Helping neighbour to keep costs under control

My neighbour is with BT with LRS up for renewal on 31/05 and Fibre1 on 16/09/22. With everything increasing she wants to minimise ongoing costs. She is not a heavy/intensive internet user - Iplayer, Ipad etc. We’re FTTC and FTTP is not available. VMO2 is in the street.

My thoughts were:
1) Delay LRS renewal until Fibre1 renewal because we may have more haggling power with BT. However, BT is asking to renew on MYBT so may not be an issue. I'll look at those offers later.
2) Change package from Fibre1 to Fibre Essentials. Sometimes Essentials can be more expensive than Fibre1. She does not qualify for the social tariffs.
3) Wait, do not renew LRS and move provider towards the end of the Fibre1 contract. Moving to say someone like PlusNet on a 12 or 18 month contract would move away from the 2x CPI+3.9% increases that are within scope for a BT 24 month contract. I appreciate an 18 month contract with PlusNet may mean 2x CPI+3.9% increases are in scope for some contract periods. Possibly move her mobile from O2 to PlusNet giving another saving but need to consider whether she will roam.
4) Look at "mobile broadband". Three seem to offer the best value unlimited tariffs but EE has the best coverage in our area. I’m on Three for mobile phones and a speedtest (inside) has just returned 19.7 down and 4.84 up.
5) Move to a broadband only package because she doesn't use the phone and if BT was renewed they could charge upto £5 per month for a PAYG package (ability to make calls and call emergency service etc). I think broadband only wouldn't reduce the cost by a lot. Apart from BT and VMO2 are there any other broadband only providers?
6) Drill a hole in our walls and connect my network to her network and disconnect her services. This may be the cheapest option. My Fibre1 (45/9) would probably handle the additional increase in traffic.

Off to do some more research and cost benefit analysis, plus also look at her HH5 logs that shows it is restarts and drops the link frequently which may explain the (possibly capped)

07:56:49, 24 May. ( 148.360000) PPPoE is up - Down Rate=24968Kbps, Up Rate=6556Kbps; SNR Margin Down=13.1dB, Up=6.1dB

which is considerably less than our 45/9. We’re on the same cabinet.

Does anyone have any comments regarding my suggestions?

Thank you

Ditch line rental saver at the end of the month. Ditch FTTC and landline at end of minimum term.

Option 1: Try simply giving her your wifi login details (now) and see if that works for her broadband speed and data needs without overusing your data limit.

If that is fine then either continue and let her FTTC do nothing till term end then ditch her FTTC and landline.

Option 2: Similar re her existing stuff but consider a Three or EE mobile broadband router for her. But bear in mind the mobile router may not be as up to date tech as a recent mobile phone, so could be slower. (See my sig).

Given the cost saving from getting rid of the landline even EE's mobile broadband with a decent allowance (say 100GB or maybe less) should save a lot

Option 3: Has she any need for broadband when out if the house? If not, upgrade her mobile phone allowance on whatever service and simply tether her computer and iPad to it. That's what I did initially. My mobile router was added later as I installed security cameras needing internet access so they wouldn't have worked when I was out.

A bit testing of broadband data usage is what is needed at this stage to aid decision-making re the mobile broadband possibility.

Option 4: For non-geeks TalkTalk isn't as bad as its reputation on these forums. My brother has been on it for decades with no trouble and so has one of my neighbours who never moved away when it took over his Tiscali service. Certainly better CS received by both of them than Plusnet seem to provide these days.

Option 5 p: Also consider Pulse8Broadband which has minimal phone call prices (no call packages as simply not needed). They run on TalkTalk Business Wholesale which is a far better beast than the retail offering.

(Don't forget that all landline PSTN services are ending in 2025 on current plans. Though AIUI BT has just paused their Digital Voice rollout as it seems they have only just realised the implications of power cuts for vulnerable people's access to the emergency services by phone or the fall-detecting pendants and suchlike).

In reply to a post by BarkingMad:

My neighbour is with BT with LRS up for renewal on 31/05 and Fibre1 on 16/09/22. With everything increasing she wants to minimise ongoing costs. She is not a heavy/intensive internet user - Iplayer, Ipad etc. We’re FTTC and FTTP is not available. VMO2 is in the street.

My thoughts were:
1) Delay LRS renewal until Fibre1 renewal because we may have more haggling power with BT. However, BT is asking to renew on MYBT so may not be an issue. I'll look at those offers later.
2) Change package from Fibre1 to Fibre Essentials. Sometimes Essentials can be more expensive than Fibre1. She does not qualify for the social tariffs.
3) Wait, do not renew LRS and move provider towards the end of the Fibre1 contract. Moving to say someone like PlusNet on a 12 or 18 month contract would move away from the 2x CPI+3.9% increases that are within scope for a BT 24 month contract. I appreciate an 18 month contract with PlusNet may mean 2x CPI+3.9% increases are in scope for some contract periods. Possibly move her mobile from O2 to PlusNet giving another saving but need to consider whether she will roam.
4) Look at "mobile broadband". Three seem to offer the best value unlimited tariffs but EE has the best coverage in our area. I’m on Three for mobile phones and a speedtest (inside) has just returned 19.7 down and 4.84 up.
5) Move to a broadband only package because she doesn't use the phone and if BT was renewed they could charge upto £5 per month for a PAYG package (ability to make calls and call emergency service etc). I think broadband only wouldn't reduce the cost by a lot. Apart from BT and VMO2 are there any other broadband only providers?
6) Drill a hole in our walls and connect my network to her network and disconnect her services. This may be the cheapest option. My Fibre1 (45/9) would probably handle the additional increase in traffic.

Off to do some more research and cost benefit analysis, plus also look at her HH5 logs that shows it is restarts and drops the link frequently which may explain the (possibly capped)

07:56:49, 24 May. ( 148.360000) PPPoE is up - Down Rate=24968Kbps, Up Rate=6556Kbps; SNR Margin Down=13.1dB, Up=6.1dB

which is considerably less than our 45/9. We’re on the same cabinet.

Does anyone have any comments regarding my suggestions?

Thank you

Out of those two options, the one's that are the best in my opinion are, a 4G / 5G option as first choice, the reason is because of phone personal hotspot which would work if speeds are suitable and no second cost as long as its an unlimited or high data plan.

The alternative running ethernet through the wall, I hope to an access point e.g. One of these (cheaper are available).
would definitely be suitable if you trust your neighbour with access to your network, I don't know how technical you are, but if you know how to configure a VLAN to segregate access I would.
The reasons are VLAN's can "separate" the two networks and just means you don't see each others devices more for security .
It's just a security thing for me really. It's like I have a guest network, but its on its own VLAN with a login portal and simple password it basically makes sure no one can start messing around and intercepting traffic etc.

A VLAN can only be configured with some routers so its worth remembering.

Otherwise if access isn't a big concern than I don't see why not.

It would be my prefered option from a reliability point of view as 3, 4 , 5G is very variable at times so personally its the best bet.

If it was me I might charge a small amount monthly e.g. £5 to 10 to cover the costs of the access point and cable and to contribute partly to the internet bill, but that's obviously not my decision to make. I only mentioned it as if I didn't have the hardware or none spare its a cost to me, if you see where I'm coming from.

Thanks pluralist,

I've done some digging.

BT will allow recontract at £2p/m reduction for 24 months and no PAYG call package and LRS. Approx £28 per month overall.
If she switched to PlusNet now she'd be looking at £22.99 for 18 months, with a £75 reward card on top. I estimate ETC from BT would be around £48.
She could get Virgin M100 for £24 for 18 months
Three Mobile Broadband isn't available in our area - according to the Three website. Strange because I have a Three mobile plan.
EE (only 4G at the mo) in our area, A 5GEE device (future proofing) has £100 upfront and £20 p/m for 40GB for 24 months. It has a lan port. The 4GEE wifi mini 2020 is £0 upfront and could have the same usage plan as above. I don't think the 4GEE has a lan port.

Looking at your options, wifi would work for sharing my network, but she has an ethernet connected YouView box so either I'd need a cable from me to her which would plug into Youview box, or a router set up in AP mode (if I have got that correct) - connects to my wifi and then ethernet ports can connect to the Youview. I think the 5GEE would be useful in this regard.

I did consider Pulse8 but it is £30 per month. I've just checked TalkTalk and can get Fibre65 or Fibre35 for £23.50 over 20 months.

I need to work out how much data she is using. Hopefully the HH5 will tell me!

I'm willing to bet I'm asked why I'm not using a mobile solution.

Thank RR_The_IT_Guy,

A good point about the VLANs. I'll probably be able to set one up although the neighbour is a retired professional and not a geek. My Billion 8800NL R2 supports VLAN. I'll need to try when the wife isn't working from home in case I need to reset the 8800.

I've picked up a PAYG EE SIM to test signal and speed in my Iphone.

In reply to a post by BarkingMad:

Thank RR_The_IT_Guy,

A good point about the VLANs. I'll probably be able to set one up although the neighbour is a retired professional and not a geek. My Billion 8800NL R2 supports VLAN. I'll need to try when the wife isn't working from home in case I need to reset the 8800.

I've picked up a PAYG EE SIM to test signal and speed in my Iphone.

Of course, nothing worse than accidently kicking someone off the network trying stuff out.

I know I have done that before, wasn't popular, in the process also caused a bigger issue so went from working and in under half an hour of changes went to hours of downtime, working to make it work before the next day. That evening didn't go down well, no streaming and no internet from 8PM until i finally got it working again at 3AM.

That was a massive software upgrade, I did have redundancy but I obviously rolled out the upgrade to every device at once, thinking that it wouldn't be a problem.
Always nice when things go to plan.

But yeah on a serious note the VLAN and cable, with an access point and since there is that youview box a cheap switch would do nicely.

Let's no go into what I'm about to say but one of the neighbours and I have been considering doing dual WAN so we both pay for a connection from a different network, e.g. me on Virgin them on Openreach FTTP when available in September and running cables between us, so different traffic can go over different connections for performance and redundancy at no extra cost to either of us as I already have the cables spare.
It would mean that we have a VLAN each in the scenario and rate limiting so neither of us could obtain more than the max speed on our own connections even if it using each others for different traffic, e.g. streaming traffic would go over VM and as much other traffic as possible would go over the FTTP connection as long as there is always spare bandwidth somewhere to ensure that neither of us maxes out 1.6Gig's of combined bandwidth.
All dependant on many factors, but we agreed that if we did anything we would need to do some testing first before laying cables to see how things looked and what the plan was if either of us was on holiday and a network fault developed.
you get the general idea.

It's similar in a way, so I have thought about the issues with sharing connections

RR_The_IT_Guy,

Thanks for the reply.

Results from the EE Ookla speed test stood at the window showed EE was 21.6/5.72 compared to Three 19.7/4.84. I thought EE would be much better in my area.

About to discuss findings so far with the neighbour and see if I can see how much data has been through the HH5.

In reply to a post by BarkingMad:

RR_The_IT_Guy,

Thanks for the reply.

Results from the EE Ookla speed test stood at the window showed EE was 21.6/5.72 compared to Three 19.7/4.84. I thought EE would be much better in my area.

About to discuss findings so far with the neighbour and see if I can see how much data has been through the HH5.

No problem at all, I'll be honest, that's a lot better than I get on any network round my area, (even outside). The max i used to get on EE was 100Mbps at night like 2 up (but that was me pointing my phone at the mast across the road from the window, (must clearly be the only mast in KM's as its clearly overutilized)) and the rest of the time between 5 and 10Mbps down 1UP on 4G, three is 3G only hitting a whopping 5-9Mbps constantly with half a meg sometimes 1.5 max up. Vodafone and O2 are exactly the same at 5Mbps if i'm lucky as they have utilisation issues at the moment.

Your speedtest is very good, (at least compared to my expectations) Back when I had fixed line with Openreach I was on 10Mbps download although after power cuts got 13down, 1up until the 13th of october 2018 and just about coped on that, FTTC was available but It wasn't suitable due to international calling being required at the time, and it being included with ADSL on talktalk for no additional cost. FTTC was considered but wasn't as viable as VM due to VM being cheaper, as their network is reliant on customers not using their connection. If more than three customers in the same area max it out, that's it, slow for everyone, (obviously i'm exaggerating a bit, but it feels like it at times)

I mean you can see for yourself in my signature. All I will say is I have seen it all while on Virgin Media, it's been interesting to say the least.

As long as those 4G speeds you shared stay like that during the peek then you might just about get away with 4K streaming, HD should definitely be okay.

Edited by RR_The_IT_Guy (Wed 25-May-22 15:25:34)

Your contract with the provider may prohibit sharing of services with other parties. My contract (residential) says

You may only use the Services and the Equipment for Your own (and the members of Your household's own) purposes only and not for any business or commercial purposes.

Thanks Thinker27,

I guess if you take the wording at face value then I shouldn't allow anyone who visits me to use my wifi.

My use wouldn't be business or commercially orientated.

Interesting.

If you aren't selling it to the neighbour, one could argue its fine.

One could argue it in debate, but perhaps not a point to take against BT's lawyers in a legal system where the loser pays the winners costs...

It is pretty clear that the term I quoted (from an altnet) contains two restrictions - not for users outside the household nor for commercial purposes.

You could reasonably consider a guest as a member of your household (= a house and its occupants). But this is not the point. The term is restrictive - you shouldn't allow a different household to use it irrespective of who you might rightly or wrongly allow in your own.

BT's term includes a similar dual restriction on who/how
Each service is just for you and your household for personal use (meaning that it should not be used for any trade, business or profession).

(On the face of it that doesn't permit WFH, but I don't think they object to modest use.)

Of course it is up to the user whether they breach their contract and risk any consequences. It seems fashionable these days to ignore national law and international agreements, so why not see if you can get away with it?

In reply to a post by Thinker27:

One could argue it in debate, but perhaps not a point to take against BT's lawyers in a legal system where the loser pays the winners costs...

It is pretty clear that the term I quoted (from an altnet) contains two restrictions - not for users outside the household nor for commercial purposes.

You could reasonably consider a guest as a member of your household (= a house and its occupants). But this is not the point. The term is restrictive - you shouldn't allow a different household to use it irrespective of who you might rightly or wrongly allow in your own.

BT's term includes a similar dual restriction on who/how
Each service is just for you and your household for personal use (meaning that it should not be used for any trade, business or profession).

(On the face of it that doesn't permit WFH, but I don't think they object to modest use.)

Of course it is up to the user whether they breach their contract and risk any consequences. It seems fashionable these days to ignore national law and international agreements, so why not see if you can get away with it?

Just out of interest, I read through the applicable bits of Virgin Media's terms and conditions to see if it was the same, (totally not the first time I have read them) it does seem that if I understood Virgin correctly they sate that working from home is allowed as long as it doesn't impact the income of the user, and doesn't make virgin look bad through a area fault (it says it differently obviously but that's the brief i understood) they basically say, if there's a problem and you can't work its your own problem and not our problem.

I might have read it wrong as I skimmed it, but they don't seem to mention commercial use. I searched for the words, "comercial, work, business" and nothing relevant came up. Anyone know if i did miss a clause?

In reply to a post by mbames:

If you aren't selling it to the neighbour, one could argue its fine.

I guess in theory passing on the ethernet cable, switch or access point would be allowed since its a totally different thing entirely. Since if your neighbour was to have access to a shared file say on your computer which happened to be connected to the ISP's network, then they are accessing the computer not the internet, I'm sure your neighbour would appreciate having access to the shared file which maybe contains information about a street party e.g. for the Queen's Jubilee as preparing for these events is important?
I'm sure you understand that a high speed link such as this is essential for file collaboration.

To be honest the only way a provider will suspect commercial activity is if they notice extremely unusual amounts of traffic and we are talking TB's not GB's. Like back when i first joined virgin I was on 50Mbps and the usage was basically flat out constantly for quite a while since I was on 10 meg before so sorta put off big downloads for a long time, as it basically got a point where my 10 Meg connection was maxed out constantly when people were working from home, in video calls and remote desktop the usage outgrew the connection. I was struggling to load google or websites or do updates in reasonable time.

The upgrade to M100 only took place because we had a lot of guests for a BBQ and needed the bandwidth as there were a couple TV's constantly streaming and the guest network.

The thing is, it wasn't the amount of people that was the problem, I could easily have had 100 users on websites, it was what they were doing.
I mean a 10 people on social media, streaming, uploading, going mad on the network, mainly because they knew that I had faster connections than their 30Mbps FTTC lines and they were purposely trying to make mine struggle, one person just sat there with a constant speedtest open.
I'll be honest and say that I wasn't really bothered because I knew that VIrgin Media didn't care about usage, it didn't affect me much anyway, was too busy trying to stop food burning, the network comes second to the BBQ.

I learnt from this that traffic management on my guest network was needed. Now each guest has to logs in using their email has a max of 30Mbps shared across each device they connect, with bursts of 50Mbps if there is no other traffic. The whole guest VLAN is limited to around 350 Mbps so I can still continue as normal without being affected, by speed testing traffic hogs (one of which will probably see this)


I think you get the idea. But I honestly wouldn't be bothered about it because back when I was on M50 my average monthly usage was 3TB download a month and 1TB UP. I think when the speed doubled the usage didn't really increase much It just condensed in smaller amounts of time allowing devices to be switched off quicker, saving electricity. I will say this year when I was on M100 there were points with days of non stop uploads and downloads so it got unbearable and felt like ADSL. I know full well that I went well over 7TB a few months ago, around 1TB of updates, 100 gigs of speedtests with samknows, video editing used over 4 and so did streaming, at an average of around 25 gigs a day.

I won't go on any longer as I think I have gone slightly off topic but in a nutshell I don't think your ISP will be bothered

Thanks for all the comments.

For the time being we've not renewed the LRS. I've been attempting to get an overview of the neighbours usage but the HH5 restarts quite frequently and/or the line drops and the usage stats seem to get reset.

I may consder putting my SH2 on her line to see if that improves stability. I assume my SH2 is not tied/linked to my service? I think we'll get BT to look at the line / run some tests. I'll perform quiet line tests etc. If the SH2 is linked then I could use my 8800NL R2 for a month or so. However that would mean I'd need to use the SH2 and when I used it a few months ago, it didn't agree with the R7800 router (in AP mode) - it causes the R7800 to see "heavy traffic" and restart on a frequent basis.

It would be interesting to know how ISPs could check for broadband sharing. With other services, e.g. Netflix I guess they could see the same account is being used by two different IPs at the same time.

Anyway, thanks again.

I think you're a super nice and kind neighbour. But I would draw the line at any long term internet sharing arrangement.

It's best too get the folks next door onto the best possible package for their budget and needs. If 4G/5G service is acceptable this is a very acceptable alternative to fixed line broadband, and you can very easily run a rental free "landline" using VoIP over the connection.

I'd agree with this - however nice someone is, and however unlikely it may be, no one wants to be on the end of a 6am knock because the person they've been sharing their internet connection with turns out to have been doing "things they shouldn't" online. By the time you're off the hook because it wasn't you, the neighbourhood knows, your kids' mates stop being allowed over, and so on.

Someone I worked with a few years ago was hauled off for such offences (he'd done it, no connection sharing involved), and you'd never have thought he'd be the type until it happened. Sharing your internet connection with someone outside your household is taking responsibility for everything that person does online, and you never really know a person. It's really not worth it to save a neighbour a few pounds.

In reply to a post by BarkingMad:

BT will allow recontract at £2p/m reduction for 24 months and no PAYG call package and LRS. Approx £28 per month overall.

If she called BT retentions, I imagine she would be offered under £25/month.

I would personally avoid sharing your internet connection or suggesting a mobile broadband solution

@pluralist

May I ask are you just using a ZTE MF286D without an external antenna (e.g. Poynting)?

With help from another post, I've now located the 3 tower (LTE B3 band only - according to Cellmapper) that is providing a signal to my Iphone SE 2020. OpenSignal was pointing in a different direction!

It's about 0.85km away, on the other side of the valley and from street level, I'm 29 metres higher, but of course the mast height would probably remove the height differential.. The "office" room is at the rear of the house and further away from the tower.

At the rear (office room) I get 15.9Mbps/3.66 (-112dBm). At the front, a more reasonable 26.3/10.2 (-100dBm)

Do you think the MF286D would provide better results than my Iphone, if I was just using the two supplied stick antenna?

I suppose I could purchase the ZTE and try it out with my 4GB download SIM.

Thanks

BM

I'm no help re that I'm afraid. Mine is "Three"-badged/logo'ed, and didn't come with any antennae in the box. I didn't even realise it had mounting points, but on looking just now it has a couple of plastic plugs in the appropriate places on the back. Goodness knows what if any firmware is tailoring it has as well.

I literally took it out of its box, put the SIM in that came with it, put it on the window-ledge and switched on. Which mast it is picking up I can't be sure as its GUI doesn't give much info. In that room the direction shown on my phone is also unreliable though I haven't done detailed investigation as my upstairs phone use is the other side of the metal-framed house.

On the very hot days recently I have kept the blind down to help against over-heating, which has always been a worry me even on landline broadband.

(I just ran a speedtest.net on the phone next to the router using mobile not wifi. 606/18.9 LOL, so not much use. A pity I can't get 5G downstairs!)

As for iPhone v mobile router, always a difficult subject. A modern mobile phone is usually a long way ahead of ISP-supplied mobile data routers wrt antennae and electronics. That's how they can in effect give the routers away.

Thanks @pluralist

From your description it looks like your router is a different version to the one I found on Amazon after googling ZTE MF286D.

BarkingMad