I think they've bitten off more than they can chew: think about it, offering 25Mbps (or even 50) SDSL over an entire rural district of 50,000+ souls (where 2 or less is probably the norm) - a recipe for anarchy. Even an established operator like Kjoma has complaints on here about unresponsiveness to potential customer enquiries, and they are a much bigger business. I also think the software may be having trouble coping (e.g. this morning I have good download but effectively no upload). There's a big jump from a few successful trial connections on the new service however well you might plan. (And this is an entirely diffferent scale from their existing and long standing service to the Rodings, so no I'm not their only customer but a very recent comer to the party!).

Their existing service to me has deteriorated significantly since the introduction of the new service: no two ways about it. I think the new service should be viewed as experimental and the launch was in a bit of a hurry (which is why I said make sure you have a back up) and IF all comes good I'd think it needs up to six months to settle down. (ADSL didn't happen overnight even with BT's resources). From bitter experience with new services you need to be very patient (and unfortunately I'm not) as I've seen the attempts to improve my service don't always work first or even second time around, so it does all depend whether you can afford the patience, and as a business I suspect may be not.

They have now replied! A site survey will be done later this week,hope it will work out fine.

In reply to a post by smurf46:

Very helpful reply, thanks. A lot of it gels with what W20/Fibre Wi-Fi have told me, including the need to use their own customised software. They reckon the new NanoM is vastly superior to my older version (horizontal and vertical aerial and the MIMO technology?) but if I understand you correctly my installation is under-performing (depending on the transmitter) at less than 10km and with speeds which were around 7Mbps down/6 up, and have halved in the last couple of months - any ideas on what could have caused that sort of reduction in your experience? There are individual trees around, none of enough height within 0.5 mile, the transmitter is on the only tower block in the area, between me and it lies a river valley, a couple of housing estates on the valley sides, and I'm on a hill! . Nothing has changed in my internal set up (ethernet cable to PC). There's no dropouts, just the speed issue. They've enhanced the backhaul and increased the power at the transmitter.(There used to be a cap at 10 Mbps as it was an advertised 4Mbps SDSL service, but it's been removed).

HI Just too add, I now have this product installed. After a 3 appointments changes ( I have also a 3mb adsl with Idnet. copper line of 5.5km).

I am in a Dengie village with Line of Sight to latchington Water Tower of 4.4km. I have had cause to doubt a few things, Especialy after having spoken to Gary Disley this morning along with having cause to email Jill Turner on previous occasions as well.

I have a split feed of 8.8 down and 12.3 mb up.

Alex the engineer / Installer. Stated that he would boost power to get better reception..

Spoke to Gary today, who states that my testing on various speed test websites including this one are useless in determinig the headline speed. Now I may be wrong but this smack a bit of ' double glazing' talk.

How can you advertise a speed related product, ie where does that seed coem from?

How can a customer check the actual speed of this product if the industry speed checks are in Gary's words 'worthless and not reliable'?

Is this product being overhyped. Remember Chelsmford County Council, Maldon Distict Council and http://www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk/ are all party to this. Have they been shall we say 'oversold' on this so that funding could be found for the new company Fibrewife / Buzzcom.?

I am i believe, far short of the advertised 50mb split, with http://www.speedtest.net/result/861816128.png. But according to Gary this figure is false! not accurate I agree no speedtest are. But they are very good indicators.

Advertised products http://www.fibrewifi.com/pricing

Can the more in tune wirless experts such as Bill Lewis - MD
Kijoma Broadband - please advise on how we are to 'check' what is being sold to us.

Now i am not being dumb I know what I know. But I would like an experts opinion on how the 'consumer' can check and verify that a product is doing, or is at least, within the parameters as stated. Not all consumers will know or even bother to come to a site like this for information.

As long as their new installed sytem is 'working' they may not have cause to check that the product they bought have is actually what is being advertised.?

Considering that I am only 4.4km with L.O.S to the antenna. With new Ubiquiti NSM5 EU that had a test date 17/12/09

After all there are legal issues here. And I at the moment am not content with what I am being told by Gary Disley.

All comments very appreciated on a much needed faster internet connection for the Dengie Hundred of Essex.

For information as well, this product is getting a lot of new customers. Alex did not not finish installing until 9pm on Friday.

Edited by Essex (Mon 28-Jun-10 10:46:44)

As you can see from my previous posts I've had a bit of a runaround on speeds too, but admittedly on their "old" service. My experience is that this site's tester on Fixed Wi-Fi pretty well corresponds with the speed measured by an actual file download from an uncongested server to my PC. Initially my speeds increased over the first month to six weeks by about 50%; and although I stand to be corrected my belief is that WiFi like ADSL can't guarantee everyone will get the maximum speed, what it does take out of the equation is the exchange problems, line joints and wiring defects that affect ADSL, and the usual range of weather (apart from some deterioration in torrential rain) doesn't seem to affect it. I also believe there can be software issues that can affect the receiver, and for that reason it's best not to loose the power supply to the receiver if possible; though I suspect the new Nano is better in that respect. My case with wildly fluctuating speeds isn't normal, and fingers crossed will now settle down.

In reply to a post by smurf46:

As you can see from my previous posts I've had a bit of a runaround on speeds too, but admittedly on their "old" service. My experience is that this site's tester on Fixed Wi-Fi pretty well corresponds with the speed measured by an actual file download from an uncongested server to my PC. Initially my speeds increased over the first month to six weeks by about 50%; and although I stand to be corrected my belief is that WiFi like ADSL can't guarantee everyone will get the maximum speed, what it does take out of the equation is the exchange problems, line joints and wiring defects that affect ADSL, and the usual range of weather (apart from some deterioration in torrential rain) doesn't seem to affect it. I also believe there can be software issues that can affect the receiver, and for that reason it's best not to loose the power supply to the receiver if possible; though I suspect the new Nano is better in that respect. My case with wildly fluctuating speeds isn't normal, and fingers crossed will now settle down.

An update to my previous. I have again spoken to Mr Disley today. More adjustments have been made to optmise my end with the receiver / trasnmitter / base station. My speeds are now http://www.speedtest.net/result/862341360.png - http://speed.io/backend/result/33078021?pID=project1 Which is a vast improvement against the original installation.

Having now had further conversations as well email correspondence I feel a lot more confident with this product and along with some suggestions that I have forwarded. I believe the system will improve greatly.

I will keep the forum updated. With the hope that it will be all positives for the future of a desperatly needed fast internet WiFi product in the Dengie and surrounding areas. Coupled to the Easynet Fibre network into Chelmsford.

I am currently using a Buffalo AirStation Afinity router to expand my network enviroment. Will look around the market to see if there is anything superior. But at the moment it is all working very well indeed.

Well done http://www.fibrewifi.com/ keep up the good work.

Curious: Did you or any other already existing or new customer of FibreWifi experience a considerable slowdown of connection speeds this afternoon or evening (Monday 28 June) because of the football cup or some tennis matches? Or did the FibreWifi service manage to cope successfully with the additional bandwidth demand?

In reply to a post by JNeuhoff:

This morning there was a news item on BBC Essex about a new long-distance wireless broadband service being launched in Essex, starting with Chelmsford, with symmetric speeds of 25mbps or 50mbps.

The company Buzcom is a london based outfit - I've seen the name before. I'm sure google is helpfull but I'm not looking now.


I have 1 customer on the network and am waiting for some real feedback once they have been using it for a few weeks.

Some things we did find out thought;

They use Easynet for therebackhaul to the internet

The 'survey' they did for my customer was a mess - they used a survey tool for a motorola point to point microwave link and not the actual hardware they are using on the live network.

They came to install and didn't bring a long enough pole to mount the CPE unit and had to go away and come back another day once they had the correct one.

They got the thing installed then found out the path they had 'surveyed' was blocked by another house and had to re align the link to another site (without a further survey)

You get an external IP at the CPE but there are lots of bridged connections within the network.

Ping times look ok at the moment, BBC is only 7 *shown* hops to the BBC most via easynet

Throughput looks ok at the moment but we have no way of finding out how many people are on the system.

The internet connection was reported to max out at about 10mbit both ways - but they have done at least 1 upgrade since that test and I'm waiting for more results.

They had an entire weekend of down time - we have no idea why at the moment.

There coverage projection maps are just that - projections as far as we can tell.

They provide support for the radio link, but we are not sure about the rest.

There radius is not working correctley at the moment, there are no usage figures logged or viewable by the end user.

No obvious lightning protection was installed at the CP End

We have not had any 'bad weather' tests yet - due to the err lack of bad weather!

They apear to also be offrering a normal WiFi network with AP's at local places - we have no details of that part of the network as yet.

We don't know how many sites they have, or if there sites are sectored or not.

We don't know what resilliance there is within the network yet.

It's been hard to get any details out of them - the website is shocking.

We have found no SLA's or anything involving a path that becomes later blocked by something (A building or something)

Also beware planning restrictions and things in the link path of which both may stop you getting this installed.

A friend of mine runs a local IT firm out Essex way he was looking at them as something he can offer his customers but at the moment is not impressed with the little info he's been able to get, or the install of my user out there.

We await more details. It's a nice idea and could work very well, but given the start I won't be putting anyone else on there for a while.


This thread is a bit long and I've not managed to read through it all - sorry. If this post attracts enough attention I may ask a mod to move it, or split it off somewhere to make it a bit easier for everyone.

Edited by IamQ (Mon 12-Jul-10 23:44:40)

Surely, if this network is being supplied with public money in association with Essex County Council then much of the above stats should be provided through the council to the public domain shouldn't it? Would be interesting to know if there was a tender process for this public money. Would imagine any such tender would specify what should be being supplied and how the success of this "pilot scheme" is being recorded.

Just thought I'd post an update in view of the negativity I think is developing on this thread. My problem proved to be a faulty old-style Nano (not the one they're now using) which has now been replaced. At 5 miles from the transmitter across North Chelmsford, speeds are 12 Mbps+ both ways, pings around 10, packet delay less than 120 at max; the killer for me is that that this compares to max 3.5Mbps download, (pings up to 200 and packet delays that start at 400ms) on ADSL which will never improve due to the number of constantly increasing number of repair joints on the local loop. Things are exactly as promised: the new Nano gives speeds twice as fast at the old version. Over the six months I've had their services there was no deterioriation in the bad weather of Jan-March, and downtime (apart from faults with my equipment) seems always to be overnight usually about half an hour once a week and within the hours of 3am - 8am, worst ever was 4 hours between those hours on a couple of occaisons. Sure there's no lighning protection - but there isn't on my TV aerial either, nor is it something I think BT provide to overhead lines!

I'm not sure the website or amount of information is any worse than every other wireless provider (including others in receipt of public funds) though the inquisitive can use an FOI on the records of a public authority! And no-one holds a gun to your head to move from a BT supplied landline as they will after all always give you the best service they're prepared to!

Edited by smurf46 (Fri 23-Jul-10 08:37:17)

Thanks for the update.

Hope to have it available in my area soon. Certainly beats BT because symmetric broadband is far more useful than asymmetric DSL. Will go for FibreWiFi's 50mbps package.