- Joined
- Mar 12, 2006
- Messages
- 2,608
- Car
- Mini Cooper S, BMW M140i
Greetings, Citizens.
I've just about had enough paying BT every month for doing sod all. They connected the landline 22 years ago when I moved in, and they've never been back since. I don't use the landline for voice any more (the mobile covers all that) so I only use it for broadband. I do use the internet a lot when I'm at home, so a decent connection is important.
What's really got my goat is that despite the fact that I live in the middle of town, and a stone's throw from the exchange, BT refuse to fibre up our cabinet. If you look at the fibre availability map of our town, it's a sea of red apart from a little white triangle in the middle. Guess where I live? Yep. I reckon BT won't fibre us up as they'll have to pay the council to dig the main road up and lay a conduit, and it's probably not worth it for the ~30 dwellings served by the cabinet. Furthermore, my connection speed's dropped from the c. 17 MB/s I got when the exchange was upgraded to ADSL2, down to 8 MB/s now. My router tells me me the line rate is still the same, so it's obviously being throttled.
So, anyway, I've been looking at cellular as a possible alternative and I think it's pretty much got the stage of being viable. I'm with 3 for my mobile, their coverage can be a bit patchy but it's OK at home since they rolled out 4G so an LTE modem should work. Also, they've just introduced a new data-only tariff which gives you 100GB/month for 30 quid. That will be more than adequate and works out cheaper than what I'm paying at the moment. The router you get with the deal is pretty basic but I've no objections to chucking a few quid a getting a better one and although I don't have LOS to the nearest cell, some of the routers I've seen have diversity inputs so a couple of external omni antennas should sort that out. Or a high-gain yagi..
Has anyone else done this? If so, feel free to rain on my parade. Does the 4G signal get upset by atmospherics? I know when we had Sky it used to crap out when it rained, but we're taking completely different frequencies. Any thoughts welcome..
Cheers,
Gaz
I've just about had enough paying BT every month for doing sod all. They connected the landline 22 years ago when I moved in, and they've never been back since. I don't use the landline for voice any more (the mobile covers all that) so I only use it for broadband. I do use the internet a lot when I'm at home, so a decent connection is important.
What's really got my goat is that despite the fact that I live in the middle of town, and a stone's throw from the exchange, BT refuse to fibre up our cabinet. If you look at the fibre availability map of our town, it's a sea of red apart from a little white triangle in the middle. Guess where I live? Yep. I reckon BT won't fibre us up as they'll have to pay the council to dig the main road up and lay a conduit, and it's probably not worth it for the ~30 dwellings served by the cabinet. Furthermore, my connection speed's dropped from the c. 17 MB/s I got when the exchange was upgraded to ADSL2, down to 8 MB/s now. My router tells me me the line rate is still the same, so it's obviously being throttled.
So, anyway, I've been looking at cellular as a possible alternative and I think it's pretty much got the stage of being viable. I'm with 3 for my mobile, their coverage can be a bit patchy but it's OK at home since they rolled out 4G so an LTE modem should work. Also, they've just introduced a new data-only tariff which gives you 100GB/month for 30 quid. That will be more than adequate and works out cheaper than what I'm paying at the moment. The router you get with the deal is pretty basic but I've no objections to chucking a few quid a getting a better one and although I don't have LOS to the nearest cell, some of the routers I've seen have diversity inputs so a couple of external omni antennas should sort that out. Or a high-gain yagi..
Has anyone else done this? If so, feel free to rain on my parade. Does the 4G signal get upset by atmospherics? I know when we had Sky it used to crap out when it rained, but we're taking completely different frequencies. Any thoughts welcome..
Cheers,
Gaz