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[Kevin Wood]

Yes, the current copper arrives in a duct, and Gigaclear and Swish have been in the area.

I think I got a leaflet through the door from one of them, saw no ISPs I recognised on the list of those available, so binned it.

I have a Zen fixed price for life contract currently so would need to be convinced I needed the extra speed to switch anyway, although ditching the shitty VDSL noise would be nice. That's more a problem of my neighbours not switching than me, however. 

You HAM boyz.  ADSL/VDSL is like high voltage power lines to you


Pre register interest in Gigaclear does tend to get a very good price offer when they finally allow ordering.  Hence I'm getting £30 a month off.

My Zen is also fixed for life, although I suspect they have a convenient get out clause in that copper phones lines are going, and my contract includes a copper phne line with Zen.  I will probably recontract the internet part when Openreach pull their finger out and provide FTTP here, possibly later this year.

Not sure what to do when OPenreach do do it, just go for the highest speed available (currently 900d/100u due Openreach's short sighted decision to use GPON, but new networks should be about to get 1800d/200u*, still based on GPON).  Or just get a cheap FTTP through Zen and also keep one of the altnets - once you've had a fast upload, its hard to give it up if you use any upload bandwidth...

...when I had the 900Mb service, it was quicker to use OneDrive to copy filies between PCs, rather than USB sticks.  It was the same speed to use OneDrive as it was to copy files across my LAN .  And Youtube uploads dropped from about 3hrs to under 3m


(Though that might get reduced to 120u, again due to stupid decisions around the utterly out of date GPON - GPON allows 2.5Gb download, 1.25Gb upload, shared by all users on that node, usually around 64 - 128 homes.  Altnets tend to use XGS-PON)

Zen replaced my copper landline with VOIP recently.

[TheBoy]

Zen replaced my copper landline with VOIP recently.

They are buttering me up for when they do mine...

[Kevin Wood]

Zen replaced my copper landline with VOIP recently.

They are buttering me up for when they do mine...

I didn't put up much resistance, in fairness. Good excuse to disconnect all the garbage extension wiring.

[TheBoy]

Zen replaced my copper landline with VOIP recently.

They are buttering me up for when they do mine...

I didn't put up much resistance, in fairness. Good excuse to disconnect all the garbage extension wiring.

I wouldn't put up any. In fact I wouldn't take up their digital lines, as my main number is already a SIP based one with another provider.  I only had the line because it was needed as part of the broadband package way back when...

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

I've signed up for a 30 day trial with Starlink because my options are pretty limited before 5G becomes more common.

I've gone for the 'residential package' at £75 PCM.......roaming and mobile packages are £85 PCM and according to users regularly throttled back if the demand is high elsewhere.

As suggested by Sir Tig  I have gone for the refurbished dish which costs £150, so £79 less.

I'll see how it goes.

[Marks DTM Calib]

We too live in the countryside but Spain. No chance of copper or fibre ever..

Our choice is 4G or 5G ( when available)  The 5G will have roughly the same footprint as 4G . At max 20 meg 4 G works for TV streaming until “ rush hour” . Schools in/ out, work finishes, adverts on popular programmes etc etc. Up is 700k so useless for video conferencing.

Spain has a programme to enable everyone to get fast internet. We get HispaSat internet. 100 meg down and 7 meg up for 35 euros a month - Free install. It works great for tv streaming but has a big ping so no good for interactive internet gaming. We are currently waiting for technician to visit to give us a free  speed upgrade.
Our install is a 90 cm dish facing South East , cable to a good quality router

Similar technology to Starlink.  Starlink have offers . Look out for one……..

Nothing like Starlink, totally different tech, HispaSat is Geo tech, Starlink is LEO.

Hence you get horrific latency as the round trip delay can be half a second and with bandwidth levelling up to a second.

LEOs are so much closer that the latency is not that different to cellular

[Marks DTM Calib]

I've signed up for a 30 day trial with Starlink because my options are pretty limited before 5G becomes more common.

I've gone for the 'residential package' at £75 PCM.......roaming and mobile packages are £85 PCM and according to users regularly throttled back if the demand is high elsewhere.

As suggested by Sir Tig  I have gone for the refurbished dish which costs £150, so £79 less.

I'll see how it goes.

That's not actually how it works, the major issue is the user count on the satellite.

It might appear that there are loads of satellites up there but, there are often only 1 or 2 over the UK at any one time, throw  in a 30 degree acceptance angle for the receivers and you have many thousands of people using the bandwidth of a single satellite.........it then gets worse with between satellite bandwidth sharing (for when they cannot access an uplink, and there are not many uplinks!).

The killer for Elon is that as users increase, bandwidth falls, plus there is big competition arriving (Amazon Kuiper plus others) and he has backed a bespoke setup so will have to replace the current  space junk he has up there (although they only last around five years anyway and they are constantly burning them up over the Pacific)

Interesting live map here:

https://satellitemap.space/

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

I've signed up for a 30 day trial with Starlink because my options are pretty limited before 5G becomes more common.

I've gone for the 'residential package' at £75 PCM.......roaming and mobile packages are £85 PCM and according to users regularly throttled back if the demand is high elsewhere.

As suggested by Sir Tig  I have gone for the refurbished dish which costs £150, so £79 less.

I'll see how it goes.

That's not actually how it works, the major issue is the user count on the satellite.

It might appear that there are loads of satellites up there but, there are often only 1 or 2 over the UK at any one time, throw  in a 30 degree acceptance angle for the receivers and you have many thousands of people using the bandwidth of a single satellite.........it then gets worse with between satellite bandwidth sharing (for when they cannot access an uplink, and there are not many uplinks!).

The killer for Elon is that as users increase, bandwidth falls, plus there is big competition arriving (Amazon Kuiper plus others) and he has backed a bespoke setup so will have to replace the current  space junk he has up there (although they only last around five years anyway and they are constantly burning them up over the Pacific)

Interesting live map here:

https://satellitemap.space/

Interesting, Mark

It's shite so I'm sending it back.

I'll lose the cost of postage and £75 they have already taken for the first month.

[Marks DTM Calib]

We have been looking at how we integrate LEO solutions into a car for some years now, have worked directly with Amazon and Starlink on this.

So have you set it up, tried it, and its not performing?

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

We have been looking at how we integrate LEO solutions into a car for some years now, have worked directly with Amazon and Starlink on this.

So have you set it up, tried it, and its not performing?

Basically yes.

No obstructions as it looks out over fields. Starlink customer service say that it's as good as it is going to get.

Now using Lebara with the Vodaphone network through a Huawei router,  which costs £12.50 a month instead of £75 for Starlink.

Connecting the TV aerial to the router seems to have made it much faster.....or is that just the placebo effect.

[Marks DTM Calib]

We have been looking at how we integrate LEO solutions into a car for some years now, have worked directly with Amazon and Starlink on this.

So have you set it up, tried it, and its not performing?

Basically yes.

No obstructions as it looks out over fields. Starlink customer service say that it's as good as it is going to get.

Now using Lebara with the Vodaphone network through a Huawei router,  which costs £12.50 a month instead of £75 for Starlink.

Connecting the TV aerial to the router seems to have made it much faster.....or is that just the placebo effect.

Possible but far from ideal, you can get directional and external cellular antennas which are MUCH better, they just need pointing at the cellular mast (for directional)

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

We have been looking at how we integrate LEO solutions into a car for some years now, have worked directly with Amazon and Starlink on this.

So have you set it up, tried it, and its not performing?

Basically yes.

No obstructions as it looks out over fields. Starlink customer service say that it's as good as it is going to get.

Now using Lebara with the Vodaphone network through a Huawei router,  which costs £12.50 a month instead of £75 for Starlink.

Connecting the TV aerial to the router seems to have made it much faster.....or is that just the placebo effect.

Possible but far from ideal, you can get directional and external cellular antennas which are MUCH better, they just need pointing at the cellular mast (for directional)

I shall look into this.

Do you have one (or more) you can recommend that works well and won't break the bank?

[Varche]

We too live in the countryside but Spain. No chance of copper or fibre ever..

Our choice is 4G or 5G ( when available)  The 5G will have roughly the same footprint as 4G . At max 20 meg 4 G works for TV streaming until “ rush hour” . Schools in/ out, work finishes, adverts on popular programmes etc etc. Up is 700k so useless for video conferencing.

Spain has a programme to enable everyone to get fast internet. We get HispaSat internet. 100 meg down and 7 meg up for 35 euros a month - Free install. It works great for tv streaming but has a big ping so no good for interactive internet gaming. We are currently waiting for technician to visit to give us a free  speed upgrade.
Our install is a 90 cm dish facing South East , cable to a good quality router

Similar technology to Starlink.  Starlink have offers . Look out for one……..

Nothing like Starlink, totally different tech, HispaSat is Geo tech, Starlink is LEO.

Hence you get horrific latency as the round trip delay can be half a second and with bandwidth levelling up to a second.

LEOs are so much closer that the latency is not that different to cellular

My bad, didn’t know they were different technologies.  You are right about the high latency. You get used to it. Streams HD TV fine for us. Mind you , like Opti, I can only make comparisons with 4G and 3G before that.

I am not convinced 5G would be any better unless they put up a new mast near your house.

Our supply company for Hispasat are coming to do a free upgrade. I am always suspicious of such things. Pointing us to a different satellite? Installing a bigger dish? Changing the router for one I cannot alter the DNS…… we will see.

Funnily enough, I am just about to do a reply to someone on an expat forum who has Hispasat and says it is rubbish and is looking to go to Starlink. I will be interested to see how they get on.

[Marks DTM Calib]

The latency will only really be an issue for voice/video calls plus gaming, for streaming and web browsing in general its not noticeable.

You have to remember that 5g frequencies do not propagate as far as the lower 4g and 3g bands, so 5g coverage is generally always worse. It doesn't get better in as much as most 5g installs are NSA (Non-Stand-Alone) so are effectively 5g radios on a 4g base station.

As per Opti, if you have a cellular modem then consider an external antenna (keep the coax length as small as possible) as that will improve reception significantly and again, a directional antenna will be even better.

[Marks DTM Calib]

We have been looking at how we integrate LEO solutions into a car for some years now, have worked directly with Amazon and Starlink on this.

So have you set it up, tried it, and its not performing?

Basically yes.

No obstructions as it looks out over fields. Starlink customer service say that it's as good as it is going to get.

Now using Lebara with the Vodaphone network through a Huawei router,  which costs £12.50 a month instead of £75 for Starlink.

Connecting the TV aerial to the router seems to have made it much faster.....or is that just the placebo effect.

Possible but far from ideal, you can get directional and external cellular antennas which are MUCH better, they just need pointing at the cellular mast (for directional)

I shall look into this.

Do you have one (or more) you can recommend that works well and won't break the bank?

If you can get the modem as close to the antenna as possible then I suspect most will work ok, check as you might need two antennas (to get 2x2 MIMO) or even 4 if its 5g, will depend how many antennas the box has today.

I just use car shark fins as I have them lying around