To think there should be some way of getting unlimited internet in a rural area?

[RumpetaRumpeta]

So, we have moved to a rural area where the broadband speeds are less than 0.3Mbps. We are using the same satellite internet provider that our predecessors used, which gives us a 40gb monthly allowance at great expense (£69.99 a month). The first month, we used this up within two weeks. OK, so we thought this was because we had made the mistake of thinking we could watch a few shows on BBC iPlayer. Obviously, we didn't have enough data for that! We were told by the provider to take advantage of their free download time between 12am and 6am, and download anything we wanted to watch.

Now, none of us actually care enough about TV to get up in the middle of the night to download it, so this month we decided to watch nothing. We used the internet for emails, a little bit of work-related research, some Facebook, and a bit of internet shopping. This time, we ran out of our data allowance in less than two weeks.

I rang up to see what was going on. Auto-update is turned off on all our computers, so that can't be guzzling data. The guy on the end of the line suggested that iCloud backups could be to blame. Fair enough, I hadn't realised that my MacBook could be the culprit.

The thing is, though... I don't really want to have to stop using iCloud as well as to stop streaming TV and films. I don't want to pay £70 a month just for the privilege of sending and receiving emails. I am really frustrated and I am wondering - has anyone else been in this situation, and what solution have you found? I'm thinking about using my mobile phone as a hotspot and getting a larger data package, but won't that just get eaten up really quickly as well?

Does anyone know of an option for unlimited internet in a rural area? I am tearing my hair out - I literally cannot do my (freelance, from home) job with this internet package! Arrggghhhhh! Help!!!! Am I being unreasonable to think that there must be something out there?!

I live very rurally (we are 4 miles further on from a village most people consider to be the middle of nowhere!) we get a download speed of about 3.8mbps with BT and have few problems watching Netflix/ now TV etc.

It can be a big dodgy in bad weather or if too many people are trying to do stuff at once but otherwise it’s fine

Move rural and you get less because it is more expensive to deliver just need to suck it up
Also, someone has to pay to put the infrastructure in place.

Unless there is a profit in it, BT are often reluctant to do this.

If for example only a few people in a village want to pay for fibre optic broadband then it will take years for them to get their investment back.

Unfortunately, the UK at present is cutting back on lots of essential services. Is it really fair that the taxpayer should be expected to fund superfast broadband in remote areas??

If broadband speeds are important for working from home then people can get by on quite low internet speeds as long as they are prepared to be very strict about who else is using it at the same time.

Even at low speeds like 1 mb/s, you can have two PCs using the internet for basic tasks, annoying but it works.

What you can't expect is to have two kids playing xBox online, someone streaming Netflix and three PCs online as well.

Yabu sorry. Live rurally then broadband isn't a given and satellite isn't too expensive really but obviously it's not unlimited.

"Superfast fibre broadband" can be slow if you live rurally.

For 95% of the country, "Superfast fibre broadband" only means fibreoptic to a BT cabinet, from there to your home it still uses the copper phone line. If you are rural and far from your cabinet the speeds can still be slow. I know someone who upgraded from standard broadband to "fibre" and their speed went up from 2Mbs to 10Mbs.

If you are one of the lucky 5% of the country then you can get fibre optic all the way into your house, making the copper line obsolete. In that case you should get the exact speed you are paying for, for example 40Mbs, 55Mbs or 76Mbs are common speeds. But 95% of the country do not have this as an option. (Although some of those may have a fast Virgin cable service as an option.)

All the pleading won't work. BT as provider of the 'last mile' exploit their monopoly position and will not provide the speeds that everyone should have. BT and Openreach should be separate companies and the BT bit for the last mile be subject to strict controls so the necessary work is done.

Our poor communications network is an obstacle to rural life and to business in general.

Shameless placemarking here. We also rely on a satellite system with a mobile wifi dongle thing to provide extra bandwidth when we use up all our allowances. I would love there to be something better.

This site allows you to check when you can get fibre Internet www.homeandbusiness.openreach.co.uk/fibre-broadband/when-can-i-get-fibre
And this site lets you check what providers you can get in the meantime if this is any help? availability.samknows.com/broadband/

I live in a town center and get crap net, very patchy and slow. I've had to stop streaming totally. I have family in a village 3 miles from the edge of town who get fibre, and my sister 2 miles in the other way from town gets fibre, but apparently no plans at all to get it here in the middle of town! Weird. So I'm stuck on Sky on 2 down 0.2 up most of the time, and no net for hours at a time. Weird how I'm in a little bubble of sadness

What about ADSL over a landline? Like MeeWhoo I am not in the UK, but here many of those who live rurally have Internet through a router, sapping in on a 100MB cable service run by the equivalent of BT and a local broadband association for that village and quite a few neighbouring villages, stretching over hundreds of miles so as to make it technically and financially possible. (The digging of the fibre cable paid for by a huge government initiative.) Other than that, ADSL over a copper landline or a 4G modem are the only options I know of, that I know to exist.

@elastamam: See if it gets better with an external directional antenna mounted on a pole on the rooftop. It requires some weak signal to work though, not a void.

elastamum
Not everyone lives in London or the SE - we pay our taxes and council tax and get a fraction of the services urban folk do. No gritting our roads, huge potholes, no streetlights, unreliable refuse collection, limited public transport.
you are absolutely right - compare council tax payments in places like Islington against that paid for the same council tax band in the sticks^ - however for all its drawbacks/frustrations I would rather live in Herefordshire than the teeming cities/suburbs.
I do feel that 'escape to the country' wannabees should be told that there are problems to running a business, getting the rural lanes gritted and relying on transport to counteract the chocolate box cottage/traditional farmhouse appeal.

When my sister moved away from Greater London one of the deal breakers was decent broadband. They did their research very carefully before they bought the house they now live in.

You could get a few 50GB mifi devices from Vodafone for that price! Check out their broadband too, can they get to you? They do unlimited I believe

There's no problems running most businesses via satellite, people just want unlimited for nexflix. With how low public money is these people just need to suck it up really.

I run my business often ruarally when helping out family and have to use my phone placed somewhere good to create a hotspot.

You could get a few 50GB mifi devices from Vodafone for that price!

And,

I run my business often ruarally when helping out family and have to use my phone placed somewhere good to create a hotspot.

We have a mobile broadband account too, because we're too remote for broadband down the phone line, and the satellite isn't reliable. But there's a problem: there aren't any mobile phone signal masts nearby so the mobile signal here is very patchy and it doesn't always work.

We have found no reliable solutions.

If you need faster broadband you could look at a line lease. They're expensive (think £200-£300/month) but will give you fast and reliable internet.

You can also look for other local options. My parents live rurally and they can get B4RN (in Lancashire). It's a community based coop that provide fibre locally. High setup costs but v low monthly costs and they get gigabit (1024mbps) internet for £30/month.

Forget about landline and “broadband” haha companies and ring round the Main mobile companies. You might want to have two different accounts one for her me and one for business so that too many films one month cant affect your ability to work!

This is the exact reason we live on the edge of a city and not rurally. I need proper broadband for my business.

Work wise try tracking down your local small business network - they’ll know the situation.

Mobile signals aren't always reliable. MIL lives in the middle of nowhere and you have to stand in the front garden to use a mobile.

Crikey, everyone, you've all been so helpful! Sorry I didn't come back to this thread - as you might have guessed, I had internet connection problems!

thinkingaboutfostering It is a secure network, yes. We only have one neighbour, and given that a) the network is secure, and b) we can't access the signal from one side of the house anyway, I'm pretty sure they're not nicking it!

ragged Yes, we do have free downloads between midnight and 6am. I have absolutely no idea how to set up an automatic backup but I will now look into doing that. Thank you very much.

Penguin82 Goodness that is an expensive deal! You have my sympathies!!! Hope you managed to Skype your mum ;)

Youcantscareme I think MiFi is the route we are going to go down! Will elaborate below.

Sargeant I hadn't heard of Fleur - thanks; I shall investigate before we go down the MiFi route for sure. lljkk thank you for the review page.\

Smoke It's satellite, not broadband. We effectively cannot get broadband in our area - I mean, we can, but it would be at a 0.3MB speed - haha! I have a one year old child so cannot realistically be on the internet at midnight - unfortunately!!! You make a really good point about contacting companies - I guess unless they know there is demand for their service there is no point in them investing in it!

bridget we had asked the people selling the house about their internet use - they worked from home and said (I realise they may have lied) that they had no trouble. We then spent a lot of time talking to internet service providers who assured us that 40GB would cover all our needs. Unfortunately we were a little naive and believed them! I've just put in our postcode on that checker you provided - thank you! It's very interesting. Apparently the cabinet is enabled for super fast, but the line is too long for us to get super fast (or fast at all!!!) speeds. It says they are 'actively looking' at other options. That's much more positive than I had expected.

Senior That's quite rude, and you obviously haven't read my post properly. I am perfectly willing to pay far more than I would do in an urban area to get unlimited internet here - but I can't seem to find ANY provider that will give us unlimited internet, no matter how much I offer to pay them. I came on here for some help with this!

elastamum that's interesting about BT taking money - I didn't know about that. Perhaps I need to read up on it and then send them a letter!!!

OnTheRise I'm curious to know why you pay for satellite and a MiFi, when the MiFi deals are much cheaper. Couldn't you just get two MiFi deals and do away with the satellite entirely? Or is it that your 4G signal isn't very reliable? (Ah, sorry, I just read further on. Unreliable signal. Gutted! I am in the more fortunate situation that our 4G is very good, so I think we will be using that as our main provision.)

Goldilocks I've never heard of crap internet in a town before! How irritating!

hevonbu I know nothing about that - I will look into it, thank you.

olligarchy99 ha yep, there are certainly detractions to the rural lifestyle! But I've always lived in the countryside and have struggled with internet provision on and off for years - never been unable to get unlimited at a workable speed before, though!

BoobleMcB Yes! That is the route we think we are going down! 120GB for the price we are currently paying for 40GB! Woohoo!

hidden thank you - B4rn sound very interesting indeed. I shall have to have a nose about locally and see if anyone would be interested in going in with us for setup.

museumum thank you - this is basically what we are going to do!

So we've done a lot of investigating. Our 4G signal is very good. We can get a MiFi deal with 02 that gives us 40GB for £24 a month. We have also upgraded our phone contracts so that we have 20GB each on our phones - for not much more money per month (think one or two pounds) than we were previous paying. So between my husband and myself, we would then have 80GB per month, for a little over a third of what we were paying for 40GB before. We are going to try that and see how it goes!!!! Thank you all so much for your help, and I'm so sorry I only just managed to come back to respond to everyone.

Maybe too late but a colleague of DPs in a rural area has point to point broadband and I believe find it works well. Don’t know about pricing or limits though. It wa something we were planning but in the end moved to a different house where we have got reasonable broadband.

Had a google and found this site...www.digitalairwireless.com/outdoor-wireless-networks.html

www.digitalairwireless.com/outdoor-wireless-networks.html

OP, if you can then try out the O2 mobile thingy before you sign up to a contract. We have a reasonable signal but the little receiver thing that's part of the deal turns itself off all the time, doesn't remain connected even when it's on--it's really temperamental. A friend of ours has the same thing and has the same problems with it.

It's infuriating, isn't it?

Try plusnet.

They do superfast broadband. (50-80 megs.) And in rural areas too. I know several people with it.

Try plusnet.

They do superfast broadband. (50-80 megs.) And in rural areas too. I know several people with it.