To buy a house without fibre broadband

[Covert19]

We’re considering a move out to the countryside. Pre lockdown, husband worked from home one day a week, using video conferencing a lot. Obviously the children are using internet for homeschool at the moment and I occasionally need to use FaceTime or Skype for my job (WFH).

The new house we have fallen for doesn’t have fibre broadband available. I can’t remember what the internet was like Pre-broadband. Are we mad to consider this move? Can you get fibre installed if you ask for it? Can you get non-fibre broadband and how? Who else lives with internet speeds of under 10mb and what is it like? Can you still watch Netflix and Iplayer if you don’t have fibre broadband?

Basically I am looking for reassurance that we will be able to manage in this amazing house despite its crap internet connection.

And I need things explained to me as if I'm your Nan- I have no technical understanding at all. I think a question like “can the internet come out of this socket on the wall?”, is a perfectly intelligent question. Please help me Mumsnetters! TIA

I have fibre and it's currently shit, because everyone is working from home at the moment and the network can't cope.

I can't begin to imagine how much worse non-fibre would be right now.

We are non fibre. I WFH and it's fine even with a house full. However, I know that DD's DFiance (isolating with us) finds our network very slow for his uni IT course.

We moved from a village with a non fibre broadband to a city with superfast Virgin. We would not go back! Honestly I would consider it carefully. Are there plans to upgrade the exchange? I can't imagine how we could WFH along with gaming/schooling and Netflix.

I moved to a remote home last year and WFH quite a lot including zoom calls etc. Have a 4g router dongle thing from EE which has been great - sufficient for all my professional needs and streaming etc

When we moved in to our house it was copper all the way and dire. Only one thing at a time could be done on the Internet - we used to set stuff to download overnight so that fingers crossed it’d be done by morning. Now we have fibre to the local box and copper to us and it’s absolutely fine. The box is probably 3/4 mile away. We can stream as much as we want with no issues. I’m not sure I would have been able to cope if it was still crap though.

It might depend on what you are used to. We are semi-rural, but very fortunate to have both a BT and a Virgin box either side of our house. We were getting 50-100 speeds, but that was not sufficient for 4 people wfh, videa conferencing, zooming, netflixing etc etc. DH upgraded to 200, and just checked and I am currently getting 220. He also invested in an upgraded wifi and boosters in several rooms. We do watch everything in HD though, and he is very tech sensitive.

Check what you can get.

ADSL of a few megabits per second is usually fine if only one person is significantly using the internet, and you don't care about HD or 4K streaming. But it's not really up to multiple heavy users nowadays. And some rural houses struggle to even get tolerable ADSL speeds.

(Most "fibre" in the UK is fibre to the cabinet, then VDSL between the cabinet and home).

Mobile broadband is affected by coverage of course.

Satellite broadband is currently expensive and high latency. The latency makes online gaming nearly impossible and video conferencing problematic. The latency might change in the next five years with new satellites (eg Starlink) but nobody knows how they'll be priced.

Some rural places have a "wireless ISP", also called FWA. They use an antenna on the house that connects to an ISP base station. I think it's good if you can get it, but most areas don't have it.

I've just checked mine. It is not fibre and sits at 4.

No mobile reception here.

I have sky, watch you tube etc. I have been working, using zoom, two teenagers use it.

Only issue can be if very windy it stops. Maybe half a dozen times a year.

We moved house early in lockdown (beginning of April). Sky have been unable to connect our broadband as Openreach have not been working inside people's homes. Our internet has been via a data sim (we have tried 5 different mobile providers too, results range from no signal at all to sort of OK as long as not much is asked of it) in a router from amazon. Fine for me- my online activity is mostly sites like this one, reddit, news sites. Been awful for the dc and dh who game and watch a lot more. And has meant the on demand service from sky hasn't worked, only live channels, and that Prime, Netflix etc often just stop or run with a really dreadful picture. Wfh would not be viable if I had needed to do it.

Openreach are booked to come in the middle of this month and I honestly think my dc will be happier when we have broadband again than any Xmas or birthday has ever made them.

Place marking to read later!

We have fibre to the premises and I've just done a speed test:- 92.4 Mbps down and 31.0 Mbps up and we're on the northern outskirts of St Leonards-on-sea. I'm astonished that people in London can't get ftp when we can.

I can't do better than the links and advice you were given in the first reply so I'll just show off about the speed of my internet. We're an old retired couple so don't need the internet for work. If I was working from home I don't think I'd want anything much slower than we've got now and I'd also want the thingy here (I know all the jargon ) to protect in case of power cuts or surges. www.amazon.co.uk/CyberPower-BR850ELCD-UK-Outlets-Charging-Format/dp/B00OHHC6D6?tag=mumsnetforu03-21.

Hi OP.

I think the fastest download speed possible on copper wire is 20mb, upload speed 1 or 2 Mb.
Copper wire being the traditional way of getting phone lines into homes.
(Are there fibre phone lines direct into homes , I don’t know!)

We , 2 adults, 2 adult kids , found the broadband couldn’t cope.
Occasionally had to kick them off if I had a Skype call or online work I did not want to be interrupted.
Actually what happened usually was the router would reboot when it was overloaded.

We got a pseudo fibre connection added for everyone else to use ( up to 60mb ) and I use the copper BB for work.

I say ‘pseudo’ because it’s still copper to a local connection box and then fibre back to the exchange.

Sorry, this has become a waffle... in summary, I doubt you will be able to do your own things simultaneously over a copper wire BB.

(Are there fibre phone lines direct into homes , I don’t know!)

Yes, and quite common on new builds.

If you can't get a decent mobile signal, do check the other networks for their signals as they are not all the same. According to OFCOM, EE has the best coverage but it still has some holes like all of them.
5G is faster but the coverage is extremely limited so far. Expansion has been delayed by the controversy over Huawei and whether their equipment should be used.
As stated above, satellite is no good for gaming, if that is important to you.
On new estates it is expected that the developers put in the cables to houses as they are built so that the new roads don't have to be dug up. There are often planning restrictions to enforce this for 10 years or so. It's up the the developers whether they put in copper wires or fibre for Openreach and/or Virgin. Those two are different systems and can't be exchanged. If you are buying a new build get it in writing exactly what system has been installed.

I’ve only just had fibre put into my middle of nowhere house. Previously I had ADSL (almost useless - 2 mbps on a good day ) and 4G. Even though we have no reception at all on our mobiles at home, by putting up an external antenna with the right orientation we could get 20-25 mbps off that.

Now with fibre we have much higher speeds but I can’t say for most day to day purposes it makes that much difference, downloads are a bit faster though.

Moving to the country from an urban area rich in infrastructure can be a shock to the system. It was to me (and to the woman I met at Heathrow, a Londoner who had moved to Devon but then moved back): no - or very patchy - mobile coverage and having to go over a mile in a specific direction, to find a spot; no pavements or lights or drainage, so roads flooded and anyway not safe to walk on; no local taxi service available when you need one - only operate at certain times / days; nearest bus stop a mile and a half away and nearest shop, post office, doctor and chemist a mile and a half away in the opposite direction and it can take days to find a builder, a gardener, a plumber (even if you're lucky enough to have the name of one) or someone to fix a roof leak. And strangely enough, although you can't find any workmen, people are applying for planning permission to build all around you. So your lovely house may end up being overlooked by a new house directly in front of it.
My IT- savvy neighbour advised getting fibre optic broadband installed as broadband speed is so poor but he was quoted several thousand pounds to get it because he is far from the road, down a private lane. I don't know which provider that was but you can find out things like that by searching online and reading up about broadband coverage and different meanings and types of installations and where the nearest green cabinet is.

The broadband providers have information on their websites about coverage and availability and what they mean by 'fibre'. My experience leaves me with little confidence that the online 'Ask us' facility can be relied upon to give correct information. One told me they don't do fibre, yet it was advertised on the site. And that's not the only example. Depends who you get.

As stated above, satellite is no good for gaming,

It is also excruciatingly expensive compared to landline or 4/5G.

We looked at it. Briefly.

I couldn’t buy that house, but I always wfh and require high speeds for my vpn.

Maybe if you were retiring.

My download speed is circa 6.4 mb. I can watch Netflix but sometimes it drops out (only very occasionally). Downloading programmes from Sky can take a while. Mostly it doesn't bother me - my teenage son however who is a gamer - it frustrates the hell out of him.

Oh yeah, and I lose connection in zoom sometimes due to 'narrow bandwidth'

Its It's something I never thought I'd say but honestly really think hard about it. We lived in very rural Ireland for 2 years, satellite didnt work and we got our money back from the 3 major broadband providers who all thought they could help and then admitted defeat. We tethered phones for internet but was very hit or miss and actuallyhalf the time we didnt even have reception for our mobile phones. All the kids' games went (not a bad thing) and we cancelled Netflix etc. This was 4 years ago before everything became so dependent on internet. Oh and if people offer advice on getting broadband etc make sure they're from places lacking in broadband, it's not as easy as most people (especially broadband sales people) think! Best of luck whatever you choose though!

I live in a large city and don’t have fibre. Our internet was fine until lockdown happened and now it just can’t cope. If DH and I need to be in teams meetings at the same time, it’s a problem. If dd is doing an online lesson, everyone else has to come off the internet. It’s a big pain.

no fibre here - did a speed test earlier and copper gives us 7MB download. Did find that streamed TV wasn't too good quality if someone else was using the connection, solved that with ethernet cables run from the router to the TV. Video calls etc etc are fine. It just works.

2km to the exchange, 500m to the box. We'd never get fibre to the door.

BUT - many in this village don't have internet, of our group of 8 houses only 3 do and no-one has kids of the age to be playing shootemups.

We don't have fibre and there's about 25 houses on our "box". We've never had any problems (but I have no idea how fast the speeds actually are)

We live rurally, don't have fibre and I wfh. We have Airband and it's absolutely fine for work and tv streaming.