BT Broadband/working from home. Rant ahead.

[fourstickymitts]

Sorry, long rant ahead...

We're relocating to be closer to family because DH can now work from home 100% and are looking to live in a semi-rural location in the South of Scotland. It is a reasonably built up area, so we are not talking about being in the wilds by any means. We think we have found a house that we like and did a postcode check on the BT website and it said that broadband between the speeds 1MB min and 2.5 MB max were possible.

I phoned BT today to try to understand a better estimate of the speed, to be told it was between 0.516 and 2MB, that is considerably lower than their web estimate. DH could have managed with 1MB according to his employer?s home working policy.

I explained the situation regarding the need to know what speed was available before making a binding offer on the house to be told that there is nothing that they can do to confirm these. I said I would be happy to pay the cost of having an engineer go out to the house (as long as the vendor was willing). They said no, the only thing they could do was take an order and process it. The attitude seemed to be that you get what you get in terms of speed and there was nothing else they can do. Is this really reasonable? I mean, if you walked into a supermarket and asked for apples and were given toilet clean instead, the shop would be consider unreasonable, no? At least that's the way I see it.

Now, I understand that broadband is a shared service, and the speed is dependent on how many people are online, etc. But there surely must be some way to at least get a best guess on what speed we could get, or a minimum speed? Being able to live away from our current area completely depends on DH being able to use local broadband to work from home, but how can we know what is available if all that BT can do is sort of shrug down the phone and tell us we have to book the service?

I'm so bewildered by this that I can't see a way to know which house we could buy in these circumstances. Who in there right mind would be willing to risk the cost of a house and moving expenses in the hopes that you might luck out and buy one that has sufficient service available. It's crazy! Or is the only other alternative to buy in the middle of a city, with a telephone exchange over the garden fence? Has anyone else faced this and won? Any words of wisdom would be gratefully received.

Line speed is dependent on the length and quality of the wire from the exchange to the phone socket. That's independent of the number of other people sharing the link from the exchange to the Internet (which can also limit overall performance).

Yes, BT could go to the house and do a line test to check what the actual line quality is like and, from that, come up with a very accurate estimate of broadband performance. I used to work for a company that made test equipment to do exactly that.

However I've had professional dealings with BT in a variety of manners for over two decades. I can say with some conviction that BT is a stunningly crap company staffed by incompetent, lazy, lying, jobsworth shitehawks. So while they could test the line properly, they won't because they can't be arsed.

Sadly you're doubly boned with this as even if you went to a different broadband provider, they'd all use BT's line to do the connection to your house and they have to rely on BT to do all the line testing.

Except that's not strictly true. Virgin's cable TV service doesn't use BT lines so you should get a much firmer idea of what is possible. If Virgin covers your area then they may be a better bet.

Alternatively, if the house you're looking at has neighbours it might be worth asking them if they have broadband and, if so, what kind of line speeds they're getting. It will give you a reasonably good idea of what you could expect.

"The attitude seemed to be that you get what you get in terms of speed and there was nothing else they can do. Is this really reasonable? I mean, if you walked into a supermarket and asked for apples and were given toilet clean instead, the shop would be consider unreasonable, no? At least that's the way I see it."

It's not the same as buying a discrete object such as apples or toilet cleaner though. There are so many variables that affect how fast broadband over the copper phone lines is, things that are very hard to predict such as the quality of the line, local interference and connections in the house, cabinet and exchange.

I accept that it's frustrating but I can understand why the companies are a bit vague about exactly what you can get. Yes they could be a lot better but it would be very very hard for them to say exactly what speed you will get.

Are BT your only choice? Is there a local cable provider? There is then the somewhat more exotic option of satellite broadband (e.g. this lot www.tariam.co.uk/) or what about using a 3G dongle if you get decent signal strength in the area?

Is there anyone living at the property ? Do you have a phone number for the property (or just a postcode) ?

In some instances ther may only be service from BT in rural locations (plus satellite, as BP indicated, but that will have hundreds of pounds extra for setup and doesn't often compare with service on a fixed line).

Can see your frustration about choice of property and no doubt the more awkward because of binding contract if submitting a bid for a property there.

I have seen some property selling web site showing broadband speed, so they are starting to include it, but cannot remember which firm it was sorry. Think it will become a more important selling point in future and householders will be more understanding of requests about speed.

A BT Openreach visit would probably cost something on the lines of 130 quid and there may be similar costs for getting an ISP to activate a line (BT passes on the setup and cease costs so at 25-35 each, plus a month's rental, there's a hole in 100 quid quite easily but it might be worth it, if house seller agrees).

You might even get them to go halves as you need to know and without a test cannot consider buying. A firm like Andrews and Arnold (www.aaisp.net) would be worthwhile, as they have in previous times offered to get BT to fix problems and they keep stats on line uptime so problems would be graphed and you'd be sure your link was stable after first 10 days - they'd have no problem with a 1 month contract and you'd want to visit with a laptop to do some speed tests after a couple of weeks of being set up so line is stable and known to be OK.

I have not been a customer of A+A but their reputation is good, and there's a bit more here about them

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunatley the area is not covered by Virginmedia, so satellite, or BT, or company using BT cables are the only options.

I will look into satellite services and A&A.

I don't know if this is true, or if I was just being fed a new line of twaddle but did some looking up on the broadbandchoices website, and then called TalkTalk who claimed to be able to offer faster service in the same area. I was a bit but it would appear that they have ADSL 2 equipment in the relevant exchange where BT do not. So, that maybe one option but they still have vaguely BT undertones in their sales speach.

The service that A&A offer looks promising, I will speak to them tomorrow. Thanks Network guy and everyone else who made suggestions.

Only 50% of the UK are served by cable, and even where some streets are online, the next might not have service... unusual for rural areas to have access, so not too surprising this place in Scotland doesn't have it.

BT is slow at installing ADSL 2+ and other firms have leap-frogged with alternative kit. If you check on SamKnows.com you can see for any exchange whether BT have upgraded (21CN WBC date) or not...

LLU (local loop unbundling) means other ISPs can offer service with their own kit and sometimes offer (close to exchange) residents a higher speed.

Situation may reverse once BT fits fibre to the street cabinets and more people will have chance to get 30-40 Mbps.

The best bet is really to ask a neighbour what speed they are getting.

You could also look at this site: SamKnows. If you punch in the postcode or better still the telephone number, it will tell you the location of the nearest BT exchange. You can then using the power of Google Maps, guesstimate how far you are from the exchange. Bear in mind that cables tend not to run as the crow flies but more as the road goes.

I'd be very dubious about ADSL2+. At longer distances, the speed you get is actually lower than ADSL1.

broadband area speed checker

I have found this to be generally quite accurate.

I meant to say you can go with the higher estimates on the results to. Many people use it when they are seeing problems (which could be their equipment so not a reflection of the service) hence a good few lower readings.

In areas where you struggle to get adequate internet speeds, you could consider a satellite broadband service such as www.broadbandwherever.net