How to get fast bandwidth where there's no broadband

[FlopemOut]

Hi. I'm looking at buying a house out in the country that apparently is too far away from an exchange to get broadband. Does anyone know if it's still possible to get a fast internet connection to the house, such as a leased line? If so, how much would this cost roughly?
Thanks!

I have a sort of same problem as the exchange is a distance from our farmhouse so the speed isnt great. But at least we can get bb.

As far as I am aware if the distance is too far then you cant because BT own the line no matter who then rents the line its the same.

The only alternative is satalite there are companies on the net that do it the set out was about £200 - £400 plus rent pm. You will have to google it or ask BT who may provide this service.

There is no other alternative unless you use your mobile phone service which is the cost of the call per minute which will add up!

Are you within reach of a fast mobile phone network? If so, then you can get mobile internet.

There are even now WiFi hubs that give you a wifi network in your house, and then go on the internet via the mobile phone network.

bacon - the trick with the mobile internet, is to get a data contract, which works out cheaper than using your phone.

They usually come with a modem (dongle).

I thought the costs had come down a bit on satellite, but the CLA (Countryside Landowners and Business Association) have been pushing for 'not spots' to get service.

Three and the other mobile networks do data - cannot guarantee any "high speed" (500 kbps and more is quite likely, but depends on many factors).

If you visit the different mobile network websites you could put in the postcode of the property and see if any show they have coverage there.

I've been using Three for almost 18 months (about to get ADSL on the landline) which cost 7.50 per month and provided 5 GB of traffic. Enough for browsing, but not really for using iPlayer for TV shows, and I don't use YouTube at all, but guess it might work. That was a special offer price.

They have a contract deal where you can get 15 GB a month for 15 pounds, but look at the other networks as well.

If it is possible, see if you can find a business contact or friend with a USB dongle and take a laptop to the place (assuming you can get a visit with just the estate agent - some farmer might look at you like you're mad if you want to test internet access from his lounge (!))

Might be worth checking for a USB dongle (mine might be going cheap in a few weeks!) and there have been people selling SIMs with 12 GB (or 12 months, whichever ends first) limit for 35 quid, and 3 GB/ 3 months limit for 8 quid (Three) on Ebay.

Maplin and other stores sometimes sell these 'starter packs' at modest prices...

Keeping one in reserve (and then using all the data) is a possible option if you plan to run a business and would find a few days without BB would leave people complaining about not getting response to e-mail, etc.

(One of my clients runs a guest house in the middle of nowhere, but they do get 500 kbps to 1000 kbps, just that they get enquiries and will contact them tomorrow to check they have a backup plan!)

Mobile broadband I found was really quite terrible outside of major towns. It can be faster than dial-up though at times if you get a good connection but I found it varied far too much for my usage. For example, it's unusable for things like iPlayer, YouTube or anything data intensive. Works ok for E-mail and Mumsnetting.

SiteFinder is handy for looking up where masts are located.

SamKnows is a useful website for seeing what services a BT exchange supports.

I'm over 3.5kms from my exchange and when I first applied for ADSL an engineer came out and did a Woosh test... which failed. A couple of years later, I got an ISP to install ADSL knowing that it may be a bit flaky. Now I am getting close to 2Mbps via ADSL (with LLU operator: O2) - BE/02 was enabled on the exchange in mid 2008.

If you are within say 4km of the exchange you may find that you are able to get something. It's a pot luck though, will depend on distance from the exchange (by wire, not road) and the line loss.

Home Satellite Broadband from Broadband Whereever looks to be costing £700 ish install plus then £35+ per month. So while the cost has come down, it's still fairly high. It is also a variable speed service (up to 3.6Mbps download). Other packages are available at a higher cost if you need a specific download speed, such as 1Mbps, 2Mbps - but the costs go up a lot. The system uses a parabolic microwave antenna, a 2-way satellite dish, so no phone line needed for the upload data (though the FAQ says it may be needed during installation). You need a license to operate the equipment but the company sorts that for you - I wonder what sort of license, maybe some kind of Ofcom one, as you are transmitting data to a Satellite.

The Broadband Wherever product is also being sold by other firms, some without the extra 25 pounds (the basic cost seems to be 499 plus 200 installation).

I found that there's a list of services from Avanti.

First on the list (Avonline) has a deal where they allow someone to spread the 700 pounds cost into 4 quarterly payments of 175 (for orders placed before 02/04/10). It might be worth contacting them (depending on how serious the likelihood is of moving into the property) and asking if they would allow you to spread the cost, assuming you buy the property - clearly it's unlikely you'd have moved in by their closing date, and would not want to commit to buy before moving in!

Another firm, Prime Satellite Broadband is offering a price as low as 27 +VAT (~31.75) per month, but at 512k down 128k up, using some satellite which goes into service in the next quarter (2010Q2) so it could fit in with plans but the monthly fee depends on length of contract so perhaps tied into 3 years deal...

The products at 34.50/35 pounds seem to have a limit of 2.4 GB so even though the speed would not be an issue, you'd quickly use up the data allowed if you watched much video via the link.

The amount of data is low, however, so it works out much more expensive than any mobile network (unless you go over the allowed limit - Three charges 10p per MB so there's a chance of a bill of over 100 pounds if you exceeded the monthly allowance, though it is only charged by the MB, so you pay for what you use, not some 'chunk' of data which might not be even half used before the end of the month).

If the house is within moderate range of a main road (dual carriageway, perhaps) then thee may be coverage. I'm in N Wales about 10 miles south of Chester, and while there's about 6 km of wire to the nearest BT exchange, and the town centre is an hour's walk away, there are a number of masts serving Three around me (the A483 goes through a cutting, so masts are placed to cover the north and south approaches, and another seems to be for the portion of road between the other two masts) so I have had few connection problems, and have watched video OK.

Hope you find a solution!

Hmmm - just found that another service offers to charge 399 for the hardware and for user to choose a local installer - and offers chance to try out the equipment at their office somewhere near Oxford.

Some others seem to charge 450 for the hardware, or add in the installation and don't offer a price below 699. However it is still costly at ~35 quid for only 2.4 GB of data.

Brilliant - thanks for all this information.

Lots for me to investigate and certainly looks like my dream home may still be a possibility. My husband and I both work from home so we need a decent connection for this all to work out.

You can get a dedicated leased line to pretty much anywhere. The question is how much it will cost you. In cities they tend to be in the £100-500 a month range. For that you'll get 10Mbps to 100Mbps with guaranteed bandwidth - it'll feel much, much faster than broadband. Installation costs would be a couple of thousand depending on location and how difficult it is to run the cable into the building.

Out in the wilds, expect the installation costs to be much higher as they'll have to run a dedicated cable all the way from their nearest point of presence to your house.

I'd recommend having a chat with Virgin about either their Managed Internet Access service or their Cable Broadband service (which is broadband run over their cable TV service). There's more info on their site here. I'm not sure how they do pricing for Cable Broadband installation; it might be significantly cheaper than the Managed Internet Access.

Depending on where you are in the country there may be other suppliers who can cover your area. If you give me a rough idea I'll see if I can find any other companies that might be able to quote.

There's a news item regarding satellite service rivals Tooway (by Eutelsat) and Avanti.

I thought the 2.4 GB for about 33 quid offering was from Avanti, but seems it was Tooway. Anyway, given the limited number of satellite services, I expect the dozen or more firms will sell products from both of them, and more depends on the user requirements.

I'd agree, on a different tack, that you can get a dedicated leased line but my guess is it would run at below 256 kbps and cost several thousand for installation and then have a hefty annual fee, even if it was on a long contract.

Unless a lot has changed, it's highly likely to be a non-started budget-wise for many (I was looking into a leased line option before broadband was around, in my case looking to see if the town's council might be able to buy it and then distribute service to around 30 businesses, since no single business might have wanted to risk the costs involved.

WAN circuit technology (as used in leased lines) has come a long way since the pre-broadband days. Most new WAN circuits in the UK are delivered over optical fibre, even if the presentation is copper. A lot of business Internet connections are presented as straight Ethernet connectors. Bung a combined router/firewall on that and the job's done.

Installation costs will depend on proximity to a carrier PoP and any civil engineering and/or wayleave issues.

Ongoing contract costs for Internet connections tend not to be that expensive, particularly (again) in/near big cities. In my last job we got a 30Mbps uncontended Internet connection (presented as throttled-down Fast Ethernet) for about £200 a month in central London. We got a 10Mbps connection into Watford for £150 a month although the installation costs were high on that job due to landlord issues.

That being said, I still think in this instance it would be worth looking at the cable TV route first. Satellite-based Internet connections can be good in certain circumstances but they feel "slow" as the round-trip time (the time from your computer sending a request to it getting a response back) is horrendous. For geo-sync satellite services you're typically looking at a round-trip time of half a second or more. Simple web-browsing is fine but complex web services that do a lot of two-way communication (eg, Google Maps) are pretty much unusable. Things like Skype is out of the question too.

OK - happy to be educated on what's going on in cities and large towns...

But it does rather depend on the location - if it is rural Wales then cable might not be an option, and another possibility, such as mobile (eg Three) service may not work either.

Would have suggested considering mobile broadband, such as from Three, even if not as fast as some, because pound for pound might be a better option than satellite, if postcode check for location suggests it is OK.

Worth checking to see if there are still any deals giving 15 GB for 15 pounds as they have done that before... I am just finishing a contract costing 7.50 a month for 5 GB...