Does country living mean bad WIFI?

[AmIbeingTHATparent]

We live on the edge of a large village and WIFI isn't great, but are thinking of moving somewhere more rural (think cottage on a working farm).

Does going that rural mean bad WIFI? Will my teenagers hate me?

Depends where in the countryside. I live in B4RNland, aka rural north west. BroadBand is supplied by a company called B4RN and is 1 gig full fibre, hyperfast. They have 8000 ish customers and are expanding... So, sometimes rural broadband is faster than city!

Will your teenagers hate being more rural regardless of what the WIFI is like? How will they get about, see their mates etc?

You can test it with the future postcode?

The postcode test isn't that reliable; ours is supposed to be great but the reality is it's crap. And we're only ten miles outside the city.

When you say "WiFi" do you mean 3/4/5G ?

They aren't the same.

They won’t like being so far from friends. Too remote. We are 35 miles from London and live rurally. WiFi is awful!!! No more than 1 person at a time can do anything. It’s sloooow!

We live on the edge of a small village too. Our WiFi is great. Our NDNs WiFi is absolutely crap - the most basic you can get. We can't actually get to the bottom of why but they've been told that if they want it improved they'll have to get their neighbours (the other side of them) on board and pay £££ between them. They all have the same postcode as us but their houses are only 5 years old - ours have been here 30 years. So it doesn't necessarily matter where you live - crap broadband is available everywhere.

Postcode lottery in my experience. If you are liking to buy in the country side choose a place that has a big business with offices in it as then you know there will be better Wi-fi.

It depends, but you can check by postcode. We live in a tiny village in a forest but have fttp, which is awesome. We moved from a suburban town not far from a city, but there we had rubbish basic broadband!

Nope. Ours is actually better than when we lived in a city.

(We don’t have any ‘big businesses’ near by either. 😉)

Very valid points so far. We live rurally, our broadband is fine and better than that of some of my workmates who live in towns and cities BUT, I did spend a lot of time giving DD lifts to and from parties and friend's houses.

She is now at university in a city and loves city life.

Ours is good. We have an independent satellite provider.
Our teenagers are fine with rural living and we always knew where they were. Huge bonus for parents of teenagers.

Ours is really good and we’re in a rural hamlet (no gas or mains water). I’d be more worried about them needing lifts all the time.

There are areas here (rural Wales) where I don't even have phone reception! I quite like it TBH, I don't have to be accountable and discoverable for 24h a day (phone says emergency calls only so 999 should still work.....) but teenagers have to be surgically attached to a phone network these days....

When you say WIFI are you referring to the home internet speed, or the mobile signal 4/5g? The actual WIFI signal strength is entirely in your gift to improve within your own house with better hardware/repeaters/boosters etc.

It used to be the case that rural areas were very poorly serviced by broadband but there have been several initiatives to improve this. Around here (Berkshire) you can now get better speeds in the sticks than you can in the towns thanks to initiatives from Gigaclear - 1gbps symmetrical fibre connections are available relatively cheap & run directly to your property.
Such high speeds aren't available in the towns unless you are in an apartment building that has a service from Hyperoptic.

How can anyone always know where teens are unless they just stay in the house? Unless they have no friends, you simply cannot keep them on a lead. It’s hard when you have to jump in a car to take them anywhere! And yourself to see anyone!

Do you mean wifi or phone data or broadband speed?

Wifi is often a challenge in old houses with thick walls, but that can be overcome to some degree with boosters and wired connections

Phone signal/data will vary. If you are in a 5g area you might be better off using phone data than broadband for somethings.

Broadband speed will vary but you can find out certain information that will help predict - is it a fibre area, is it fibre to house (unlikely) or exchange? How far away is the exchange? Is there a satellite provider instead? When you visit you can ask around.

I’m in rural Bucks and we have woeful broadband. It’s significantly better in my local town. If you are a tiny settlement or hamlet, you won’t get any upgrade any time soon.

Fibre? A distant dream here!

We live quite rurally (we live between two villages with three other houses for company) and get at least 50Mb and it is very stable, the next village has more problems with BB than we do.

We live in a village and our wifi is fine - just tested it and it said 72.1Mb. But it will vary with the exact location and we checked it before we moved here. Mobile phone - DH had to change provider as his didn't work in the house but fine once changed provider. Both my teens would want good wifi and one would want good mobile reception (other is ASD and doesn't use a phone). I would look it up and ideally test it as well and would say its pretty essential for a teen for them to be good.

Ours is appalling and so is the mobile signal.

Nope not at all. I live rurally and have always had really good bb. I work from home so it's really important to me. Even when my dh and dds are home and all using the WiFi it's ok.

Our CEO is working from home very rurally and it's driving us all insane. Zoom meetings drop in and out and proper conversations have to happen via their landline.

If you're househunting, just make it clear to agents that phone signal and decent Wi-Fi availability are priorities for you.