Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Property/DIY

Join our Property forum for renovation, DIY, and house selling advice.

Internet Connection

12 replies

OtiMama · 20/02/2025 19:41

Does anyone here live in an area with poor internet connectivity. What do you use instead?

We live in the city and have fibre but really interested in moving out. I'm worried about the connections available as my husband needs a decent connection for work.

OP posts:
Gekko21 · 20/02/2025 20:16

All Rightmove listings indicate the best available connection at the property. Use that as a starting point and then do your research. I work from home full time and have to have a strong and consistent connection. Anywhere that couldn't get superfast broadband I discounted. It can be quite individual to the property so worth doing the research ahead of offer. The internet at my mum's is terrible - I tried to work from there once and my video calls were a real struggle. I couldn't imagine having to deal with that day in day out. My mum and her neighbour are petitioning for fibre but it's been a palaver with BT and Openreach and taking months to resolve. She's semi-rural but off the main drag so half a mile down the road they probably have superfast.

CatherinedeBourgh · 20/02/2025 21:26

Starlink.

The neighbours have fibre but it's rubbish so they are considering Starlink too.

OtiMama · 20/02/2025 21:33

CatherinedeBourgh · 20/02/2025 21:26

Starlink.

The neighbours have fibre but it's rubbish so they are considering Starlink too.

Thanks, I have heard of this but I don't understand much! 😂 Do you have instead of paying for an internet connection with say BT? Roughly how much does it cost? Do you have to put something on your house, can you do that yourself? So many questions sorry!

I have done the search on Rightmove for connections but I wanted to explore alternatives.

OP posts:
CatherinedeBourgh · 20/02/2025 21:40

It's a satellite, you put it on your roof. We put it up ourselves. Yes, it replaces any other connection for us. We're not in the UK, so prices probably not the same, we pay around 40 a month, but I think that was Musk's FU to the government here after some spat, I think it's more in general.

It works really well, quite fast and reliable.

KievLoverTwo · 20/02/2025 22:08

We have lived in three countryside houses in three different counties and found the connections to be rubbish in two of them. Unlike in a town, open reach don’t ‘jump’ when a village is down. I had 45 days down over 2 years in my last house. That includes a tractor taking out a phone pole which pulled out the cable under the field - a specialist wire and team had to be ordered. The previous one, 84 outages in 9 months because someone decided not to bother maintaining any of the sizeable forest around us they owned so the trees rub up against the phone lines (brief outages).

Our saving grace in the last house was being 500 metres from a phone mast. We spent a couple of hundred quid on a modem just for 4G broadband and dumped BT and open reach completely. Ordered a Lebara sim, spent about £25 a month.

The connection is okay where we are but we have had six power cuts in four months instead!!

If you are going proper, property countryside, plan for the worst.

I would have gone starlink if it weren’t for the regular barnies with the other half about giving Elon Musk money.

For 4G internet:

My advice before you take any sort of plunge is to check ofgem’s indoor and outdoor coverage across all networks before even booking a viewing, and when you turn up for the viewing, have a sim from that provider with you, in your phone, and check the signal in the rooms you would want the modem. We did this last time and found 2/3 times that the signal was so weak we couldn’t possibly use it for internet.

(I would probably still just pay Elon Musk but obviously that has moral radar connotations too!)

OtiMama · 20/02/2025 22:20

Thanks so much all, that's really helpful for options to look into. We are looking in fair sized villages, so not complete countryside in the middle of nowhere but still not full fibre like we have now!

OP posts:
OtiMama · 20/02/2025 22:21

@KievLoverTwo I totally get the Musk dilemma!!

OP posts:
TheNoonBell · 21/02/2025 08:04

Our "3" all you can eat 4g/5g connections is pretty good. My more rural friend has purchased a specialist router with a big external aerial for it which really improves the connectivity.

We are considering Starlink when our BT fixed term ends.

OtiMama · 21/02/2025 10:35

@TheNoonBell thanks, will have a look at that!

OP posts:
Neil122 · 21/02/2025 19:35

We've used Starlink for the last year and it's been pretty much flawless. 2 of us working from home and 3 kids with boxes and its been fine.

Kentmumof4 · 16/11/2025 22:44

Can I ask - I work from an office at the bottom of our garden. Would a Starlink dish be able to provide internet to the house and the garden office?

C8H10N4O2 · 17/11/2025 17:24

Kentmumof4 · 16/11/2025 22:44

Can I ask - I work from an office at the bottom of our garden. Would a Starlink dish be able to provide internet to the house and the garden office?

You might need a wifi booster to reach the end of the garden, just as you would with any other house based broadband router. TP-link have reasonable domestic quality extenders but check the supported distances.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page