Internet speed.

[jazzyr1]

Evening all, I was hoping to find what sort of Internet speeds people are managing to get in and around Tongue area. Thanks in advance

[dx100uk]

http://www.hie.co.uk/regional-information/digital-highlands-and-islands/can-i-get-it.html#

[crayola]

The average broadband download speed in Scotland is 43.6 Mbps.

So say Ofcom: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44056617

Does anyone in Caithness get that? Maybe in the towns?

[orkneycadian]

We quite readily get that kind of speeds over here. Have seen it as high as 60 Mbps, and thats quite some distance from the mast out here in Sticksville.

[crayola]

So that’s mobile speed?

[orkneycadian]

Well, "mobile" from the mast to the house, then wired/wifi after that.

[crayola]

Ok that makes sense out in Sticksville. It must be cheaper for the supplier than digging long trenches and putting the long thin fibre thingie inside. Maybe it should be more prevalent rurally.

[orkneycadian]

Not so much cheaper for the "supplier". If you were hoping to use copper wires, then its all down to Openreach who are a complete disaster at anything they do. Putting all your eggs in their basket wouldn't even yield you an omelette. Anyone who wants any kind of service over 'is side o' 'e watter, puts up an aerial and pipes 4G into their router.

[crayola]

There’s an Orger I know in a different Sticksville who does the same for all the same reasons. I doubt he’ll join in and post but hey you never know. :)

If the passive population of Caithness would communicate we would learn about how widespread this practice has become. I’m not holding my breath. :(

[Gronnuck]

I gave up on BT/Open Reach over a year ago and went to satellite. It's more expensive and there are data limits depending on what you can afford.., but it is way more reliable than BT/Open Reach. Now since 4G has found its way to my neck of the woods I've got a neighbour who's with O2 and he's tethered his phone to his router and gets much faster broadband than BT and Open Reach can offer. My mobile contract is due for renewal in July and I'm intending to go the same way.., giffgaff appear to have some good offers.
IMHO BT/Open Reach thought they had the monopoly on Broadband supply so their service was less about looking after customers needs and more about paying their shareholders' dividends. Well customer demand and technology have overtaken them leaving them on their back foot. They'll have work hard now to get customers back.

[orkneycadian]

Dunno about "tethering" your phone to the router. In these parts, we hardly even tether the sheep any more. Weapon of choice here now is to get a USB dongle, stuff an EE data only sim card in it, plug dongle into USB port on router, screw aerial to chimney, plug aerial into dongle. Set up load balancing / failover in router if you still have Openreach sending you the odd, sporadic electron up the ancient bit of copper thats laid in the ditches, and off you go.

Even if you only use PAYG with EE, its about £22 for 10 GB for 3 months. Be struggling to find VDSL for that.

[johndh]

I bought a netgear Nighthawk M1 mobile router. EE contract for 100gig pm. Dumped a load of wire as everything hooks up via wifi. Speeds, well, 60mbps is the average, 70 or 80 on a good day. Bad day, I've never seen anything go below 35mbps (that does not happen often). With open reach, the best of late was 5mbps, and a huge amount of errors + the phone line was very noisey and no one at Open Reach was interested despite all efforts of the retailer SSE. So I had the landline terminated.

A 100gig a month is generous for my needs so I indulge in some telly via a cheap amazon firestick, no subs or anything, just the basics, iPlayer and the like.
The other benefit is that the router has the option to run off of its own battery, so it comes with me on hoiliday. No need to buy wifi time away from home. Oh, the sound quality on the mobile is just perfect. I'm a low user on the phone so that is payg. cheap as chips.

I now look upon the bit of BT copper hanging vacant out of my wall as a curio from times gone past.

Happy days.

[crayola]

Excellent. :)

I know a number of folkies who could benefit from the mobile setups you all have. I shall spread the word.

The community is still alive on the Org after all :D