Fibre Optics in rural areas
 

I have been doing quite a bit of research recently into fibre optic and openreach/virgin etc.

I am moving house and figured now was the time to go for Fibre Optic connection speeds. Up to 76mbps I hoped.

I had an office very near my new house which I have recently closed. However, before I closed the office, I saw the bt lot installing the fibre optic cables in the cabinet, which was right outside the office

I have since checked the landline number for the office, which I still have and can see that the fibre is in place and is available up to 76mbps.

Unfortunately my new house is 1.5 miles from the office and is up a private road, where there are quite a few houses in a little hamlet.

The internet speed there is baffling. Adsl I am told from my searches is available, ata whopping 1MB.....disaster

However, fibre is also available, at a similarly disastrous 3MB

I can only assume that the distance to the cabinet and the quality of wiring is the problem here.

Having a Playstation and spending a lot of time online and downloading films on Apple TV etc, I need a decent connection.

In my current place I have an 8mb speedtest.net result and that sometimes isn't fast enough... 1mb will be worse than useless, and paying fibre prices for 3mb isn't much better.

Is it possible to upgrade the wiring from the cabinet to the house? If so, how much would it realistically cost? I imagine I will be able to persuade the little community to chip in for the upgrade.

Also, the cabinet results confuse me, as they show the low download rates but suggest fibre is available. Surely if the cabinet is fibre enabled it would suggest that 76 is available, just not to my home as the wiring from cabinet to the housess poor. The cabinet is connected to the same exchange as the office cabinet is which states 76...

Any ideas?

Also, if the cost is ridiculous, can anyone suggest a way around this? 3G dongles any better? Is there an unlimited 4G dongle? As bizarrely this is in an area which has 4G capability.

Re: Fibre Optics in rural areas
 

Not sure on prices and download limits but satellite internet may be an option.

www.tooway.com

Re: Fibre Optics in rural areas
 

You can't get your copper phone line itself upgraded.

Openreach are offering a FTTPoD service where you can pay the install costs to have the copper phone line supplemented with a pure fibre connection to the home. The installation costs of this are estimated around £500-1500 but I'd expect yours to be at the high end if not higher. Groups of neighbours could band together and share the costs though, which would drastically reduce the per-customer cost and only slightly increase the total.

This is a long term investment though, that can dramatically increase home value, as it offers 1Gbps speeds now and up to 10Gbps in future.

3G dongles are OK for browsing and what not but not gaming. Same applies for 4G although it's slightly better.

There are no unlimited 3G or 4G dongles, although T-Mobile offer a semi-unlimited dongle plan.

3 offer a 3G mobile phone plan where you can use tethering and unlimited data, and technically although not morally this could be used in a dongle as well. This will include a free upgrade to 4G once it's available. However 3 have by far the least 4G coverage right now (actually, none) but should be catching up over the next year or so. That's the closest you'll ever get to an "unlimited" 4G service that can be used in a dongle.

Satellite is completely unusable for gaming and pretty poor for video services too due to paltry data limits. 4G even without unlimited will surpass it in every way.

Re: Fibre Optics in rural areas
 

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it costs about £5-6k per kilometre .. so rough guestimate around 13 grand .. ouch !!!
mind you divided by say 20 houses not quite so scary ..