Broadband - 12mbps

[KenJ]

Hi all,

Question about home broadband. The house we’re moving to is relatively rural, however not remote. I’ve spoken to various broadband providers and been quoted around 12mbps speed.

How do those in rural areas get along with that kind of speed? Are there any alternatives you use? I’ve read a bit about Starlink, but have no experience.

Many thanks

[The_Doc]

What do you need it for?

1 person doing 1 Zoom call or streaming 1 HD movie, you'll be fine.

Family of four doing 'things' on a weekend, you'll struggle.

Having said that, I live on the side of the Fell with sheep for neighbours and we have 45Mbs speed and it's totally fine.

>200Mbs is for running a TV studio.

[Turtle Shed]

Another option is home 4g/5g

We have that, provided by Three. Works very well but then we've got line of site across open countryside below us, which must surely make a big difference.

200mb/s down and 100mb/s up at peak, averages about half that.

£23/month for unlimited data. Two year contract which includes the 5g router.

[james6546]

Depending on where you are there are other options like starlink or we have w3z we can choose.

But 12mb should be just about ok I think.

Saying that we now have 900mb rather than 1 on a good day and it’s nearly life changing!

[JSP440]

I use starlink all the time for work, one of our sites is in the shetlands and we have a team who live up there.

they all use starlink for £75 a month and get 300Mbs consistently.

I was thoroughly impressed. we even had a job in the falklands and popped one in our suitcase and managed 200Mbs with it just laying on the floor not properly installed.

[KenJ]

Thanks all for the replies so far. Sounds like the speed might be ok, but I’ll investigate 4g/5g router and Starlink.

There are 3 of us, my wife and I, plus our 6 year old son. We work from home a couple of days a week (Teams meeting etc), plus have Amazon / Netflix streaming, albeit, we don’t run lots at once.

Cheers

[wyson]

Mind you, Starlink is now tainted by the Elon Musk thing. So he is threatening now to turn that off in Ukraine if he / Trump can’t get the sort of mineral rights they want. Big thread on PH about his effect on Tesla as well. Some people might care.

I’d see if there is a decent mobile signal first. On 5g, you might get 10x 12mb/s for a similar monthly cost. Definitely won’t cost as much as Starlink.

Edited by wyson on Sunday 23 February 16:55

[Actual]

Use Better Internet Dashboard to check the broadband service providers and mobile phone data coverage.

https://bidb.uk/

If very rural there may also be poor mobile phone coverage which can be a pain as so many people use mobiles and txt these days.

Internet banking when you can't receive the 2FA txt is difficult.

My dad had 1Mbps ADSL and no mobile phone signal which was a challenge.

In my experience just 1Mbps of ADSL Wi-Fi is good enough to run Vodafone Wi-Fi calling.

Issues included going out and taking a few photos which then take 12 hours to upload to the cloud and blocking all other traffic.

[The_Doc]

KenJ said:

Thanks all for the replies so far. Sounds like the speed might be ok, but I’ll investigate 4g/5g router and Starlink.

There are 3 of us, my wife and I, plus our 6 year old son. We work from home a couple of days a week (Teams meeting etc), plus have Amazon / Netflix streaming, albeit, we don’t run lots at once.

Cheers

Be very careful about banking on 5G, we don't have it and in the sticks the 4G signal is patchy too. The mobile companies just don't care about rural, and who wants masts everywhere? You can hide them in cities and suburban.

Next time you view the property, try 2 different mobile phone/networks, inside the house, with fast.com running

[OutInTheShed]

Up until a couple of years ago, we were often finding that our 'normal' 10 to 16Mb/s broadband would often become notably slower due to 'holiday traffic'.
Being in a 'holiday' rural area, resources get stretched thin on wet days in peak season.

Now our 'normal' rate is more like 35 and we only notice it get slow on rare occasions.

A solid, reliable 12 is probably OK for most two person households.
If it's 12 on a good day and 4 on a bad day, you will see issues I think?

As for using mobile data, dream on, we often use wifi calling for a basic voice call.

[allatsea]

Did 6 years with 12mbps, it isn't sufficient and there was no intention for any of the companies to improve it. Yes, we've got three, now late teen/20s boys, but occasional WFH and using the internet like anyone else wasn't actually possible all of the time. During COVID installed a 4G set up for the office and got 35mbps which was 'ok' and I hardwired it to the boys games set ups.....only just sufficient, but not really.

Switched to Starlink and now always get over 150mbps and often 200-250mbps, game changing, internet is now never, ever mentioned at home as it just works, the TV's all work as intended and so does everything else.

If you try and get by on 12mbps, trust me, if you use the internet for anything other than email, it'll be the bane of your life.

Edited by allatsea on Sunday 23 February 17:51

[Sheets Tabuer]

Mine is fine until the kids get home at half 3 then the whole village must fire up the playstation.

No mobile signal unfortunately.

[KenJ]

Actual said:

Use Better Internet Dashboard to check the broadband service providers and mobile phone data coverage.

https://bidb.uk/

If very rural there may also be poor mobile phone coverage which can be a pain as so many people use mobiles and txt these days.

Internet banking when you can't receive the 2FA txt is difficult.

My dad had 1Mbps ADSL and no mobile phone signal which was a challenge.

In my experience just 1Mbps of ADSL Wi-Fi is good enough to run Vodafone Wi-Fi calling.

Issues included going out and taking a few photos which then take 12 hours to upload to the cloud and blocking all other traffic.

Thanks - I’ve tried this website and it appears we should have 4g and even 5g with mobile signal with Vodafone. I’m with Vodafone and I do recall there being a good mobile signal, so it’s possible we could use their mobile broadband service.

[KenJ]

allatsea said:

Did 6 years with 12mbps, it isn't sufficient and there was no intention for any of the companies to improve it. Yes, we've got three, now late teen/20s boys, but occasional WFH and using the internet like anyone else wasn't actually possible all of the time. During COVID installed a 4G set up for the office and got 35mbps which was 'ok' and I hardwired it to the boys games set ups.....only just sufficient, but not really.

Switched to Starlink and now always get over 150mbps and often 200-250mbps, game changing, internet is now never, ever mentioned at home as it just works, the TV's all work as intended and so does everything else.

If you try and get by on 12mbps, trust me, if you use the internet for anything other than email, it'll be the bane of your life.

Edited by allatsea on Sunday 23 February 17:51

Thank you, that’s a great first hand perspective. I’m going to look into Starlink, although have to say, don’t like the idea of giving Mr Musk any money!!

[shtu]

KenJ said:

There are 3 of us, my wife and I, plus our 6 year old son. We work from home a couple of days a week (Teams meeting etc), plus have Amazon / Netflix streaming, albeit, we don’t run lots at once.

I would put 12 Mbps as "perfectly acceptable" for what you describe there.

Providers do tend to under-estimate on the speed chaecks, to try and avoid paying out oin any speed guarantees.

(edit - I should point out that I spent over a decade with sub 2Mbps, so know how it goes with low bandwidth.)

Edited by shtu on Sunday 23 February 19:06

[skeeterm5]

It depends what you want to use it for.

We live in the Highlands and until recently lived with an average of 8mb occasionally peaking at 10mb.

I use a playstation to play online gaining (Destiny2) without issue.

We have streamed via sky with no issues and used Skype to speak to family all regularly again with no issues.

Music streams fine and so on.

But there are only 2 of us and no real contention on the line,

As it happens we had FTTP installed in October and I now have a 1.6gb connection which is nice, might be worth checking out what plans Openreach have for upgrades

[Arrivalist]

12mb download is typically fine BUT that normally comes with a very slow <1mb upload which is useless
for any type of video conferencing.

Check out your basic needs and then decide.

[Jasandjules]

We used Starlink for several months until a decent broadband system turned up. Found Starlink perfectly suitable 99 times out of 100.

[Arrivalist]

Regrading 5G - I’ve been using Three 5G as my only home broadband for about 12 months now and it’s superb. If you can get a good signal it’s great.

[Lefty]

We have no cable broadband available at all. We struggled by for years with old fashioned satellite broadband (expensive and st) then 4g routers with external aerials (also expensive and only slightly less st).

Then Starlink appeared. We pay for a business priority service so it’s £180/month but I work from home these days so need the bandwidth and data. It’s awesome. I can be in a seamless teams call whilst downloading large files, wife on her phone or streaming tv whilst ironing, kids playing online and streaming music etc and it all just works.

I chew through a stload of data but it’s the best £180/month ever spent. I think the basic package is £75/month but be aware of data limits.

It’s usually around 100-150mbps but seen it as high as 200.

We’ve had it maybe 5 years now and have never had any down time. Absolutely none.