Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Rural broadband: Residents miss out on NI scheme

4 views
Skip to first unread message

Java Jive

unread,
Nov 18, 2021, 7:56:32 AM11/18/21
to
Rural broadband: Residents miss out on NI scheme
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-59326186

Seems to be something of a postcode lottery:

""This new service promised up to one gigabit, 1,000Mb, as you can
appreciate at the moment I'm on seven, so if I could get 30 I'd be more
than happy, that's four times what I have at the minute."

He said some of his neighbours have also been told they are excluded,
while some derelict buildings in the area are currently included in the
scheme.

"There were some houses where I know people are crying out for a decent
broadband connection were excluded, yet they were going out of their way
in some cases hundreds of metres up the lane to a derelict house that
nobody has been in for 25 or 30 years.""

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

Martin Brown

unread,
Nov 18, 2021, 12:48:39 PM11/18/21
to
On 18/11/2021 12:56, Java Jive wrote:
> Rural broadband: Residents miss out on NI scheme
> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-59326186
>
> Seems to be something of a postcode lottery:
>
> ""This new service promised up to one gigabit, 1,000Mb, as you can
> appreciate at the moment I'm on seven, so if I could get 30 I'd be more
> than happy, that's four times what I have at the minute."

7M is pretty good for ADSL2+. I was on 5M but the average in my village
is nearer 2M. The new full fibre install is real and now active. I am
one of the early adopters. Farm shop was ahead of me in theory but their
installation failed due to requiring planning permission for some weird
reason I still don't fully understand. They have given up on it for now
- can't risk having a service disruption in the run up to Xmas.

I presently have 500M on evaluation (1000M is available) but I will
almost certainly drop back to the nominal 150M (guaranteed 100) service
that I am paying for. I negotiated a trial of the faster service since I
figure that if there is going to be a problem it will show up there.

Incidentally when you do get the chance to upgrade to full fibre ask for
at least one step slower than the one you really want - that way the
sales droid can upsell you to the next tier up at a discount and earn
brownie points whilst you will get a better than list price deal.

All in all it was really quite painless and a helpful BT OpenReach
engineer put the new fibre internet modem (white box about 8x8x3cm) in
my office which makes a nice change from having the POTS master socket
at the far end of the loft. The new unit has no POTS capability at all.

Surprisingly few people apart from businesses are even contemplating
upgrading (even though it is almost price competitive and much faster).
You have to move to BT to retain a POTS geographic number phone line.

> He said some of his neighbours have also been told they are excluded,
> while some derelict buildings in the area are currently included in the
> scheme.

You can tell which poles are fibre capable since they will have a little
yellow sticker on saying "caution fibre overhead". I now know that my
fibre goes right back to the county town of Northallerton which explains
why my local exchange still claims to have no FTTP capability.

The new fibre drop lines are curious in that they are a figure of 8
shape with the fibre and a copper line pair in the same insulation.

> "There were some houses where I know people are crying out for a decent
> broadband connection were excluded, yet they were going out of their way
> in some cases hundreds of metres up the lane to a derelict house that
> nobody has been in for 25 or 30 years.""

That seems fairly typical. When they installed it here they did a ducted
run of about 500m that serves only a single remote farmhouse that is
itself nearly 1km away from the road down a private drive. All the farms
here are on the microwave network already. The worst affected parts of
the village past me that get 1Mbps or less have not been put on fibre
though! OTOH most of them have long since moved to the rival superfast
microwave infrastructure. (I would have done too if I had line of sight)

--
Regards,
Martin Brown
0 new messages