It is with profound regret that I have to inform you that I may have to start giving Starlink money. I am not happy about this.
Basically, our broadband is glacially slow. We are still on ADSL, and the maximum real-world speed we can get is around 5-10Mbs. The other option -- 5G -- is a little faster, but tends to drop out. A lot.
@ianbetteridge what the heck? 5-10 Mbps should not count as broadband in 2026
@exchgr @ianbetteridge per the USO, 10mbit down/1mbit up counts https://www.bt.com/broadband/USO
if it drops below that, keep costing them money
OpenReach were meant to lay FTTP this year. OpenReach have now said they have taken us "off plan" and have no idea when they will do this.
(Just to reiterate: we're on ADSL. There is no FTTC here, because, apparently, our cabinet is too far from the exchange thanks to some crazy cable routing.)
@ianbetteridge Is there no local control over Openreach? Probably a silly question.
(Speaking as a gigabit ftth user on a farm up in the valleys, it is certainly possible …)
@BashStKid Nope, and our situation is actually quite complicated. We're in a close which was built in the early 70's on the edge of the University (which obviously runs its own telecoms and high speed access). The university has grown around the close, so we're basically in the middle of it.
This means as far as OpenReach is concerned, we're not rural -- because we're in a somewhat built up area --- so don't get the kind of prioritisation that rural gets (where there's no connection at all). But there's no incentive for them, or anyone, to provide better services, as they would in a built-up area, as it's only 10 houses.
(Side note: OpenReach are generally ballsing-up the FTTP roll out in Kent, anyway. Having promised FTTP to the majority by end of this year, they've got about 20% of the way through the project, last time I looked)
So, annoyingly, the best option is fucking Starlink. I do not like this *at all*. But it's got to the point where even working from home is stretching things, thanks to Teams being a bandwidth hog at the best of times.
Oh and just to add to the general woes of our broadband. Not only do we have a bonkers distance to the exchange, and no FTTC let alone FTTP, the cable to the cabinet is aluminium, not copper, which basically halves the speed of any kind of DSL. Nice one BT, nice one.
@ianbetteridge AIUI Starlink is not much faster in practice, depending how many other local users there are. Consensus is that it's the least bad available if you're in remote areas (like the UK) but not if you can get any sort of land or even a 4G+/5G connection.
How's speed on data sims?
