• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

What does a Request Timeout mean on Ping test, Now Starlink,

Is that a Starlink mounting kit? Which one? If we do go permanent I’ll be needing something similiar.
The one in their shop only provides for a 4” overhang which wont be enough. Your one seems to be close to 10” or 12”
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A quick Google seems to suggest they don't make their own long wall mount for v3 Starlink so you'd have to look at the 3rd party market. There appears to be a lot of them out there so you've need to work out what you think is best and take a punt, or go with one of the other mounting options they do supply.
 
Cheers Mark, I’ve come to the same conclusion. Starlink standard pipe mounting fitting for the dish then any suitable angle pipe bracket loads available for Tv satellite dishes etc.
At the moment I need a 19mm masonry bit so I can run the Starlink cable into the living room. While I am at it I will make an access route for the fibre.
We had another set too with an engineer this morning who was sent out by the ISP to connect us up despite us telling them, numerous times, that fibre cannot get to the edge of the property until the blockage under the road is sorted. Fourth time now ISP has sent out an engineer. The infrastructure provider (Altitude) is responsible for getting cable to edge of ghe property of course not the ISP. We are reliant on the ISP raising the issue them as is no route for the customer to do so. Engineer was extremely rude and pi$$ed off (contractor, apparently not paid if they do not install).
 
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That telegraph pole on the right is the only one on that side of the road, 21 properties, 8 poles. It is the only one of that design too so must have been placed after the rest. The cabling, in conduit for power and comms, is incased in the same concrete that supports that pole, the concrete had also flowed and set inside the conduit. There is no inspection box on our side of the lane. The white box is the lecky meter. With lecky probably in close proximity to the comms I ain't digging around on my side of the lane.
Aerial route not possible because of this.

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The roots of this will also pose a problem when it’s time to lay new cable but I have made it quite clear I will not dig up my side until I know the fibre can be connected.
 
RogerS said:
I have a chainsaw. Post or tree. No odds either way. Just let me know.
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After all, a post is just a particularly sparse tree :)

Can confirm I also had great experience with Starlink- If I was still working from home I would likely have kept it as failover as my ISP is Virgin as the only "Full Fibre" provider, BT said they were building here and O'Connor Utilities started surveying but went the opposite direction from the nearest ODF :confused:...I keep hoping, but we also don't have Great 5G coverage... I do know a guy with a POP at the local hill, but it's over the crest so I can't use an E-Band Link.

As above, our xDSL was dreadful- some of the in-ground cables are likely Alloy, and the contention ratio was dire... They love to sell you an "up to" 70 Mb/s connection.... Which ran at around 19 Mb/s even if the website you wanted was down hill.:ROFLMAO:
 
Skylink router now indoors next to existing ADSL. Used same hole in floor that TV aerial and telephone cables came up through finished with a silicon split grommet. Have we all got a rat’s nest like this somewhere? The router sits on the desk above that lot.
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Now have more than adequate wifi speeds throughout the house. MrsP will test to see if it meets her home working requirements tomorrow.
Will not let ISP of the hook re Fibre installation but we are good for the next month at least.
 
We’re getting there, more than 4 years after the ISP first advised that the adsl cable was blocked under the road we have finally had a call and admission from the infrastructure supplier that there is in fact not even a conduit (unfortunately they came when we were out but did leave a message and called us back later) and the cable was indeed set in concrete under the pole.
They have accepted that they will dig the road, lay a conduit and make an access trap on our boundary. The ISP still have to raise another call, they are coming tomorrow and providing they send one of their own engineers and not a contractor we might actually ger somewhere.
 
Starlink have reduced prices to £35/month. Seriously tempted at that price as a backup. Then when our Gigaclear special offer runs out and they hike the price up....maybe stick with Starlink ?
 
My trial offer expired just before Galetti took down the phone lines:(. We seemed to have hit more buck passing with the “who will dig up the road to lay fibre” problem. With so much of our infrastructure above ground , copper and fibre, and so very vulnerable to trees bringing the whole lot down i am tempted to forget fibre and go back to starlink.
On my way back to France at the moment after a hectic few days in Blighty so will reassess the situation on my return. The adsl is now working but the neighbours fibre cable was actually broken and they are not yet reconnected. The tree that took them out was little more than a large bush and even when sorted I do not imagine anyone will come along and trim all the other trees to below the pole height so the next big wind will likely cause a repeat.
 
You got me all excited there Rog. However, the £35 is only available in some areas. Not ours. In fact on ours they gaev a demand surcharge as an up front extra costs. Dynamic pricing in action I suppose. :mad:
 
We have the non priority package here in Spain, very really ever drops out so for my needs a priority package is not needed at the moment.
Last week we had mega rain, over 300mm in 24 hours and Starlink never missed a beat, many with fibre lost coverage so we are well satisfied with Starlink
 

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We’re back on Starlink for good now. Just installed today and an unexpected but welcome advantage is WIFI 6 which along with a new phone will now give me a signal in the workshop without need of an extender.:)
Been testing wifi calling on the phone today. I can’t tell the difference. Need to decide whether or not to keep the landline number and an internet phone.
 
AndyP said:
We’re back on Starlink for good now. Just installed today and an unexpected but welcome advantage is WIFI 6 which along with a new phone will now give me a signal in the workshop without need of an extender.:)
Been testing wifi calling on the phone today. I can’t tell the difference. Need to decide whether or not to keep the landline number and an internet phone.
Click to expand...
Landline is almost obsolete in the UK. We ditched ours two years ago.
 
yeah, logic dictates we ditch it all together. I like the idea of not having all my eggs in the one basket (the phone) though
 
When we last changed broadband provider there was no landline option so we ditched it then. Instead we bought a very cheap android mobile and got a pay-as-you-go SIM that has a minimum usage of "some chargeable use" every 3 months. That's mounted on the wall (and plugged in to a charger permanently) where the landline used to be and is used to send a single text message every 3 months, so the £10 top-up we did when we set it up will last a very long time.

Whenever a company insists on having a phone number for you to deal with them (e.g. buying on-line), they get the "landline" number rather than our normal mobiles; they can spam that one as much as they like as it only gets checked for messages every few weeks. It also gives a fall-back option for calls if there's a major issue, although we're on different networks to each other so we have that redundancy anyway.
 
Dr.Al said:
When we last changed broadband provider there was no landline option so we ditched it then. Instead we bought a very cheap android mobile and got a pay-as-you-go SIM that has a minimum usage of "some chargeable use" every 3 months. That's mounted on the wall (and plugged in to a charger permanently) where the landline used to be and is used to send a single text message every 3 months, so the £10 top-up we did when we set it up will last a very long time.

Whenever a company insists on having a phone number for you to deal with them (e.g. buying on-line), they get the "landline" number rather than our normal mobiles; they can spam that one as much as they like as it only gets checked for messages every few weeks. It also gives a fall-back option for calls if there's a major issue, although we're on different networks to each other so we have that redundancy anyway.
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Same. No brainer.

Mobiles in our case on two networks that don't share a mast. Covered.
 
Yes ours is a single mast though if I drive to the top of the hill I can get a bit of a signal from the coast so when the mast goes down which it did for 5 weeks last year we're scuppered. Same when we get a power cut, twice last week we lose phone signal as we need a booster connected to the router to get a signal indoors. other networks share the same mast but poorer signal so we're tied in really.

I'm fed up with BT, can't get full fibre despite an access point less than 50 metres away because there's no trunking (bloody builders) so the existing copper line is just burried underground and no one seems interested in pushing a mole through or digging a route for one property. understandable. I'm under contract untim February but will be having another close look at options as I don't think £35 is good value for max 25mb
 
Lons said:
I'm under contract untim February but will be having another close look at options as I don't think £35 is good value for max 25mb
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Starlink is £35/month for 100 Mbps (£25 for the first six months) and is presumably available where you are if you don't mind giving money to Musk.
 
Lons said:
I'm fed up with BT, can't get full fibre despite an access point less than 50 metres away because there's no trunking (bloody builders) so the existing copper line is just burried underground and no one seems interested in pushing a mole through or digging a route for one property. understandable. I'm under contract untim February but will be having another close look at options as I don't think £35 is good value for max 25mb
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Exactly our problem too Bob, and with at least 200m of fibre cable high enough up to be at the mercy of the next storm blown tree left me with little choice.
 
Dr.Al said:
Starlink is £35/month for 100 Mbps (£25 for the first six months) and is presumably available where you are if you don't mind giving money to Musk.
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Thanks Al, yes I saw that but I still have nine months left on the BT contract but I'll certainly be contacting them at the end of the year if I can't get full fibre.
I've dropped an email this morning to Alcom who laid the fibre close to us and I was originally signed up to them and the Gov broadband scheme so disappointing. I could get between 125 and 200 Mbps for £25 or 325 MBPS for £30. They're a local company who I'd rather support and of course I could physically bang on the door if any issues. :ROFLMAO:

They might consider a change of heart as while there are only 5 properties in the cul de sac next door has been sold with new owners due very soon, next to that is a frail guy mid 80s whose daughter will be moving in I'd think before too long, next to that a lady in her 90s just gone into a home and the house will have to be sold to fund it and last a widow late 80s, a good friend who might be talked around if needss be.
 
It's good to know that AndyP has got his wi-fi sorted out. The village where our daughter and family live in France had very dodgy reception due mainly to the fact that they were at the end of the village and the end of the line. The village, one of the larger ones in the area, has about 100 houses. However, it is part of a Community of Communes covering some 40 villages with c. 10,000 inhabitants. The chances of getting France Telecom to wire them all up for fibre were remote so the Commune decided to sort it out themselves. From memory, each house in the Commune has had to pay something like an extra 100€ p.a. for the next 10 years to fund the cost of the infrastructure. In our case, the fibre cable ended at the Mairie, 100 metres away, with copper from there to the house. However, you could pay to have fibre to the house which is what they now have. It enables my daughter to work from home, one grandson to play online computer games and son-in-law to stream Netflix and the like simultaneously
 
Dr.Al said:
Starlink is £35/month for 100 Mbps (£25 for the first six months) and is presumably available where you are if you don't mind giving money to Musk.
Click to expand...
They advertise £35, but when I tried it yesterday, the only offer for installation was the £75 version. Strange.
 
There is some sort of dynamic pricing going on there Adrian with Starlink only offering the cheaper contracts and slower download speeds in select areas and based on demand too.
 
Indeed I did! I was suckered into looking again by this thread. However, I have now found a map that shows the whole area in a ring around London, including Kent, has a £75 / month offer only - though it is the maximum speed offering and includes whatever the thing is that does whole house broadband. It also includes a portable roaming unit as well.
 
That’s a shame Adrian, sounds like they are only offering their Residential Max , the speeds of which I doubt you would ever need, nor the mobile dish either.
Here the Residential Max >400mbs is 60€, Residential 200mbs 40€ and Residential 100mbs 30€.
Being as we have survived quite comfortably on around 20mbs adsl for years the 100mbs will do us just fine.
 
AJB Temple said:
Indeed I did! I was suckered into looking again by this thread. However, I have now found a map that shows the whole area in a ring around London, including Kent, has a £75 / month offer only - though it is the maximum speed offering and includes whatever the thing is that does whole house broadband. It also includes a portable roaming unit as well.
Click to expand...
I looked at the portable thing as I got an offer to have it for free being an existing customer, but on digging I realised it's a paid service as soon as you enable it, and given I might use it once or twice a year if we went away to somewhere remote with little signal, the cost was prohibitive to keep in standby. Shame as I love the idea of it, but not paying for something I will use for maybe 4 days a year.
 
I'm really grateful for the bump to this thread, thanks @AndyP :)
I've been on the £75/month Starlink contract for the last couple of years and it's been great, but at no point did they tell me that the cheaper plans were now available in my area. It's rare for me to get a connection over 200mbps so I've now dropped to that tariff and will be saving £20 each month 🥳
It changes over to the cheaper one at the weekend so I'll wait and see if the performance suffers at all, but I'm guessing it won't.

Funnily enough though, at our French house in a little village surrounded by fields I can get 2Gbps fibre for €25/month 🤯
 
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