Good morning all
Well after YEARS of crappy internet connectivity for the past 22 years, having lived in Manchester suburbs not more than 150 cable meters away from my exchange, to out in a field at the end of a damp piece of string, I have never had more than I have now at 18Mbps/1Mbps.
This just isn't enough now both SWMBO and I are both full time home workers and we have two fully digitally connected kids in their early teens, using phones, Netflix etc. Something had to be done!
Freedom Fibre are touting around our area and I've been liaising with them for a few weeks, flyering the rest of the houses on our road and down in the village, to get everyone to register interest and sign wayleaves for FF to survey and tell us when/if they can provide us a service. They effectively piggy back on existing infrastructure, running their fibres through existing ducting or renting BT pole space and running them overhead.
This process could take a while because of an odd situation where BT's checker tells me that absolutely under no circumstances is my area and any of the postcodes in it, in their pipeline to be upgraded to FTTP, but when the telecoms companies then check their higher end systems (so they can confirm and go back to the Government to claim the relevant subsidies to make it financially viable for them to provide) BT system tells them that we ARE on the list, they just have no date for when. Brilliant!
During this time my friend and neighbour up the road (only 150 metres further along the cable than me but can only get 6Mbps/0.5Mbps), who used to own many telecoms companies over the years and knows the owners of FF and the other smaller entities looking to help us, decided enough was enough and he was going to look into Starlink. It arrived last week and it's completely stunned us both.
Dish arrives with a small star shaped stand mount, which you put on your lawn (for initial setup, or you could leave it there) and mount the square dish atop, plug in the router indoors and run a long (75m provided) PoE cable from dish to router, and fire up the app. The dish then auto adjusts itself (small motors in the mounting bracket) to align itself with the Starlink satellite train, and job done.
He's now getting 220Mbps/14Mbps with 20ms ping times, which is MORE than adequate for everything bar the needs of a professional gamer (which neither of us are), so my order went in yesterday. I've also ordered the ethernet adapter (for some reason there is no ethernet port on the router so if you want to use a 3rd party mesh system or have any wired devices you need the adapter), and a wall mount so I can mount it at eaves level out of the way and with the clearest view of the sky.
I've also ordered an Orbi mesh system to then pipe the Wi-Fi around the house.
Not cheap at £460 for the hardware then £75pm, but once it's up and running I'll cancel my previous Sky broadband and land line, saving about £35pm, leaving me a delta of around £40. Wife and I can both claim a small portion of that back through work, so all in all not a massive dent in the wallet for a much needed upgrade.
I'll let you know how it goes...
@Roger - might be worth looking at for your internet needs, if the price isn't too much of a put off...
Well after YEARS of crappy internet connectivity for the past 22 years, having lived in Manchester suburbs not more than 150 cable meters away from my exchange, to out in a field at the end of a damp piece of string, I have never had more than I have now at 18Mbps/1Mbps.
This just isn't enough now both SWMBO and I are both full time home workers and we have two fully digitally connected kids in their early teens, using phones, Netflix etc. Something had to be done!
Freedom Fibre are touting around our area and I've been liaising with them for a few weeks, flyering the rest of the houses on our road and down in the village, to get everyone to register interest and sign wayleaves for FF to survey and tell us when/if they can provide us a service. They effectively piggy back on existing infrastructure, running their fibres through existing ducting or renting BT pole space and running them overhead.
This process could take a while because of an odd situation where BT's checker tells me that absolutely under no circumstances is my area and any of the postcodes in it, in their pipeline to be upgraded to FTTP, but when the telecoms companies then check their higher end systems (so they can confirm and go back to the Government to claim the relevant subsidies to make it financially viable for them to provide) BT system tells them that we ARE on the list, they just have no date for when. Brilliant!
During this time my friend and neighbour up the road (only 150 metres further along the cable than me but can only get 6Mbps/0.5Mbps), who used to own many telecoms companies over the years and knows the owners of FF and the other smaller entities looking to help us, decided enough was enough and he was going to look into Starlink. It arrived last week and it's completely stunned us both.
Dish arrives with a small star shaped stand mount, which you put on your lawn (for initial setup, or you could leave it there) and mount the square dish atop, plug in the router indoors and run a long (75m provided) PoE cable from dish to router, and fire up the app. The dish then auto adjusts itself (small motors in the mounting bracket) to align itself with the Starlink satellite train, and job done.
He's now getting 220Mbps/14Mbps with 20ms ping times, which is MORE than adequate for everything bar the needs of a professional gamer (which neither of us are), so my order went in yesterday. I've also ordered the ethernet adapter (for some reason there is no ethernet port on the router so if you want to use a 3rd party mesh system or have any wired devices you need the adapter), and a wall mount so I can mount it at eaves level out of the way and with the clearest view of the sky.
I've also ordered an Orbi mesh system to then pipe the Wi-Fi around the house.
Not cheap at £460 for the hardware then £75pm, but once it's up and running I'll cancel my previous Sky broadband and land line, saving about £35pm, leaving me a delta of around £40. Wife and I can both claim a small portion of that back through work, so all in all not a massive dent in the wallet for a much needed upgrade.
I'll let you know how it goes...
@Roger - might be worth looking at for your internet needs, if the price isn't too much of a put off...
