BT Faster Broadband Reveiw (UK) 11MB+ for rural britan

louisoft01 · December 4, 2015

I live quite far away from my local telephone exchange (like most people in rural parts)

I used to have to put up with kind of crap 5MB ADSL Max (Not even ADSL2+)

Recently my local cabinet was upgraded to support FTTC style broadband under a government funded program called Broadband Delivery UK.

On the day they started taking orders i checked the BT website and it said that i could get BT faster broadband rather than just standard broadband or BT infinity.

This is because i live too far from the cabinet to achieve 24mb+ so a qualify for a discounted package called "Faster Broadband"

Me and my dad ordered it and in two weeks it was up and running, with no problems!

The BT Home Hub 5 router is great and i am loving the AC speeds on my mobile devices and FINALY gigabit LAN for my brothers and I PC's.

I was syncing at about 17.33mb down

and about 1.93mb up

This is a big improvement from my 5mb adsl from before.

Here i have enclosed before and after speed tests

Before

After

BrightCandle · December 5, 2015

That has put you into decent ADSL2 territory but with 2x the upload bandwidth not too shabby.

LordMas · December 5, 2015

Not a bad speed at all to be honest considering you live that far away. Ping is much better too!

Yamosu · December 5, 2015

What a superfarce.

I live around two miles from my cabinet and I get, currently, around the 5Mbps mark and on a really good day lately I have been getting 6Mbps. However I am living in one of the very few areas where we are getting FTTP and have recently placed an order. Assuming the local landowner gives permission for it it is probably going to take six months to a year at the speed that BT Openreach move.

For those of you not in the UK our phone and broadband infrastructure is, largely, owned and maintained by two companies. Virgin Media own and run the cable networks and BT Openreach own and run the telephone network that most ADSL and VDSL services run off. We have a peculiar situation here where BT Openreach is one of a group of three companies. You have Openreach, Wholesale and Retail. Openreach tell Wholesale what they can provide at X address and wholesale then tell the ISPs (BT, Sky, Talk Talk etc) what their customers can get at their address. However I digress.

Some time ago it was decided by government that we would roll out 'superfast' broadband with the aim of 95% coverage by I believe 2020. There were two main bidders for the contracts. We had Fujitsu who were offering a FTTH deployment and we had the incumbent monopoly, BT Openreach offering VDSL/FTTC. Fujitsu pulled out citing problems with the bidding process and BT ended up getting the contracts and cash for FTTC. So thanks to BDUK and our Government we have now got an excuse for a national high speed broadband network which only really works if you are close enough to the cabinet. Assuming you can get a connection at all.

Without going into a long rant about the various things Openreach have done or in many cases not done it is suffice to say that we have been royally shafted. We are trying to make, in many cases, 50+ year old copper cables provide a 21st service and while it may work fine for some people the problem is that it doesn't help anyone like the OP and myself who live in rural areas. I have had many a go at the current MP responsible on Twitter about the situation and I have been ignored or told to go away as I apparently don't know what I'm talking about.

I apologise for the rant but the whole situation drives me insane. As and when Openreach sort out wayleaves I will be getting FTTP because I am of a very few who are getting rolled out as standard in my village. Even then because of the lunacy of it all only one half of the village can order it. The other half are stuck with VDSL. It really is madness!

So yes while the OP's broadband improvement is just that if BDUK and gov't hadn't been had by the BT snake oil salesman he could be getting 1Gbps over fibre!

Edit: I apologise this is probably off topic somewhat but as I say this makes me blood boil.