The General Wibble Thread

Ally, I see that several companies are now offering free sat kit on their contracts, or as you live in Wales you can get a "broadband grant" from the Welsh assembly to cover the cost of the kit.

either way, it looks like a maximum of 10mb down and 4mb up for sat connections and they carry a hefty monthly fee

Your best bet is to move back to a big city

AllyG wrote:Glad you're sorted Icy

Snapzzz,
Why can't they put the internet through a Sky dish? It would be very handy for me if they could. We are a very long way from the exchange and the only option for us at the moment to increase our internet speed would be to pay for our own internet satellite dish, which is pretty expensive

Ally,

The problem is that dishes are just like aerials...they receive only. Thats your download.
But how do you tell the internet what you would like to download? That is upload. And upload is not possible by 'sky' dishes as they are receive only....no transmit.

So even with satelite internet you need that upload link which is generally by a phone line (slow) or by a VERY expensive dish that transmits.

If sky could offer broadband by dish they would have by now for sure. Sorry

The best bet is to have patience as in a year or so they will be rolling out 4g with speeds of 30mgbps over the air
http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/news/2012/06/everything_everywhere_achieves_20mb_mobile_broadband_/

daved wrote:The best bet is to have patience as in a year or so they will be rolling out 4g with speeds of 30mgbps over the air
http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/news/2012/06/everything_everywhere_achieves_20mb_mobile_broadband_/

But again this will be in centres of population to start.

Rural users will still be stuck with copper to the exchange for many years as the only viable broadband.

In rural Norfolk my exchange isn't on the 2013 or 2014 projection for fibre to the cabinet and 3G mobile is non existent (I use a fem to cell to get a mobile signal at home).

I get 2.5MBPS broadband with little sign of this going up in the next few years.
One problem that those on low speeds suffer is that so much content is now aimed at high speed users that we suffer doubly. Slow speed and high bandwidth needed for services. Interactive websites, streaming videos, graphics on web pages, larger documents - all contribute to emphasising the dichotomy between those on fibre and those on copper.

But - hey ho !!!!

Bit better than a 14Kbps modem which was my first internet connection.

Thanks everyone for that very useful information on broadband

Snapzzz - if the technology is there but it's just too expensive at the moment, don't you think maybe one day Sky will be able to offer broadband through their dish?

How do I find out how fast my broadband is?

It's OK for shopping and reading e-mails and things, but I can't download ski videos from U-Tube etc. unless I stop them first and wait about 5 minutes - otherwise they keep freezing.

OldAndy wrote:
In rural Norfolk my exchange isn't on the 2013 or 2014 projection for fibre to the cabinet and 3G mobile is non existent (I use a fem to cell to get a mobile signal at home).

Do you farm types call your wireless network 'get off my LAN' ?

We used to have a party line (remember them?)
The other party used to tut when we were on it (apparently too often)
They could have yelled 'get off my land-line'

AllyG wrote:

Snapzzz - if the technology is there but it's just too expensive at the moment, don't you think maybe one day Sky will be able to offer broadband through their dish?

No, i can't see that ever happening i am afraid. Even if they funded two way dishes (expensive) it would need a ridiculous amount of bandwidth on the satellite which i doubt it could cope with.

AllyG wrote:

How do I find out how fast my broadband is?

Click this link and run a test, it will tell you. http://www.speedtest.net

Here is my result, its slightly low as i am on wireless in my bed!