Anyone Been in this Situation with Broadband?
 

A friend has recently moved into a small block of flats, all privately owned, run by a management company. She has health and mobility issues and placed an order for a broadband connection back in August. Only full fibre being offered in her location, no copper or part fibre.

So nearly a month after moving in she has no broadband yet due to Openreach advising major civil works will be required and now may not happen. There is very poor/non-existent phone signal in her flat so she can’t use a phone or connect laptop to essential services like NHS and banking etc. She is piggy backing onto a neighbour’s wi-fi, however, it is not stable and intermittent. All the neighbours are still on the old copper system, which will be disconnected in about a year.

Anyone any suggestions on how to get internet into a location like this while they figure out how to deliver full fibre? Annoyingly all providers are only offering full fibre in the location despite the lack of infrastructure. Starlink is expensive and doesn’t help with the phone.

Not british so advice is very limited, if she access to roof get a starlink, here in AUS its more expensive than FFTN/FFTP but its the most effective other option

I suggest you try her postcode on a sales page for any primary or secondary provider. She lives in what is termed an MDU or multiple dwelling unit where the building copper network will be present. See if the likes of Sky etc. can sell her a 70Mb product which they will order from Openreach using the SOGEA suite of products.

Good luck.

Round here people even further out in the sticks use Airband or Starlink

What do other residents do?

Would it be possible to mitigate poor mobile signal with a well sited mobile based router rather than a handheld phone.

Broadband providers usually fall over themselves to get you signed-up.

Try a different mobile 'phone network, e.g. Vodafone: they don't all have the same geographical coverage.

Openreach in my recent direct experience, are not very good and are only interested in providing installations that are easy for them to install. Any slight difficulty and they don't want to know.

I had a similar issue, although mine was a case of a break somewhere in the wiring within the building itself. Openreach were unable to source the break and a standalone line was not permissable.

Vodaphone came up brilliantly with a 4G/5G mobile hotspot

https://www.vodafone.co.uk/mobile-br...-wi-fi-hotspot

I have one now and it is so easy to use, no external connections required, just plug it into the mains and do the password etc on the pooter and away you go. Mine is actually significantly faster and cheaper than the fixed type broadband and with the added bonus that I can take it anywhere too.

Mine is the Max plan that gives unlimited data and no upfront cost for £23 per month (payable by DD or direct via Vodaphone website) there are 4 plans available via the link

There are 4 UK mobile UK phone networks, try entering the postcode into each networks coverage page and see what comes up. One might cover the area.
Due to poor BT service I've been on mobile broadband with data only sims for many years for a fraction of the cost of a landline service. The online coverage maps are not always correct in the real world though. One option is to get a PAYG or a 1 month sim on each network to try in a mobile handset. Once you have that information buy a mobile broadband router (unlocked so you can change networks and one of the better ones). There may be limitations using a MVNO sim instead of one from the main network but a might be to OK to start with to see how it goes. Some do not allow access to all the available bands.
Look at cellmapper.net to see what masts are in the area of interest. Use the menu to select the network.

I've just gone onto 3's '5g Outdoor Hub'. It's much faster than my fibre to cabinet was. The hub is on my outside window cill (it's designed to be 'stickied' to a window), router inside window cill. I've had to reset it (off/on) twice. Getting between 75 and 100 mbps. Previous was 35. Under £20/month on offer.

CG

PS, long try it and see period...

The other residents are still on the old copper system which will be deactivated in 2027.

She is currently using a dongle modem with a data only sim and it is sellotaped to the inside of a window which gets the best download speed, which varies between 1.0 and 4 Mb/s.

Thanks all for suggestions so far.

That's the analogue voice over copper network. Copper broadband will be around for much longer. I did smile at the original target date of December 2025. I doubt 2027 will be achieved given the history of smaller and easier technology withdrawal programmes.

Openreach withdrawal of copper lines | End of BT copper telephone lines | Digital telephone lines

On her behalf I spoke with several providers on that very issue, one of them agreed to provide broadband via the existing copper installation in the building, then about an hour later withdrew that offer. They wouldn't tell me why, but as you say it made complete sense to do so until the fibre situation is resolved.

When my BT connection went down for a few days a couple of years ago, they immediately dispatched (I think it came through the letterbox well under 24 hours after I reported the fault!) some form of standalone wifi box to which I was able to connect while they resolved the problem at the cabinet. Can the provider not do something similar while they sort out a permanent solution? Seems a good way to impress a new customer...

Incidentally, a friend had to piggyback on a kind neighbour's WiFi for a while, it was also quite intermittent and I got her a WiFi extender which improved things no end...

Ofcom Mobile Coverage Checker
 

This site *might* be useful to determine the best telco to use for a mobile 4G/5G hotspot while the hard-wire issues
are sorted out.

As others have mentioned, the maps are not always 100% accurate.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/mobile-coverage-checker

Another vote for mobile broadband. Got fed up with BT so binned them completely and have a Three broadband router working off 4g/5g. Set up contract online, router arrives, switch on, use. Other networks are available.

We had one of those gizmos when we were with BT. Then we switched to PlusNet and had to give the gizmo back. PlusNet uses the same infrastructure as BT but BT will not let them give out the gizmos, so when your Broadband goes down, it stays down until it is fixed.

Just about to move to a countryside location where there is little or no 4G signal and the BT connection is over original copper hence pretty slow. My current provider is Virgin who don’t have a service (and no plans to) so I have decided to go with Starlink mini..

Will report back if it works :rolleyes:

Three cheers for privatisation and deregulation.

:ok:

There is no 5G where I live and I have to clip the 4G MiFi to the curtains to get a one bar signal. One bar is enough for 30 Mbps with Talkmobile. £ 9.95 a month for 70 GB data.

Then they steadily rip you off by upping the bill year on year in the hope you will not switch because it is too much of a faff, meanwhile the quality of support falls.

Only three networks since the CMA completely capitulated on the Three Vodafone merger, and they all tower share anyway.

I would have imagined you would be on Jurassic's network, or Cuckoo.

(Another benefit of deregulation and privatisation.)

The two networks will not become one for some time. I have a Three sim and a Vodafone sim in my 'phone and I can assure you that they do not perform the same at this time, at least where I am and bother to look.
Lots of info available on ISP review.
For my mobile BB at one property vodafone about 20Mbps and Three 80Mbps, another property they are about the same but use different bands. Not the same at this time.

Agree it is not good for competition. Some areas may win but I suspect some will lose as some masts are taken out of service.

It's very easy now to change between ISPs on Openreach, using One Touch.
You don't even have to tell them you're leaving.
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Not necessarily, a lot of people get trapped by using their ISP provided email address as their main address. If they subsequently change ISP it can be a nausea to disentangle yourself from your former provider. You have to change to new address, independent of the ISP, and then alter all your log-ins and account details. Rather than do this, many people stay where they are. Some ISPs even charge an ongoing fee to retain your ISP email address if you change to a different ISP.

My email address is <my initial>@<my surna.me> It costs me €20 odd a year. I think it's worth it to own my domain, and have total control over my email.

Nine characters in total. No-one ever gets it wrong.

My surname ends in .rs, which is the ccTLD of the Republic of Serbia. Customer service in English at all reasonable hours.

I left BT about 10 years ago but still have access to my email with them. Never used as have a Hotmail and Gmail plus my own.

If you were in BT a long time ago, that is true, now it could cost you £7.50 a month to keep it if you leave.

I did wonder if things had changed as I pressed the submit button.

When I was a councillor, a resident came to me complaining of very poor broadband. It was so slow that to update his iPhone it took all night just to download the update. He lived on a small estate opposite where I lived, and it was a 'fill in' estate, in that there was an area of land that got filled in with about 30 houses. As it was an afterthought, there were no ADSL lines left, so the maximum speed was about 2 Mbps. I managed to get it upgraded as they were moving from copper to fibre, so it was a lot better. It was also done first in the town, as the council contributed to the cost, which then became a gateway to the town being upgraded quite early in the era of the Government giving funding to councils to get the upgrades moving. Needless to say, the estate were all very pleased to get the super fast connection.

So the moral of this tale is to contact your County Councillor to see if they can help fill in these holes in the network.

It's very short sighted to have your email address locked in the hands of an ISP, who will use it as a hold when you come to negotiate a new contract.
And ask those on Virginmedia who move house to an area they don't serve.

Anither vote for 3 5G Mobile Router... It sits on the window ledge £29pm and get 60-70 Mbps . Only downside is if there is atmospheric issues affecting the TV signal... ,not often. .. with a 3 sim card. As for e-mail just generated a couple of Yahoo addresses.
Then just monitor your 'old' e mail address and see which you really need to update to your new address...
No wires or water damaged outside cables

Talking of ISP contracts, in France out ISP was Orange. If you moved house, you had to keep them as your ISP. When we moved to Anglesey, we told Orange of our change of address. We even went into the local shop and made them write it down, including Wales (in French).
Unsurprisingly, Orange could not provide a service but that did not stop them insisting on being paid for the rest of the contract. We didn’t and not only cancelled our DD, we closed the bank account to. That made them very cross and the letters got quite threatening, especially as they kept writing to the old address so it took a while for us to respond.
Eventually, we were visiting some friends in our old village so we dropped into the Orange shop to have a word and point out the small print in their contract that said the contract could be terminated early if they could not provide a service. It got quite acrimonious but Mrs N, who is fluent in French, stood her ground, by the time she had finished I felt quite sorry for the assistant. It was a side of her I have rarely seen.

My girlfriend is an Afrikaner, her Afrikaans is mutually intelligible with Dutch and Flemish. When she comes on with a blast of the verbals I am amazed how the language of such a pious people can have so many obscenities in it.

[QUOTE=Grayfly;11964301] ... She has health and mobility issues ....

There is very poor/non-existent phone signal in her flat so she can’t use a phone or connect laptop to essential services like NHS and banking etc. ....

Grayfly,
As nobody has yet stressed the point, it is said that the great invention of one Mr. Marconi was “The Elevated Electrode”.

For quite some years my internet has come, to my great satisfaction, via a USB ‘dongle’ connecting to one or other of the cellphone networks .... linked to my PC or laptop via a longish USB cable. Back in the day when the local signal strength was bad, I did some experimenting and found I could get a quite adequate signal strength by siting it by a strategic window .... and if I ever needed better, I was astounded by the increase in signal signal strength if I shinned up a ladder to raise it a couple of metres [ Fourier Envelope, anyone? ] .... but actually never needed to do that in practice.

I prefer the USB dongle to portable ‘MiFi’ routers both for security and to avoid the need for a separate power supply for the latter. Although ‘straight’ USB dongles are in short supply now, I see that there are loads of dirt cheap Chinese cellular + WiFi-enabled USB dongles available from the Usual Places.

Speed has never been a problem for me - I have neither the time nor the inclination to download entertainment like data-hungry video material ... after all, I have PPRune! ... and even heavy software downloads are quick now that we have a 4G service.

If as I fear your unfortunate friend may find herself now in somewhat diminished circumstances, here is the cherry on top of the icing on the cake .....

I simply buy a preloaded data SIM for the dongle to cover me for a year or more ..
- no contract
- no registration ... anonymity
- no monthy expiry of entitlement
- no goddam Direct Debits
- no hassle, I just fit a new data SIM when the year is up, and it just works.
- best of all, all of my internet use is costing me less than £5/month, with much to spare!

Call me Ebernezer, but that adds to my aformentioned satisfaction - I feel so sorry for all those less tech-savvy folks with limited internet use, especially the elderly, who are inveigeled into paying far, far more for a connection than ever is needed.

[PM me if you need any tech gen].

[QUOTE=dogle;11965073]The only problem with a USB dongle is that it goes in the side of your laptop /back of your desktop, and where I'm sitting there is no coverage. The MiFi needs to be clipped to the curtains on the window facing the cell site. 4G coverage in Lincolnshire is poor and 5G is non-existent. So your solution may work in your location, but not in everyone's. I'd be interested to know how much data you get for £ 5 a month. I pay £ 9.95 for 70 GB, which in practice I never use. I could downgrade to £ 7.95 and 30 GB, which means I might run out some months, but for two quid a month I'd rather have the knowledge that I will never run out.

justapax, so sorry if I failed to make myself transparently clear but hey the point of my Marconi allusion was to emphasise that a USB dongle does NOT need to be plugged into the box - as I said, it can be “ linked to my PC or laptop via a longish USB cable”, with excellent results.

Since you ask, FYI I last paid just under £50 delivered for a 120GB preloaded SIM good for 12 months, which will cover my needs for a year with 30 -40 % data to spare ... if you know of any better deals, please do tell!

If 10 GB a month is all you need, then fine. I download a lot of films from TPB, so I pay £ 9.95 a month (just under £ 120 a year) to Talkmobile. The rates haven't gone up in five years, when it was £ 9.95 a month for 60 GB, now it's 70 GB.

If you are in a Three coverage area, it can be even cheaper, but I found data rates horribly slow - around 1 Mbps as against Talkmobile (which uses Vodafone) typically 20 Mbps. I'd love 5G, but it's just not avaiable where i live.

I set her up with a dongle modem plugged into a usb charger plug and located it at a window. I installed a Three pre-loaded 500Gb data sim (£19) which should last a few months. However data download is only around 1Mps. A kindly neighbour, who has high speed broadband, gave her a guest access to his system. It wasn't a great success to begin with but I have now added a WiFi extender and she is getting above 10Mps around her flat.

This will have to do until Openreach figure out how to connect the fibre in the street outside to the building.