Hi Guys
I'm after some input into a decision my daughter is trying to make. She has just bought a new build property in Bedfordshire (MK45) and she
needs to get internet access.
Her choices as I see it are to either:
1) bite the bullet and pay BT to connect her, then get a DSL service delivered over the standard 2 pair connection or;
2) get one of these 3G based services from the mobile operators via a dongle etc
The village her house is in, is the same that I live in and being 3.5 miles from the local BT exchange means we get less than 1Mb connection using
DSL. I have no idea how good or bad the mobile operators services are, do people have experience they can share? Are they comparable to a DSL
connection, or are they a poor substitute? Who offers the best value and connections speeds?
The final thinking 'out of the box' option is looking at directional antenna's for my home wifi network. Her house is 400 meters from
mine, is there any technology which works over this kind of distance which is 'off the shelf' and proven?
Thanks in advance for you inputs
I saw an interesting thing where they got wifi to go a kilometer using a home made pringle-tube Yagi but you need line of site.
I recently got DSL for the first time. My house is supplied by overhead telephone cables via some very dodgey looking connector boxes on the front of
the house. Ended up going for a cheap deal of
direct save telecom (they use BT wholesale services then sell them on for 15% less) with Be broadband
Blimey it's quick. The broadband guides said I might get 3 if I'm lucky. Currently clicking along at 5.5 
400m I would be looking at using an infrared line of site system... but not cheap...
3G will be flakey and expensive.
I would just get a cable put in...Physical connections are always better than wireless ones!
No Virgin cables in the street?
Although you might manage a connection with directional dish aerials mounted externally the only real choice is a BT line.
Be & O2 (really the same company) use ADSL2* basically the equivalent bandwidth of two ADSL lines. But look at the small print carefully as
some Be packages are not ADSL2.
BE or O2 ADSL2 is not available in all areas. O2 offer very good discounts to customers with O2 phones --- even PAYG.
On our backup ADSL line we currently use O2 and have used Be in the past but left them because they switched or basic contract package from ADSL2 to
normal ADSL by a sneaky change in the T&Cs.
With both companies the email and other services are pretty basic O2's account control panel is truly awful. I would seriously recommend making
other arrangements for email, even consider using Googlemail.
Our other ADSL line is with Plusnet who are now an independant part of BT They have been first class no problems at all and the email options and spam
filtering is very good indeed. Plusnet also offer ADSL2 on the £12 per month premium package --- standard package is £6.00 permonth.
[Edited on 22/12/09 by britishtrident]
Forgot to say - if you do go with the phone line it may not be that pricey. A few months ago when we got our renovated house reconnected, BT had a
promotion on and waived the £120 (or whatever we thought we'd have to pay) connection charge. Not sure how my wife found this out as it
wasn't clearly advertised on BTs website. We then used another promotion, from o2, to get some cheap broadband
Liam
quote:
Originally posted by Liam
No Virgin cables in the street?
quote:
Originally posted by Liam
Forgot to say - if you do go with the phone line it may not be that pricey. A few months ago when we got our renovated house reconnected, BT had a promotion on and waived the £120 (or whatever we thought we'd have to pay) connection charge. Not sure how my wife found this out as it wasn't clearly advertised on BTs website. We then used another promotion, from o2, to get some cheap broadband
Liam
we live right on the limit for BT broadband but they supplied us with a BT HOME HUB 2.0 and I have to say it's been excellent, I have a vodaphone 3G for work and it's ok for sending-recieving e-mails but that's about it.
Is there no landline connection to the house already? Surely that would be part of the build specification that the property have a phone line in
which case you just need a broadband service provider to enable the service for you/her?
Or am I missing something?
The new build may have the physical line and white socket box, but not be connected, in which case I think the BT charge would apply. I take it
she's checked that she has no dialing tone already, carpmart?
According to my wife we had to phone 0800 100444 and quote 'save on connection' to get a free new line. No idea if this promo is still
running and it was conditional on staying at least 12/18 months (can't remember). That allowed us to get just the phone line and we got o2
broadband on some other promo that gave discount if you already had an o2 mobile (so we got an o2 PAYG sim if i recall).
If the BT promo has expired, and your happy with a combined phone/broadband package from BT rather than just the phone line and a free choice of
internet provider, then BT will connect for free anyway when you take out the package.
Liam
i used a dongle when our house was being refurbished... slow, unreliable and very easy to go (horribly) over the limit and incur outrageous
charges!
Avoid avoid avoid!
I haven't got them myself Harvey, but Sky paid all my sister's connection charges when she took out the Sky bundle. She pays about that same as me for Sky £20 ish . She also like yourself was quite offended at the BT connection charge!
Don't go 3G we find it totally unusable.. Old dial up would be faster! The 3G network seems to get over loaded at peak times of the day.. In the
middle of nowhere however that might be a different story (we live in London), but borrow someones dongle for a week to find out, if you want to try
this. I'd go for a real wired connection if possible.
Dan
Thanks to all for the input!
She has ordered a BT line and got the install for free!