Moving to a rural area - Ideas for decent broadband?

[THX1138]

Hello All

There may be a possible house move coming up in the next 6 months and just wanted to get an early heads-up on what type of broadband options may be available in the area.

We are currently on Sky FTTP Ultra Plus and loving its stability and speed. Unfortunately, the possible house move will place us back in the dark ages regards broadband options as you can see below as it’s in a rural area.

Based on Openreach’s recent announcement of halting further FTTP infrastructure upgrades, is (FTTP on Demand) a viable option to pay for? Or is it such a crazy price to not even entertain it? Are there other options for broadband e.g., ‘satellite’ to avoid having to step down from our current 500 mb and go all the way back down to a painful 21 mb – if where’re lucky?

Cheers

[cookiemonsteruk]

@THX1138 

Fttp on demand can cost >£8000 to install and as the customer pays everything it is primarily for business and only a few specialist providers

[Highlinder]

@THX1138Are you moving to an area that has Starlink as an option for you?

[Skull+Treaty]

@THX1138 

Depending on where you're moving to and the cellular services available - an LTE or 5G mobile router may be an alternative for you. 

[THX1138]

@cookiemonsteruk @Highlinder @Skull+Treaty  Many thanks to you all.

£8k that's a BIG ouch! and a total no-go.

There is no 5G coverage, so this may not be a goer ether.

I'll take a look into the Starlink option. It looks very interesting and from their website's coverage map the whole of England is covered. The costs are also quite decent.

Cheers

[TimmyBGood]

@THX1138 

£8K might be cheap for FTTPoD: tens or even hundreds of thousands is entirely possible.  The point of that option is it commissions the provision of a full fibre connection to a location that is not on the commercial rollout roadmap, and the customer pays all the ECCs above the £2800 that Openreach is prepared to cover.  Not surprisingly this is rarely viable for anything other than a handful of businesses prepared to invest in making such a location work for them, and the combination of low uptake and delayed delivery means it's been suggested that FTTPoD may well cease to be available at all.

[THX1138]

Many thanks again to everyone. @TimmyBGood @Skull+Treaty @Highlinder @cookiemonsteruk 

Sorry it’s off topic from ‘Sky’ but looking deeper into the Starlink option is very interesting.

Yes, there is the initial outlay for the equipment at around £600 + installation, with a service fee of £80 per month for the basic service, I know is considerably more than an FTTP setup and monthly fee, but getting up to 250Mbps download from Starlink is a darn site more liveable than a stone age 20Mbps over FTTC that can be prone to frequent drop outs as well as the DLM Profile resetting dance.

I would also assume that the Starlink connection should be as stable as an FTTP connection (apart from maybe adverse weather sometimes affecting the downlink – like a Sky dish can suffer in heavy snow)

For rural locations that don’t have a hope in hell of getting FTTP anytime within this decade, Starlink could be a godsend.

It will need a lot further investigation before placing an order, but it sounds encouraging.

[TimmyBGood]

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@THX1138 wrote:

I would also assume that the Starlink connection should be as stable as an FTTP connection (apart from maybe adverse weather sometimes affecting the downlink – like a Sky dish can suffer in heavy snow)

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Satellite television can be affected by falling snow: with Starlink it's when that settles.  Oh, and cats...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/outdoor-cats-are-using-500-starlink-satellite-dishes-as-se... 

[Highlinder]

@TimmyBGoodYou can also roof mount the dish, does not have to be on the ground.