Thanks all for making me depressed with the trillion + Mbps download speeds that everyone else gets. A carrier pigeon could give me better speed than I currently get.
It’s all my fault. It’s what I get for deciding to live in a small,friendly village in a beautiful part of the country. I’m just grateful that we have electricity (but no gas) and proper roads.
Exactly come and move into my noisy flat with the neighbour from hell upstairs and you get really quick broadband , water flooding through the ceiling everytime they have a bath and loud goth music from 3pm -1am and they throw cigarette ends out the windows which have set fire to my curtain twice now. Bet you are tempted 
I wish mine was a lot better than it is.
I have applied for fibre with the NBN and my application is pending because this dopey government wants to go to fibre to the node (FTTC) rather than the previous government’s fibre to the home (FTTP). On my side is the fact that the cabinets that have been installed are too small for fibre to the node.
It is all the fault of that monster Murdoch protecting his TV interests.
At the end of the day, I will just have to put up with slow speed. I’m not interested in streaming videos etc… and it’s just about fast enough to watch iPlayer. At least TV and phone coverage is very good.
This is a nice place to live, but over the years everything has closed - school, pub, shop, garage etc) as people have moved and resources are directed at the bigger towns. It then becomes more important to have a reliable internet for online banking, shopping, keeping in touch with family etc…
According to SKY - my provider - the local BT Exchange is at fault Grumblewagon.
I’m getting 10.67mbps at the moment - a bit down on what I normally get again but SKY checked everything and said I should be getting around 16mbps but the the old BT Exchange up the road isn’t up to it.
Some time ago BT themselves told me exactly the same thing but the annoying thing is now they’ve set up a high-speed internet “box” at the bottom of our road, right next to where our 'phone & Broadband is connected but ours isn’t getting updated.
Strange thing is a neighbour up the road is a BT Customer but he’s still on the same box as we are.
Perhaps they’ve upgraded him at the exchange, which is at the top of our street?
It all seems so unfair that no matter who your provider is, you’re still stuck with ancient BT Exchanges that they won’t update unless there’s something in it for them.
The new high-speed do-dah’s for the new houses across the road from me, so I assume BT thinks they’re all going to be potential BT Customers.stevmk2
''All ‘’ 
not sure if you read my post George … 
http://www.over50sforum.com/showthread.php?p=402594#post402594
…mine is hardly fast and I have trouble watching I player.
I don’t download videos or films and just want a reasonable speed.
Because I live in a small hamlet in the field I doubt we will ever achieve a good speed here, BT will not see us as a priority.
One of the comparison sites has a map which shows the ISP in an area and the speeds achieved, I can see all my neighbours have a similar speed to myself.
Still depends how near you are to your local exchange.
I think you’re stuck with the bad speeds George, unless they come up with some new way of speeding them up in areas like yours. I see the satellite broadband speeds can get up to 20mbps. but it’s more expensive. I won’t boast about the great fibre cable speeds we have here in the city since the cables went in two years ago.
Meg, I dream of getting your mega super fast 2.5 Mbps. I go out and make a sacrifice to the great internet god if I get half of that! I might as well have dial up - that’s how bad it is.
I know what high speed is like - I used to live in an area with cable.
I know what high speed is like - I used to live in an area with cable.
I can imagine how frustrating that must be George.
My mate uses his mobile phone for his internet now. As far as I know he plugs his comp or laptop into it. Apparently you can get damn good unlimited deals and fast speeds too. Might be worth a shot if you can get a good signal. Try and borrow a good mobile phone to try?
I have a few friends who use this too but it is only if you have a 4G connection when you should get about 25+Mbps up and 30+Mbps down but like all these things it depends on congestion and it costs a lot more than ADSL or fibre too
I was wondering about costs as he is very short of dosh at the best of times. Will enquire how much he pays. I do remember him telling me how much at one time and I was a bit taken aback as to how little it was compared to how much I thought it would be. Maybe he has found a damn good deal somewhere - will ask.
To answer the original question, yes speeds are dependent on quality of the cable and the distance you are from the exchange. If BT (or Virginmedia for that matter) decide to convert 100% of the country to fibre optic cabling it will improve somewhat but as far as I’m aware they have no plans to do that.
I think it depends on the line, but also the ISP.
We used to have Virgin, to begin with it was great, then went downhill. We changed to SKY and for years it has been brilliant (much better than virgin - both through the telephone line) however, this last year it has been getting rubbish… I think it’s because fibre has just been released here and they want us to upgrade! 
I have just been told by a neighbour that the reason our broadband connection is so poor is because there is a fault under the road outside the village hall.
Because there is only one small lane into our hamlet, if BT dug up the road we wouldn’t be able to get to our houses, (there are 19 houses in all) so they are reluctant to do anything about the fault.
I wish they would consult us, I would be happy to park down the road for a few days and walk across planks though I understand some people may be concerned about our being inaccessible to the emergency services .
just did a check out of all the internet providers and the highest download speed even with fibre is 67 download. That is disgusting , at the moment all I get is about 34 down and 6 up which is even worse. just not worth even considering changing comp[anies
Well I’m with Vodaphone and for this time of night (9:11pm) my readings are:
Download - 11.35
Upload - 10.72
I tested it with https://www.speedtest.net/
I have no idea if this is good or not 
Virgin Media
386 mbps download
35 mbps upload
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