Desperate time calls for desperate measures.

As some of you may know we had an incident up the road from me which involved a large tree and a telephone pole.

needless to say the tree won that battle and that win took out our telephone / broadband line.

We don’t have the best internet speed anyway, but not having it at all was quite a inconvenience, more so now than ever with COVID-19 and being encouraged to work from home.

I share with you below just how dire our broadband is, according to ISP Andrew’s and Arnold we are approx. 2186m from the green box at the top of Smithy Lane.

this is our price to pay for that distance.

As you can see not great... Just imagine when a new update comes out for a game my son wants to download!!

16th September was the date the internet went down and having to put up with complaints from all angles I decided to try a mobile broadband solution.

Looking online, I found that Three were doing an offer. Unlimited data, calls and texts for £18 per month for 12 months with £60 cashback via Quidco

I know from being a Three mobile customer that I get a good 4G signal inside my home as well as out. So for me this SIM was a no brainer given the unlimited data. EE I have found good, but they do not offer unlimited data sims at this time.

A SIM alone is not enough, I also need something to pop the sim into for it to work. I tried a Netgear LB2120 from Amazon but found that it was not able to cope with the demand of the household and kept dropping out. This was promptly sent back for a refund.

Some more research brought me to the Teltonika RUT950 from Amazon, this is a little more enterprise grade but also looked like it could take a beating.

Sim card installed and away we go. After trying the device in a few locations around the house and getting ok speeds, I decided my last hope to increase my speeds was to attempt the loft space. Remember, we live in a dip, surrounded by hills on all sides. This makes our loft high, but perhaps not as high as some of the other properties around me.

Bingo! After some speed tests, I can now confirm I am getting speeds well in excess of what BT can provide me.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not as good as perhaps some of you reading this may be getting in the villages, but I’m sure you can appreciate just what a life changing situation this is for me and my family.

I will of course continue to drive the Openreach Community Fibre Partnership with our villages. I offer this only as a possible solution to those who may be suffering the same poor service and speeds I am via traditional copper cabling.

1000Mbps via fibre would be another level of speed for us regardless of what you are receiving now.

Today, 7th October Openreach reconnected the line and we have broadband and phone once more, I think however, I'm going to stick with my mobile solution and have the BT slow band as a backup.

If you have any questions, please get in touch. I am more than happy to discuss with you my set up.