Jon Clarke Posted April 19, 2017 Share Posted April 19, 2017 After years of suffering truly poor broadband in rural Herefordshire, I am about to get an upgrade. The original broadband was of course via a modem on the phone which gave me a download speed of 1.4Kbps. Then adsl came in and I got a 1mbs connection speed and download at 75kbps. Then it was upgraded and got a download speed of 120kbps. Then a repair to a line gave me my current 250kbps. Well the phone exchange has been upgraded to 2017 pecs and BT (British Telecom) have decided that due to my distance from the exchange, and lack of number of houses in my postcode to warrant a cabinet, they have installed a direct link Fibre To The House.... Come Friday evening I will be connected at 300Mbps. I know I won't get the advertised speed but even it drops by 100mbps i will be as happy as a pig in doodoo. No more having to take 5 days to download an AF2 DLC of 100GB, nor all day to download a back up copy of some of the larger Orbx global addons. From the ridiculous (slow) to the sublimely ridiculous ultrafast broadband with the flick of a switch...well almost ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VH-KDK Posted April 19, 2017 Share Posted April 19, 2017 Great news for you and it really sounds as if your part of the planet has finally been dragged into the 21 century. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chumley Posted April 19, 2017 Share Posted April 19, 2017 You should be glad you don't live in the land of opportunity (Australia). Here you can have a choice between a second grade broadband or a second grade broadband link and have download speeds that are nearly as good as the old ADSL. For that you will pay more and be given no alternative but to transfer when they shut down the old network. Oh joy. I can hardly wait until they knock on my door with the good news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deepstar Posted April 19, 2017 Share Posted April 19, 2017 Hi I have a fibre connection 300 Mbps and I am downloading 39 MB/s with FTXC3. It is superfast. No need to download .zip anymore. Just tick Use multiple threads for downloads and away you go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iain Emms Posted April 19, 2017 Share Posted April 19, 2017 Knocks my 75Mbps into a tin hat that does. But im very happy with what I have good luck and enjoy that super speed. cheers Iain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted April 19, 2017 Author Share Posted April 19, 2017 Thanks gents. Yes I am excited because of all the years of suffering but living in a gorgeous location. Extremely rural and quiet but as in most places in tiny UK only 5 miles from nearest town. I bet that my post's "Subject Title" had a few people wondering what the hell good news about sims was coming up on Friday. "P3D 64 bit is released" or something similar !!! Anyway thanks for sharing my good fortune. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimh20 Posted April 19, 2017 Share Posted April 19, 2017 Hi jj, Congratulations! I hope it's your patience which has paid off with BT, for like you, I'm a country boy and with miles of overhead phone lines, and a few hundred yards of armoured cable lying on the surface. Maybe there is hope yet. I'm getting by with a download speed which has crept up to 900kbs/sec at quiet times. Thanks for sharing some good news with us. Cheers, Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sniper31 Posted April 19, 2017 Share Posted April 19, 2017 This will be exciting for you JJ, like Christmas in April...hehe. When you can load webpages lickety split and download large data files in minutes, rather than hours, it is definitely a time to be happy. Excited for you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassman Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 Australia used to have state owned communications that was "best in world" standard where all profit was re-invested in technology then they privatized the system, sold it for a pittance and now with a much reduced re-investment (we have to pay the shareholders) we lag behind some third world nations. Our new National Broadband Network (yes you read correct, Broadband!!!!) is a joke for those that have it and will be a joke for the rest of us. Most of us will have to pay more for what we have already. So I am very envious of you guys in Norway and even you guys in UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted April 20, 2017 Author Share Posted April 20, 2017 Yes for me it's all about download speeds for Sim data files really. Not too bothered about streaming movies etc as I can watch them quite well on TV and record and save for future viewing already via the Sat TV. Bassman: I am very surprised to hear quite a bit about the Broadband scene in Oz considering it is such a "modern" country. Of course the vast majority of people live in the bigger cities so there should be no excuses really in that environment for slow broadband or lack of fibre. For the others who live in that vast country I can possibly understand the lack of investment. I recall an Australian here in the forums was writing in about the problems he was having in downloading some big FTX data files, probably like Vector or the OLCs because it was using up his monthly download allowance of 20 GB on a satellite connection. I suggested in my ignorance that maybe he could could seek to use a mate's PC to download so as not to exceed his limit. He replied that his nearest neighbour was 350 miles away and that he lived on cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere !! Very hard for us Brits to understand distances like that between towns or cities let alone between your "next door neighbour". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnfromoz Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 Good for you, jjaycee! You may have gathered you are lucky not to live in Oz. It happens a tradie is connecting my new National Broadband tomorrow, but I'd bet you'll be better off! I wait with trepidation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted April 20, 2017 Author Share Posted April 20, 2017 Well johnfromoz I feel you are lucky to live in Oz (exception being the broadband situation)!! Big open spaces, nice weather, good beer drinking culture, great sports people etc. Seriously I wish you luck with your upcoming install. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Abdey Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 20 hours ago, jjaycee1 said: After years of suffering truly poor broadband in rural Herefordshire, I am about to get an upgrade. Very nice your online world will be transformed. We, sadly might be going the other way, with a move from the edge of a town, with superfast, to rural Devon, or Cornwall, where depending on location can go as low as 1MB/s. I keep trying to tell myself it doesn't matter, but having superfast has become a part of how we live, so going back to the internet stoneage will prove hard. Anyway, enjoy your speeeeeeeeeeeed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted April 20, 2017 Author Share Posted April 20, 2017 Mark I know what you are saying but rural Devon or Cornwall has got to be a joy. Let's put it this way... I didn't move to a town to get fast fibre, I could have done but that would over prioritise the need for speed versus quality of life, because i just love my locale's peace, views and lifestyle. So I know you are not moving to a beautiful rural location just to get potentially poorer broadband Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Abdey Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 43 minutes ago, jjaycee1 said: Mark I know what you are saying but rural Devon or Cornwall has got to be a joy. It is, and I would never put broadband speed as a reason not to move somewhere. Having good broadband does offer certain freedoms, and the kids (as do we) love iPlayer etc. which we would miss, but there are more important things in life than TV and the PC... and I will keep telling myself that if we move somewhere where sending data by pony would be quicker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benny Posted April 20, 2017 Share Posted April 20, 2017 interesting topic.... I also live in a beautiful rural area, I was stuck with slow satellite internet for 3 years. Oh yea, I also have an LTE cell data internet but with no real data plan. Lately, I have a fair WIFI internet connection, a small company is using the high farmer tower to elaborate a powerful wifi internet for our rural community. 8mb download and 1 upload... plenty for me compare to what I had... Ben Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassman Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 Yes I am very fortunate and lucky to live in Australia; the only downside is this internet debacle which I have to put up with. Once my NBN is in place AND I am forced to change over I can expect a realistic maximum speed of aprox 8MBps (not a typo, only 8 mega bytes per second or 64 mega bits per second) in my suburb which is in the city of Melbourne and is certainly not in a remote area. Also our plans are I believe quite expensive i.e. I pay AUD$95 (USD$71) per month for unlimited downloads. I wonder how this cost compares? There are some cheaper plans but only a few providers service my area and this plan is the cheapest I can get for unlimited. The private company called Telstra, which used to be the state owner, still owns all the internet infrastructure now privately and controls the availability of nodes to the other ISP's and indeed withholds (illegally IMHO) nodes from other ISP's thus preventing true competition and thus I have no other choice but to be with them; also their service is third world, probably because their call centres are based in third world countries. Sorry for this long winded comment but telecommunications in Australia are real bug bear to me; I would be surprised if JV as a fellow Australian does not have an opinion on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted April 21, 2017 Author Share Posted April 21, 2017 Well it's up and running ! Download speed 40MB/s. Not bad since yesterday it was 220Kb/ps. Welcome to 2017 jjaycee1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Cooper Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 You must be delighted. I was a couple of years ago when BT Infinity arrived to boost my connection from 1mbps to 37 mbps. That seems to be about a tenth of your new speed but still 4.5 mbps download is much better than the 50 odd kbps that took me about 168 hours to download NL 2000 Mind you, they have boosted the cost by about the same Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted April 21, 2017 Author Share Posted April 21, 2017 Yes Nick I am delighted, but my bank balance is in for another blasting. More downloads without hesitating as whether or not I want to spend hours downloading ! Just did a backup copy of FTX ENG in 1.37 minutes(3.9GB). My speedtest currently shows 314 Mbps connection. It will probably settle down to a bit less since it's only been running for a couple of hours. Paid for a years line rental in advance which brings the bill down to £32 per.month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VH-KDK Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 On 20/04/2017 at 2:40 PM, Bassman said: Australia used to have state owned communications that was "best in world" standard where all profit was re-invested in technology then they privatized the system, sold it for a pittance and now with a much reduced re-investment (we have to pay the shareholders) we lag behind some third world nations. Our new National Broadband Network (yes you read correct, Broadband!!!!) is a joke for those that have it and will be a joke for the rest of us. Most of us will have to pay more for what we have already. So I am very envious of you guys in Norway and even you guys in UK. All true but we are lucky to be sitting on a sea of gas and getting such cheap energy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmiG Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 I still remember when we were finally able to ditch the 56k modem and switch to 10Mb/s fibre. That must have been close to 15 years ago now. Currently running a 250/100 connection which is honestly more than I really need, but the price difference compared to the lower tier 100/25 was so small that it made no sense to go with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Sawyer Posted April 21, 2017 Share Posted April 21, 2017 Wow! Lightspeed, Ludicrous Speed! LOL! They just dug up my subdivision to put in fiber but they want to jack me up for an extra $85 a month for fiber when all I do is download Orbx stuff and the occasional plane. We never watch movies or TV and don't play online games so is it worth that much more for fiber? It would if I could afford it so I'll live with my turtle slow DSL. Congrats on your new astonishing speed JJ! You should be able to pull down LOWI in just a few seconds now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnfromoz Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 On 20/04/2017 at 4:34 PM, jjaycee1 said: Well johnfromoz I feel you are lucky to live in Oz (exception being the broadband situation)!! Big open spaces, nice weather, good beer drinking culture, great sports people etc. Seriously I wish you luck with your upcoming install. I'm a suburban guy and I like Scotch. I would happily live on Islay! And for general info, my NBN hardware has been installed for a week and is still not working. Fortunately I still have my old ADSL, and for preference would keep it, but as you read above we have no options. Bloody technology gets into everything! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chumley Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 On 4/21/2017 at 10:39 PM, VH-KDK said: All true but we are lucky to be sitting on a sea of gas and getting such cheap energy. More energy generated from shivering from cold than available is this great land. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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