Wednesday, 29 September 2010
BANDWIDTH IN THE ALLERTONS
At the September meeting of the Environmental Group, several people expressed concerns about the slow internet connection speeds available in the Allertons especially at cetrtain times including Sundays. We are seeking to establish whether others in our villages have serious concerns about this. Please comment (by clicking on comments below) and let us know how this issue is affecting you.
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We have two telephone lines in our house in Chapel Allerton. One gets download speeds of around 1MB, the other gets downloads of 3-3.5MB. We are usually able to stream BBC iPlayer without pauses or stutters which is my benchmark of adequate speed. Things do get a little clogged up on Sundays but not so much as to make the internet unusable. I run a business from home and have never found the internet speed to be a problem since broadband became available. Having said that, faster speeds would be great!
ReplyDeleteOur speed is slow at best, and at worst just doesn't even bring up a page on the internet. We have had visits from BT engineers, paid for new wiring etc but still sometimes such a problem that I subscribe to a dongle for the tmes I can't use BT!
ReplyDeleteI am afraid I don'tunderstand the profile choices so have put anonymous
Penny Piggott
We have a couple of lines and both work from home. I've got normal BT broadband on mine and my husband has business broadband. We both get download speeds of about 2 MG and upload speeeds of about .4 MG. dh uploads and downloads huge files regularly but has no real problems with it and we both use a lot of audio conferencing again with no problems. The only real issues we have had has been with drop out but both times a BT man has come and fixed it somehow. I can stream video fairly well I think but it is not something that I do alot of. However the kids spend loads of time watching BBC iplayer in the evenings and don't complain. They are also using wireless whilst dh and I are both wired. Faster would be great :) but our lines are only rated to 2 MG and that's what we get so unless someone comes and installs fibre optics I can't see how much can change. Also from waht I've read, and from online work contact with a lot of people in rural areas, I think that we actually get quite good speeds given our location as loads of similar communities seem to get a far worse deal.
ReplyDeleteWe don't have a problem with our speeds - we both work from home; I do a fair bit of audio conferencing and Robin uploads and downloads huge files all the time and spends a lot of time in net meetings. The children all seem happy streaming with BBC iplayer and Edward has just spent most of the evening chatting to his friends in a virtual world where they all appear as different kinds of dinosaur :).I find that Radio 4 usually works well so we are all happy. I've done several tests now at different times and always seem to get about 2 MG which seems to be all we can get along our lines anyway. I guess that faster would be better but the only way that I can see this happening is if we can get someone to lay new cables. Some communities have done this - eg Ashby de la launde http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/08/14/nextgenus-uk-commences-rollout-of-100mb-broadband-in-ashby-de-la-launde.html
ReplyDeletebut I think that we'd have to (a) pay and (b) dig our own trenches. Other than that I cannot see any other way - even if the exchange were unbundled I cannot see any private company thinking that it would be worth installing a load of new equipment and laying new lines given the size of the villages. They'd just use the BT equipment and lines which would make no difference to the speed.
Lots of you are very lucky. Do you live in Stone Allerton like I do? My broadband download speed is typically around 470kbs with upload at 170kbs.
ReplyDeleteIt has got worse since Talk Talk took over Tiscali. I can no longer Skype webcam my grandchildren in Australia which is hugely upsetting because my deafness renders the telephone calls useless.
I have given up on iplayer.
Can anyone help? Chris Pike
we are in Stone Allerton (near the school room). Elizabeth says that the iplayer occasionally stops but that it is not really a problem. I've not used skype though. I've just done a test now (as it is peek time) and am getting 1.8 MG. I've also just had a look at iplayer and this is also working fine (certainly not HD but not blurry either - perfectly watchable on a 19 in moniter). Have you got an okay router? These can sometimes cause problems. Also we do have the broadband thingy on our main socket and don't have any other phones plugged in. Also my desktop is not wireless which I think makes things better (although Elizabeth uses the wireless for her laptop). We are with BT though and I did move from Tiscali as I found them useless (but that was up north when we had dial up).
ReplyDeleteSomeone sent me a word document called "how to improve your broadband" - I can send it to you if you'd like it.
Thank you Hayley. Anything is worth a go. Interestingly, we live behind Penny Piggott who seems to be having similar problems to me. ( See second comment above)
ReplyDeleteChris Pike.
Chris - do you and Penny share a physical line at all - maybe there is a specific problem with one of the actual wires coming into the village as I assume that at some point they divide up (ie whilst we will all be sharing (I guess) one big line at one point, it must brach off at various stages. Maybe there is a problem with one branch?).
ReplyDeleteHayley
Hi I am based on Copsewood Lane, and seem to have ridiculous amounts of problems when it comes to broadband speed. We are tied to an unlimited package with Tiscali which means we can use our internet as much as we like, we do pay a premium for this and its very annoying when at certain points in the day the connection slows down, or stops completely. More specifically I am currently studying a degree using distance learning which means I have to submit work via the internet, I have lost pieces of work in the past due to a loss of internet connection.
ReplyDeleteI an unclear whether this is our service providers problem or the actual BT lines. As BT heads towards fibre optic broadband all over the land I think it would be useful if we were to, as a village, as a whole, contact the BT with regards to our problem....Do people think that this is an issue for the parish council?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated..
I'm a tutor for a distance learning degree and find that our connection is fine for downloading assessments and uploading the marked ones (and I've done lots - upto 30 ish - at the same time). Mine are all zipped automatically by the (Open University) software - are yours zipped? You shouldn't lose any work though just from uploading as it should still be saved on your system. It is possible that you could have issues with online tests etc - it depends who you are studying with though (the OU still has students using dial up so is very good at things like ensuring that everything is zipped and/or accessible via a dial up connection).
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know there are no plans for fibre optic everywhere - I thought that the standard idea was that 2/3 of the country would get it and that the rest would not get it for years.
As many in the village do find that their connection is okay it could be that there is a particularly bad individual line somewhere so it may help if any individuals who have problems contact their ISP (internet service provider) and complain. The ISP will then (in theory) contact BT and if BT got lots of requests all on one line then they would send an engineer out to test it.
I live in Copsewood Lane and have had broadband from bt for many years. I undertook a speedcheck earlier this year. It was 0.5 meg per sec. On the particular speedcheck website it allowed you to see the results of other checks in the area which seemed to be between 0.4 and 2.7 mps. I contacted bt who told me several times on several occasions that I would only be able to receive 0.5 max. I got really fed up with discussing it with people who would only repeat parrot fashion the same statement. I even enquired with Sky who told me the max speed would be 0.5.
ReplyDeleteBut as I can be an annoying so and so, I called out the bt engineer anyway. A really nice young man arrived, so my wife says and proceeded to put a new front on our main socket. He replaced the so called latest openreach front panel with a ASDL V10 front panel and told my wife that we should ring bt and have the 0.5 restriction taken off our line.
I spoke to bt, who admitted after several calls that, yes we had a restriction placed on our line to ensure a reasonable connection. I ended up making several more calls and ended up taking out a new contract before I could get them to lift it.
The result was that my broadband speed increased to 1 meg. I was pleased, my speed had
doubled. It's still not fast, but I've spoken to at least one other person in the lane that is still limited to 0.5 meg and advised him to do the same.
My impression of bt is that there will be no improvements unless they see a large profit.
David Callow.
This 0.5 restriction is your line profile (see article in Allerton News) and it really is worth trying to get it changed if it is 0.5 Mg. I have had similar experiences when phoning the various BT "help" lines :( but it is worth persevering and also getting your ISP (person that you pay for your braodband) involved as it can make a big difference if you can get through to the right person.
ReplyDelete