Broadband

[Smokin Joe]

I'm just outside Armagh, the last house on the BT exchance and I can only get 8MB d/l speed from BT.

After being on the waiting list for a year my Starlink beta came today.
I'm getting d/l speeds of between 50MB and 160MB and u/l of 24 MB.
Happy with that.

What sort of cost was it Joe?

It's expensive. Something like £450 for the kit and £89 per month.  It's not targetted as a replacement for those in urban areas that have good internet.

[Smokin Joe]

I'm just outside Armagh, the last house on the BT exchance and I can only get 8MB d/l speed from BT.

After being on the waiting list for a year my Starlink beta came today.
I'm getting d/l speeds of between 50MB and 160MB and u/l of 24 MB.
Happy with that.

Any issues with latency, on conference calls and the likes?

I haven't used it for calls, but the ping is pretty good at 30ms (it's low orbit satellite) so I'm assuming it should be OK.

[Taylor]

I'm just outside Armagh, the last house on the BT exchance and I can only get 8MB d/l speed from BT.

After being on the waiting list for a year my Starlink beta came today.
I'm getting d/l speeds of between 50MB and 160MB and u/l of 24 MB.
Happy with that.

What sort of cost was it Joe?

It's expensive. Something like £450 for the kit and £89 per month.  It's not targetted as a replacement for those in urban areas that have good internet.

Ah ok - does it give you internet as good as fibre?
Gaming etc ok for it?

[Smokin Joe]

I'm just outside Armagh, the last house on the BT exchance and I can only get 8MB d/l speed from BT.

After being on the waiting list for a year my Starlink beta came today.
I'm getting d/l speeds of between 50MB and 160MB and u/l of 24 MB.
Happy with that.

What sort of cost was it Joe?

It's expensive. Something like £450 for the kit and £89 per month.  It's not targetted as a replacement for those in urban areas that have good internet.

Ah ok - does it give you internet as good as fibre?
Gaming etc ok for it?

Never had fibre, so dunno.  If I had fibre I wouldn't be spending this money on low orbit satellite.
Son was gaming last night and was good.  At 30 ping and d/l of > 60mb and u/l of 20mb I assume it's got to be good for gaming.

[Taylor]

I'm just outside Armagh, the last house on the BT exchance and I can only get 8MB d/l speed from BT.

After being on the waiting list for a year my Starlink beta came today.
I'm getting d/l speeds of between 50MB and 160MB and u/l of 24 MB.
Happy with that.

What sort of cost was it Joe?

It's expensive. Something like £450 for the kit and £89 per month.  It's not targetted as a replacement for those in urban areas that have good internet.

Ah ok - does it give you internet as good as fibre?
Gaming etc ok for it?

Never had fibre, so dunno.  If I had fibre I wouldn't be spending this money on low orbit satellite.
Son was gaming last night and was good.  At 30 ping and d/l of > 60mb and u/l of 20mb I assume it's got to be good for gaming.

Thought perhaps you had it in a previous house.

Those numbers are pretty decent and I assume it is unlimited?

The way things are going I can see other broadband providers upping their costs and using various excuses to justify it

[Main Street]

I switch after every 18mth contract is up, I've found no difference in any of them tbh for speeds of up to 34mbs in Armagh area (had Sky). As can be read above I moved to Virgin with alleged speeds of up to100mbs - found there was very little improvement tbh, but on the advice of tommygunn I invested in a Mesh Network and the difference is very noticeable, feels like 100mbs now.

Sky are 100%

Isn't it so that the Mesh network just distributes your bandwidth better around your property, it doesn't increase the bandwidth that arrives from your provider?

[rosnarun]

I switch after every 18mth contract is up, I've found no difference in any of them tbh for speeds of up to 34mbs in Armagh area (had Sky). As can be read above I moved to Virgin with alleged speeds of up to100mbs - found there was very little improvement tbh, but on the advice of tommygunn I invested in a Mesh Network and the difference is very noticeable, feels like 100mbs now.

Sky are 100%

Isn't it so that the Mesh network just distributes your bandwidth better around your property, it doesn't increase the bandwidth that arrives from your provider?

yeah the basic idea is the signal hops off the nearest Mesh repeater device rather tha go back to the original Router (access point ) each timebt whole home worked great for me , where as a more expensive orbi with a higher spec  is a lot slower. must be something im doing

[lfdown2]

I am in the final throes of a new build, during which I installed CAT6 cabling throughout the house - do I plug a router into each socket where I wish to have wifi (obviously I can use the hard connection in certain circumstances)...I hadn't thought that far ahead.

[WeeDonns]

Has anyone any experience of Fibrus yet? They are due to upgrade my area shortly. I'm joining a Hyperfast NI update event via teams this evening, anything I should look out for? Currently I have approx 17mbps download speed and 1mbps upload.

I've signed up, not installed yet - £24.99 for 300MB is better than I'm currently paying for 17MB
Have a site visit from them on Sunday morning

On thre topic of Wi-Fi boosters - I see they can provide one for £5per month! I don't know why you'd pay that rather than just buy one

[WeeDonns]

I am in the final throes of a new build, during which I installed CAT6 cabling throughout the house - do I plug a router into each socket where I wish to have wifi (obviously I can use the hard connection in certain circumstances)...I hadn't thought that far ahead.

If I were doing it, I'd only have CAT6 going from Smart TVs back to the router & then maybe a Network Hard drive back at the router so you can access media on it from all the TVs.
Building a nice new tidy house, and then having WI-FI extenders plugged into power sockets, patched into CAT6 points doesn't make sense to me. I'd use sockets with built in WI-FI extenders
Any other smart devices you're likely to have will have built in WI-FI and have no advantage of being connected to ethernet

EDIT: exception being gaming computers - so 1 CAT6 for the computer & 1 for the Smart TV

[Harold Disgracey]

Has anyone any experience of Fibrus yet? They are due to upgrade my area shortly. I'm joining a Hyperfast NI update event via teams this evening, anything I should look out for? Currently I have approx 17mbps download speed and 1mbps upload.

I've signed up, not installed yet - £24.99 for 300MB is better than I'm currently paying for 17MB
Have a site visit from them on Sunday morning

On thre topic of Wi-Fi boosters - I see they can provide one for £5per month! I don't know why you'd pay that rather than just buy one

I've signed up for 300MB with Fibrus as well, paying double what you're paying as I'm well out in the sticks unfortunately. Had a site visit this morning and waiting on an installation date. I bought my own Wi-Fi boosters.

[rosnarun]

would you think the same regarding  Mesh

[johnnycool]

I am in the final throes of a new build, during which I installed CAT6 cabling throughout the house - do I plug a router into each socket where I wish to have wifi (obviously I can use the hard connection in certain circumstances)...I hadn't thought that far ahead.

If I were doing it, I'd only have CAT6 going from Smart TVs back to the router & then maybe a Network Hard drive back at the router so you can access media on it from all the TVs.
Building a nice new tidy house, and then having WI-FI extenders plugged into power sockets, patched into CAT6 points doesn't make sense to me. I'd use sockets with built in WI-FI extenders
Any other smart devices you're likely to have will have built in WI-FI and have no advantage of being connected to ethernet

EDIT: exception being gaming computers - so 1 CAT6 for the computer & 1 for the Smart TV

I ran CAT 6 to every TV point  where I was always going to put a desk for the kids homework but is now my office now that I'm WFH.

It mightn't be a bad idea to leave some CAT 6 into the ceilings as you may need to include WIFI extenders, proper ones in the ceiling anyway for mobile phones, tablets etc etc

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ubiquiti-UniFi-Lite-Access-Point/dp/B08T6CKG5B/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3M36JZEQHFV5X&keywords=ubiquiti+access+points&qid=1649328342&sprefix=ubi%2Caps%2C268&sr=8-3

Link everything back to the one spot where the phone line/fibre is going to come in and make sure you've a few power points.
Mines was under the stairs, so out of sight most of the time.

I wish I'd run a CAT 6 into the attic as our BB is dung and would have liked to put an 4G antenna outside on the Gable wall to help with that.

[LeoMc]

I am in the final throes of a new build, during which I installed CAT6 cabling throughout the house - do I plug a router into each socket where I wish to have wifi (obviously I can use the hard connection in certain circumstances)...I hadn't thought that far ahead.

If I were doing it, I'd only have CAT6 going from Smart TVs back to the router & then maybe a Network Hard drive back at the router so you can access media on it from all the TVs.
Building a nice new tidy house, and then having WI-FI extenders plugged into power sockets, patched into CAT6 points doesn't make sense to me. I'd use sockets with built in WI-FI extenders
Any other smart devices you're likely to have will have built in WI-FI and have no advantage of being connected to ethernet

EDIT: exception being gaming computers - so 1 CAT6 for the computer & 1 for the Smart TV

Depending on how much steel and concrete is in your house you may find you need a few wifi extenders. Look at the wall or ceiling mounted POE extenders. No visible wires and no need for a power socket.

[giveherlong]

Has anyone any experience of Fibrus yet? They are due to upgrade my area shortly. I'm joining a Hyperfast NI update event via teams this evening, anything I should look out for? Currently I have approx 17mbps download speed and 1mbps upload.

I've signed up, not installed yet - £24.99 for 300MB is better than I'm currently paying for 17MB
Have a site visit from them on Sunday morning

On thre topic of Wi-Fi boosters - I see they can provide one for £5per month! I don't know why you'd pay that rather than just buy one

Anyone move to Fibrus lately? Is their pricing still similar to the above?