Broadband Scotland’s r100 voucher scheme??

[Barryscotland]

Has anybody used this scheme to help with there broadband connections?
 

We’ve been quoted a scary £330 by open reach just to do a survey after which they will give us a price to get a line to us. The r100 voucher scheme says it will provide help to get broadband to places there’s none but I can’t understand from there website how to go about applying.

[JohnMo]

We got BT to tell us the speed we would get before committing, 6Mb was all they could offer.

 

There is broadband supplied by radio towers, by line of sight, which a friend has, super fast (WiFi Scotland). Or 4g router.  We did 4g router.

[ProDave]

Do you have an ordinary landline?

 

We have slow BT copper broadband here, 3MBPS on a good day.  We had the chance of signing up with a local private wireless broadband scheme a few years ago where I believe for a limited time we could use a similar voucher to pay the install costs, but we declined as the monthly cost would be more than the BT broadband and would not include a landline so you would have to mess with VOIP to replicate a landline with a landline number.  That voucher to pay for the install was only available for people that signed up at the start.

[Barryscotland]

1 minute ago, ProDave said:

Do you have an ordinary landline?

no landline yet, that’s what openreach want £330 to do a survey for before they quote to put in a line.

 

we are using a 4g router in the caravan we are living in just now and will probably just end up using this in the house as well but if there was a grant available to put in a landline we would go for that.

[ProDave]

14 minutes ago, Barryscotland said:

no landline yet, that’s what openreach want £330 to do a survey for before they quote to put in a line.

Has something changed?

 

It used to be an OR survey was free and any work up to £3000 for a new line was included in the very cheap "new connection" fee.

 

Or is it so obvious yo are so far from the infrastructure it would be way over the £3K cost?

[Barryscotland]

We’ve built in a residential street but told that as the cables are under ground it would involve a survey, if we had a pole within a certain meter age it would be free 

 

[saveasteading]

I only know about SE England on this but it is still Openreach so probably the same applies.

There were all the statements about 98%, or whatever, of the nation getting broadband. That 2% includes everyone in a small village or below.

Then there were the £3k grants, but that covered about 10m of fibre, and it needed an awful lot of neighbours to combine to anything useful.

 

That is, unless your area is getting lots of new housing, in which case they will get broadband and maybe, just maybe, it can be latched onto.

Copper connections can get you 40MBPS IF there is fibre to a box nearby.

 

Otherwise it is likely to be 4G

 

I have heard many stories of Openreach salespeople offering high speeds which are far from available, so the moral is to sign nothing until clarified.

 

In my village we got broadband by commissioning a small company. They used radio signals between church towers*, then linked to the existing boxes, and copper after that. Cost £50k about 15 years ago, but was a massive improvement , and nobody can compete yet, unless in new housing with fibre.

* they intended to take a poorish but decent signal up to the tower then beam it to the countryside areas, but when up there realised they could see 4 other churches, and changed their plan to 'import' signal tower to tower.

 

[ProDave]

Try a different approach.  Just apply to BT for a "new line" and see what they say.

 

Our cables are underground and that did not stop OR doing a survey for free, so I ask again "what has changed over the last few years?"