Alternative broadband supplier questions

[ProDave]

We have BT wired copper ADSL broadband at a staggering 3 MBPS connection speed.  We also have a BT landline rarely used but nice to have mainly for incoming calls.  Although slow, baring faults it has worked well.  But daughters boyfriend has moved in, he is a computer game junkie and now his XBOX seems to be almost continuously downloading stuff leaving the rest of us with little or sometimes nothing.  I have been tasked with pricing an alternative on the basis the BF will be expected to pay the additional costs.

 

Now there is an alternative (only one) that is a local company that provides broadband via a wireless service.  It is basically a series of point to point services, with some houses hosting a relay station.  The system is already installed in this locality and we have the required line of sight to the nearest dish in a nearby neighbours garden.

 

This wireless service offers broadband speed of up to 50MBPS.  I will be questioning them (and neighbours that are already using this service) to see what real world speeds are actually like.  And it will cost about £10 pm more than BT (when you include a VOIP landline as we would completely dump BT of we choose this)

 

I have resisted switching to this service as in a way, I wish they were not there.  By offering this private network in my mind they have let BT / Open reach off the hook for providing a decent service and investing in the network.  We know there is fibre at the top of the road and it would not be difficult to for them to provide a fibre cabinet at the top of the road and provide FTTC service to all the houses in this road, but with only a few of us left using BT now, that is unlikely to happen.  

 

But part of my concern is if we upgrade to this and say get 40 MBPS how do I know this infernal XBOX won't just carry on it's never ending download at that speed and still leave little for the rest of us?

 

Obviously I have technical questions to ask of the provider like can their router throttle the speed to one particular device?

 

Thoughts please from anyone that has uses a non BT / OR private wireless broadband provider?

[dpmiller]

what 4g options do you have?

[ProDave]

5 minutes ago, dpmiller said:

what 4g options do you have?

None, or at least nothing useful.  2G from O2 and Vodaphone and weak / slow 4G  from EE but even if they gave a decent signal with decent speed there is no sensible unlimited data package from them.

[Wumpus]

You could look at Starlink. 200mbit/s but it’s pricey.

[pilgrim]

Have a look at Onestream, https://onestream.co.uk/ (if they operate in your area) I switched to them and they organised an open reach engineer to upgrade the existing copper connection at the fibre box so we have almost fibre speeds at the house over the old copper wire. Average around 60Mbps

I dont understand how this black magic works but BT insisted it couldn't be upgraded without paying them a lot of money yet Onestream sorted it all out at a cheap price!

[Temp]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

But part of my concern is if we upgrade to this and say get 40 MBPS how do I know this infernal XBOX won't just carry on it's never ending download at that speed and still leave little for the rest of us?

 

Some Routers have the ability to limit the bandwidth each device gets. The way they do this probably varies. On some I believe you can just set a hard limit like 10MBit or 20MBit so no device uses more than half of the available 40Mbit bandwidth. However I don't know what current BT modem/Routers can do. I found one comment from 2019 that said they have a QoS (Quality of Service) setting which is meant to do something like this but it said it still allows some streaming services like Netflix to have too much priority over other devices.

 

 

 

[ProDave]

2 minutes ago, pilgrim said:

Have a look at Onestream, https://onestream.co.uk/ (if they operate in your area)

No fibre available here.  I have logged my details with them to notify me if it becomes available.

 

This is why I am reluctant to sign up with this private company, we keep getting told by politicians that every home will have super fast broadband available.

[ProDave]

1 minute ago, Temp said:

Some Routers have the ability to limit the bandwidth each device gets.

Can;t find anything on our standard BT home hub 4

[Temp]

Some WiFi access points can also do bandwidth limiting so how does the xbox connect? Probably wired connection?

[Adsibob]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

how do I know this infernal XBOX won't just carry on it's never ending download at that speed and still leave little for the rest of us?

With a decent router, you should be able to limit how much bandwidth is used by the Xbox. Pretty sure ubiquiti’s dream router does this. It was selling for about £170 on their EU store recently. I’ve been very impressed by how much better it is than the so called Virgin Superhub.

 When comparing ISPs make sure you look at latency and upload speeds as well as download.

[ProDave]

the xbox is connected via wifi.  the router reports it's connection speed as 130MBPS which is no doubt the theoretical data speed between the xbox and the router.  I have not found an option anywhere to limit speed anywhere let alone to limit speed just to one specific device.

[Bozza]

(pro) Dave, you said ruled out 4g due to weak EE signal & cost.  Have you considered / tested an external antenna for a 4g router, it took me from 1/2 bars signal to 4 bars.  And you can get an unlimited EE sim for £37 pm, but £75 cashback via TCB.    Like you we have crappy antique BT line here and no fibre etc, so we didn’t get any landline into the new build. Just use the 4g which does everything we need really well.   All the Sat broadband options I found were rubbish & expensive.  £37 pm a lot but had no other options.

 

 

 

 

[Temp]

If you Google for Bandwidth limiting with BT you can find several posts saying it's not possible with BT Routers. Many replies recommend switching to a TP Link Router but point out you loose BT support (and possibly support for BT WiFi range extenders?).

[Temp]

If it had been a wired connection it might have been possible to insert a 10MBit hub in the path. They still seem to exist surprisingly.

[Temp]

Apparently an xbox uses all the bandwidth it can get when doing game updates, and much less during actual game play. So one option that might help would be to turn off game updates on the xbox. Tell him he can turn updates on when you are out?

 

https://youtu.be/tRdEExYnEok

 

[Adsibob]

45 minutes ago, Temp said:

Apparently an xbox uses all the bandwidth it can get when doing game updates, and much less during actual game play. So one option that might help would be to turn off game updates on the xbox. Tell him he can turn updates on when you are out?

 

https://youtu.be/tRdEExYnEok

 

Or just get some ubiquiti kit and decide how much bandwidth he gets and when.

[Gone West]

10 hours ago, ProDave said:

Thoughts please from anyone that has uses a non BT / OR private wireless broadband provider?

At our last place we used a private company supplying a WiMAX service as we didn't want crappy BT. The speed was around 20mbps compared to the BT 3mbps. We didn't have any problems during the three plus years we used it.

[Susie]

We live in a big long stone converted barn, we have good BT but bad Wi-Fi so we have quite a few TP link Deco boosters from one end of the barn to the other and down to the cellar and to the out buildings. What we can do with these is decide which devices get the priority, so would automatically compensate for when Xbox user is in on their own or your in wanting priority. They are expensive but solved our problems. Very easy to set up. You do need a router as well and if it has Wi-Fi it’s best to switch that off. 

[ProDave]

Yes it is sounding like the Xbox would just use up the 40MBPS or whatever so the faster BB would not "solve" the issue.  It would probably just mean he could download more games.

[joe90]

9 hours ago, Bozza said:

external antenna for a 4g router, it took me from 1/2 bars signal to 4 bars.  

@Bozzacan you point me at what you bought, my mobile signal is rubbish and i use a hotspot from my mobile for my iPad .

[Simplysimon]

10 hours ago, Bozza said:

(pro) Dave, you said ruled out 4g due to weak EE signal & cost.  Have you considered / tested an external antenna for a 4g router, it took me from 1/2 bars signal to 4 bars.  And you can get an unlimited EE sim for £37 pm, but £75 cashback via TCB.    Like you we have crappy antique BT line here and no fibre etc, so we didn’t get any landline into the new build. Just use the 4g which does everything we need really well.   All the Sat broadband options I found were rubbish & expensive.  £37 pm a lot but had no other options.

 

 

 

 

the other thing with the EE unlimited sim is you can gift data to another EE sim

[SteamyTea]

21 minutes ago, Simplysimon said:

the other thing with the EE unlimited sim is you can gift data to another EE sim

Gift it to mine

[Kelvin]

Are these games he already has and they are being updated? If so then you can manage this. Within settings untick the box that says keep games and apps automatically updated.  He’ll be notified there’s an update pending and you tell him to do the updates over night. 
 

In terms of faster options. Your WISP option (Wireless Internet Service Provider) is a good option and your best available at an affordable price. I’d upgrade to this anyway. 
 

We have a similarly crap BT service so tried all the options. WISP is available in our area but trying to get the company that does it to ever come out was impossible so canned that. One of their excuses was a sheep ate through a cable 😂 I also tried LTE via EE. This improved things but video calls were a bit hit and miss. I used an external antenna which made some difference. Ironically the EE mast is at the end of the long drive but we sit down in a gully so the signal isn’t the best. Finally we went for Starlink. It solved our problem. It’s a great service but it’s expensive. £589 for the equipment and £89 per month. For that you get no data cap and and speeds of 150Mbps download and 20Mbps upload. I’ve seen as high as 260Mbps download. Starlink’s latency is typically in the mid 30s but sometimes worse than this. Not ideal for online gaming but still useable. 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Kelvin

[kommando]

12 hours ago, ProDave said:

Thoughts please from anyone that has uses a non BT / OR private wireless broadband provider?

I can only give my route to getting a good service, it may or may not work for you.

 

1. ADSL via string, 8mbs when dry, nothing when wet and always expecting issues.

 

2. Stage 1 upgrade, got a dual WAN Draytek 2925 (obsolete due to firewall speed limitation of 300mbs so who cares) for £70 off ebay. This allows you to connect to 2 services and load balance the 2. To a user you do not notice unless you are downloading a a single string file which is very rare today. The 2925 will also allow you to add a phone hotspot as a 3rd WAN.

 

3. Used the 2925 to line balance the ADSL with 3G hotspot giving some 25mbs.

 

3. Got a local wireless connection of 25mbs and line balanced it with the ADSL to give 33mbs. The local wireless provider was not really interested once they got you signed up, every time they added a new user the bands clashed so my 25mbs became 10mbs until I rang them. This became a fortnightly call so dropped them for solution 4.

 

4. To replace the Wifi I got a 4G router with directional antenna and line balanced it with the ADSL, total 60mbs. Signed up with Sipgate and tested the service with a new local number. Once the test showed it could work I then ported my old landline number to Sipgate and this automatically ceased the landline and ADSL.

 

5. Got a second 4G router with antenna pointed at a different mast and line balanced both 4G's for 120mbs. If one mast goes down the other takes the full load.

 

6. Fibre is due in next 3 to 4 months, one 4G contract lasts until Sept next year, so will drop one and keep the second as a backup to the fibre and then drop that leaving Fibre as sole link but can always use a phone hotspot if needed. 

[ProDave]

Nothing yet has given me good reason to switch, I just fear the bloody x box would still suck up all the bandwidth.

 

I wish there was a published schedule of when / if BT/OR are going to provide a fibre service here.  If that was soon, I would wait, if that was never, I would switch.  Not knowing is not helping the decision.