Rural broadband, options?

Wildcard7

Hi,

I'm working from my home office, using a VPN connection to another country and working on a Citrix-Server. For that I require a reliable connection with a low enough (<50ms) latency. I live in rural Wicklow (Ashford area).

I currently have 2 lines:
a) Wicklow Broadband line of sight connection. I am/was quite happy with that, but the problem is that the Signal for the antenna has to cross a neighbours property and a street, before having clear line of sight over a valley up to the antenna on a nearby hill. The neighbour is growing quite a few trees in his garden, and with them growing the signal is getting more and more unreliable, especially on rainy days.
b) A DSL (phone line) connection through Sky. This is reliable enough, latency generally below 40ms, but there's not much bandwidth (3.5MB/s down, officially it should be 5).

I'm currently working on the DSL line and using the Wicklow Broadband as backup and for my private computers. But with Wicklow Broadband going out I'll need another backup line (if I'm needed in the office at a certain time I can't afford not being able to connect). For a while I tried with a 3G router (provider: 3), but that didn't work well at all. The quality, both in terms of bandwidth and latency, varied wildly all the time.

I know satellite internet would be an option, but from what I read about it the latency there would make it impossible to work.

Fiber will most likely not be available here for a while.

Is there any other option I haven't considered yet?

Thanks!

ED E

The VDSL exchange AFD1 is active already but if on paper you've a 5Mb line we can assume you're about 3600m from there thus out of range.



The good news is FTTH, are you outside the reach of these yellow tendrils? Obviously if you can avail of that it would be by far the most ideal.

Wicklow Ashford Q3'17 260

If so, not THAT far off. If not, 2019.

In the meantime:
A) Are we to assume neighbor wont help out?
A fixed LTE install either with Imagine or Three are likely the best options. Imagine have a 20GB/Day cap but may be slightly less prone to jitter. Three unlimited for ?20/28 days is a great deal especially if your local cell isnt overloaded.

Johnboy1951

a) Wicklow Broadband line of sight connection. I am/was quite happy with that, but the problem is that the Signal for the antenna has to cross a neighbours property and a street, before having clear line of sight over a valley up to the antenna on a nearby hill. The neighbour is growing quite a few trees in his garden, and with them growing the signal is getting more and more unreliable, especially on rainy days.

Do you have an option of raising the antenna higher to clear the trees?

Wildcard7

Thanks for the replies.

Regarding the VDSL exchange: I'm <2500m from the village centre (that's distance on the road, not line of sight). Does that mean I should be able to get VDSL? Would it be worth to ring up sky or eir to get someone out to measure that?

FTTH: I'm outside the yellow tendrils, if only by about 200m. That means I should/could/might get FTTH by 2019? That would still be relatively good news.

Fixed LTE installation: Do you expect the quality to be a lot better than with just a router (I had a Huawei B593 with extra screw on antennas)? I'd hate to pay for a fixed installation only to find out that the troubles from before still exist. I have no idea if the "local cell is overloaded", but I assume that the quality varying wildly (seemingly worse at night and in the weekends when more people were around) would point that way...

Neighbour: I haven't talked to them yet, but yer man is an avid gardener and I don't want him to have to move trees because of something that is really not his problem. We're on a nice "occasional small talk once a week but apart from that we just coexist" basis and I think that suits us all, so I don't want to create an awkward situation where I owe him or he thinks I'm angry because he didn't agree to do me that favour. Probably a bit silly I know

Raising the antenna: I don't think that's an option, raising it would probably mean putting it on top of the house, and then there are other things in the way. If there is no other options I'll ask someone from Wicklow Broadband out to assess the situation too.

The Cush

Wildcard7 wrote: »

FTTH: I'm outside the yellow tendrils, if only by about 200m. That means I should/could/might get FTTH by 2019? That would still be relatively good news.

Depends how fast they rollout the NBP after the contracts are awarded - http://www.dccae.gov.ie/en-ie/communications/topics/Broadband/national-broadband-plan/high-speed-broadband-map/Pages/Interactive-Map.aspx

Wildcard7

I'm in an amber area, the houses just up the road (200m out) are light blue though. That's not too bad, I would have thought there's no chance of getting fiber out here for at least another 5-10 years.

ED E

VDSL: The range from the exchange is 1700/2000m so at 2500m by road your line is too long to try.

FTTH: Its a shame you're just outside the existing commercial plan but 200m from a the last drop point is unfortunately too far. The NBP is at tendering at the moment and 2019 for significant works to start and 2022 for completion would be where I'd put my money.

All that means you need to sort out a suitable setup for a few years.

LTE: From a quick scan of Siteviewer the area is very much 2G/3G. A B593 operating on a 40Mb 3G cell is quite a lot less effective than same working on a 150Mb 4G cell. (which can be a stable 20Mb+, 20-30ms)

Imagine(Weird LTE): Dont cover you, massive dead zone in Wicklow (the wonders of a few hills).

Result:
A) Resolve WBB issues, a 1.5m steel pole, two U clamps and a longer antenna cable and you'd likely beat 3yrs worth of foliage growth.
Come to an agreement with a neighbour up the road to share a 300Mb connection later this year (Technically not allowed in the contract but nobody knows nor cares)