We give up on BT!

Our BB has hovered around 0.5 since dial-up and, though it has ‘worked’ it has been frustrating, tortuous and a huge waste of time.

D Link/TP link range extenders.

We have had one or both of these since Mum moved in and I moved out side to the village hall to write. When 27 arrived we had a stronger one that has more or less kept 27 on-line. More or less. There are issues here with ‘black holes’ – no connection – and haunted sockets – these will work, with the Link, for some years then stop – but still can be used to boil the kettle.

Technical help for this falls between Rob Smith of RKS Electrics Ltd, and Mark Beed of  Black and White Computers  and a telephone/ broadband engineer . The kind of help that is rarely found all in one person – I haven’t found the third – but am lucky with the first two. The lack of the third means there are facts – things don’t work any more but are not broken – and intangible things in the surroundings – ‘Suddenly for no apparent reason…’ that remain unanswered and unresolved.

Have things improved?

Sort of.

When it works, the new 4Gee EE router, works as long as it is near the window I least want it plugged in by. If you move it, at all, then it is only 3Gee.

Do we have BB everywhere?

No.

There is no BB upstairs in the main house or the Dairy Loft – ie both our offices are off-line – and though there is good BB in 27 I had to bring in the TPLink adaptor to the house to get the BB up both staircases; there is now no BB in 27 – other than my phone Hot Spot, which is luke-warm.

What else is being done?

Mark Bede ( B and W) has ordered more TP links so hopefully 27 will be back on line some when over hols and possibly other TP Links will make the house coverage better.

We are about to go over the point of no-return for the EE contract and I had hoped to have a good trial with it all working – this hasn’t been the case and several days were lost to them not sending out the sim card. BT worked badly everywhere; EE works very well, sometimes, somewhere.

When the new adaptors arrive we will have to check that the kit is all on the same house ring-main and I have no idea how that will go given the layout of the very thick stone and brick walls and the limited number of sockets in the house that share a main with everything in the orchard ie 27.

I am pretty confident we will cancel BT and keep EE – warts and all; aside from anything else it means we can have an actual plugged in telephone again as our phone line was so feeble it couldn’t take BB and a phone.

We could also get EE to come and fit an external antenna to improve the 4Gee. I may do this after we have the other stuff in place – and definitely if the other stuff doesn’t work.

Would I recommend doing this?

I didn’t think we had a choice and if you’re in that situation and you can do something – then do it – I already knew that EE 4Gee worked here as my iPhone runs on it – unlike O2 which doesn’t work here ( husband’s contract is with them). Cost wise it is £50 for 500 GB/ month over 18 months. I use a 50 GB contract on my phone running the ‘Hot Spot’  along side the BT contract as well – I generally use just over half of it unless I am doing a lot with Dropbox or setting up new machines and I always watch video on the lowest data setting.

Husband’s TV I think will rip through the new contract. I am checking the data use and recording it but it is too early to say -we joined at the end of my data period so in 6 days of which TV was used on two evenings he used aprox 50 GB out of his 500 and if that is the case he is going to have to keep an eye on it if we get shot of BT but he likes things ‘just so’ where as I will watch things ‘fuzzy around the edges’.

Yes, I would recommend this.