Page 1 of 1
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 5:00 pm
by Sylvia
This is a warning for anyone working in IT who thinks they would like to bring their business to rural Wales, buy a smallholding and unwind in the beautiful Welsh countryside.
You may remember the proud boast that with new IT anyone would be able to work from anywhere.
I have a relative who, envying our lifestyle (he has only seen the farm on a few good days) found a buyer for his property in Surrey and chose a smallholding not far from us. So far so good. But he needs an ISDN line and SDSL. No to SDSL said BT but ISDN and ASDL no problem. Next, it will cost £43000 to put the lines in, no sorry that should be £11000. Oh dear we can't put an ASDL line in but the ISDN will be OK. Try a satellite. He orders that. Oh sorry about this but we can't put the ISDN line in either. The satellite won't work without the ISDN line. He manages to cancel the satellite order, but will have to wait for a refund. This has taken months
Not being able to have either of the essential lines he needs he has to pull out of the purchase, the vendors try to charge him for putting in the lines which BT told them would happen this week. Meanwhile BT send him a bill for the lines they have told him they cannot put in, followed the next day by a credit note.
He has to find another enabled property quickly but BT don't publish maps of enabled areas and at the end of this month they reassign the numbers he has in Surrey.
Well that is rant over, but let this be a warning to anyone else trying to move to a rural area. Before this happened I had absolutely no idea that it would be so difficult. Now I know different
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 6:21 pm
by Broomcroft
You got me there Sylvia. I thought BT was bluetongue and Wales had now been brought into our happy little club.
Why does he need ISDN with satellite? I thought the satellite was separate. There's a company who specialise in satellite broadband for farms and the like. I had a quote from them. I think it was about £1500-2000 installation, or was p.a.?, I can't be certain it was some time ago.
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 7:03 pm
by Sylvia
Hello Clive, his business (which is going downhill fast because of this) relies on being able to up and download masses of data quickly. Don't ask!! And, yes, he had to have them both. What he was going to pay for satellite was a lot more than you've mentioned, then hundreds of £££ monthly too. Tomorrow the frantic search starts for another place. :p
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:50 pm
by Minnie
Gee whiz Sylvia,
This sounds like rural Australia, a total sham as far as broadband goes.
Doesn't it make your blood boil when these government bodies and companies mess you around with no though that it's sending you broke. We had an experience with the electricity people (after moving out of town) saying one thing then changing their mind then saying okay and trying to get us to pay $20,000 for a 3 Phase line which was to our front gate... they changed it to $6,000, where do these people grab these figures from. Suffice to say on their advice we had already spent some thousands on 3 phase air conditioners for tropical fish setup which we sold for a dollar each to get rid of them, and lost all the fish. 
I never believe any of them these days! And still sit working all day on an old slow modem, which drives us nuts as our bread and butter work is on the internet.
Hope it works out.
Regards
Vicki
Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 9:14 am
by Sylvia
Well Vicki, m'dear, that is probably the first and last time rural Wales will be been likened to rural Australia :D
The irony of this situation is that before my husband retired he had an ISDN line to this farm for his work and I had a separate one (called Home Highway) for the farm stuff. BT discontinued Home Highway but changed it to Business Broadband which is quick enough for my purposes. So it is possible here but 8 miles away, not a chance. In fact they wouldn't (couldn't) put it in to a property 4 miles away which was about 100 yards from a telephone exchange, but not the right type apparently.
I could almost see the funny side of this, if I couldn't see the terrible stress it causes first hand.
Posted: Sat Nov 10, 2007 5:43 pm
by Kathy Millar
We get all our internet services via the telephone line which apparently was upgraded at some point to allow "high speed internet". There is also cable internet service which comes over the cable TV line. It is really fast and I think may be digital (whatever that means). About twice a year the cable company tries to sell us their services. Trouble is, the line ends about a quarter of a mile down the road and their high-tech staff just can't seem to figure that out as their maps seem to indicate...............just wishful thinking on their part and agressive marketing. What is broadband?
Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:16 pm
by Sylvia
Just a little update on this. My poor long suffering relative found another property (eventually). Checked with BT and was told they were so pleased he had found a property which the lines could go into without any problem. Cost about £12000.
He bought the property and moved in before Christmas. Since then he has had a temporary line and has recently squeezed a broadband line out of them (at a price), he has had one story after another about the ISDN, has spent hours every day on the phone and at meetings with BT, has seen the price double, has been told it could be done in a few working days, 17 working days, before the end of February (although they didn't specify which year). Individuals are trying to be helpful, but what an almightly shambles.
And the joke is that if you try another provider they all want BT to put the lines in that they would send their service down.
Kathy, cable is just wishful thinking round here. Broadband (ADSL) was meant to replace dial up as a quicker option. I expect Clive would be the one to explain in more detail all the techie stuff.
Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:31 pm
by Broomcroft
Hi Sylvia
Don't know whether your friend is still looking but I had a quote for satellite broadband when I moved out here, but eventually put up with ISDN which wasn't that good and very expensive with the amount I used it (6 hours a day average maybe). I can't remember the quote for satellite broadband but is was affordable and certainly wasn't £12k. I was going to buy the satellite and then BT put in a cable so I didn't bother. They put 1.8 miles in just for me, but that was because the village up the road (about 20 houses!), was more potential business for them in the future.
I think it was £1,500-2,000 for the satellite version? But that might have been per annum. I can't remember the company either...I'm really losing it...but it was something to do with 'rural'.
Try these if you're interested:
http://www.broadbandwherever.net/?gcid=S....oadband
http://www.digiweb.co.uk/
PS. Don't let the slow speeds fool you. I have the slowest speed ADSL you can buy and it's quicker than the fast ones. It's how it's done, not the speed.
Edited By Broomcroft on 1200508411
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:42 am
by Sylvia
Thanks for your help Clive, I'll pass the info on to him when I can contact him but I'm fairly certain he has covered every option already. The main problem is that when BT said it could be done he didn't expect weeks and weeks of alteration, retraction and all the rubbish which has been going on. But we now know that the first contact is with salesmen who always say yes it can be done (and presumably collect their commission) and it is when the order progresses to the next stage that the **** hits the fan.
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:11 am
by Minnie
Hi Sylvia and Clive,
I really do need to read the forum more often 
Since the beginning of this post we've had satellite broadband installed (rural NSW Australia) for which the government paid... all trying to have us agree that selling half our government communications is fine and they can sell the other half.
We've been saying for a long time that satellite isn't great hence we kept holding out, but as our livelyhood depends on the internet and the modem was getting slower and slower we said 'what the heck it's got to be better'.
Massive amount of rain this month in northern NSW (big floods) and every time the rain got heavy no internet... the dish couldn't see the satellite for the cloud etc I imagine is the reason.
It was a bit of a pain as we were trying to see who was flooded and what roads etc...
So although satellite is better than modem it's not as good as ADSL in my opinion.
???
Vicki
Edited By Minnie on 1200989538