Wireless broaband?

[Nate]

So recently a letter came through that we can now apply for a wireless broadband to be installed from this company http://www.countybroadband.co.uk/ website doesn't seem to show cost so I'll list it here:

Data Plan    DL/UL speed    Aggregated Service Speed    Monthly Sub
500MB		500Kbps 		1 Mbps		   FREE
1GB		4Mbps			8 Mbps		   £9.99
10GB		8Mbps			16 Mbps		   £16.99
20GB		16Mbps			32 Mbps		   £19.99
50GB		16Mbps			32 Mbps		   £24.99
50GB		24Mbps			48 Mbps		   £29.99
100GB		32Mbps			64 Mbps		   £34.99

There's also a one off £99inc. vat for installation(they put a receiver on your roof) and then you can choose to have free broadband or any of the paid monthly ones. I can't seem to see any customer reviews of this company, I'm guessing they're new.

At the moment I'm doing the normal down the phone line broadband with Eclipse on a probably out dated package of £20/month for 20Gb, the fastest speed I can get is 1Mbps. I'm considering this wireless but paying out £100 for something I have no idea of the stability or company history, I'm really not sure. I could get a 16Mbps(16x the speed I currently have) with 10Gb less/month for the same price. But yeah..wireless?

What do you guys think? Run in to anything similar/know of this company?!

Cheers!

 

[soze]

No personal experience. But one of our customers uses them and after a complete pain in the arse getting up and running they are very happy. Unfortunately they had a lot of teething problems with ports being blocked IP Addresses being swapped and poor speed. After about 3 weeks though it settled down and now seems to be fine. I say it is fine all that means is they have not logged any calls.

 

[gunner440]

This sounds like a lot of the companies that have started popping up in my part of Spain over the last few years. The paid service will vary from provider to provider and vastly depends on the quality of their own infrastructure. This stuff is normally set up to provide 'decent' internet to places that would otherwise get much worse from the normal providers. By decent I mean be able to browse web pages, make skype calls and send emails and this doesn't mean the ability to watch films on-demand, play games with a low ping or download in bulk. These activities of course could actually be completely possible with this provider but chances are with that kind of setup I highly doubt it.

The 'free' service is not quite like that. That service is paid for by the user(s) that happen to have unsecured wireless networks that are picked up by the antenna/other receivers so the company has no influence over the quality or uptime. The range on those devices/infrastructure can be quite surprising so it's just pot luck as to whether you've got access to some technology-inept person's wifi. Short and sweet - don't bother with the 'free' service.

 

[Raven]

I would run a mile, Dataplan 100 GB - I assume that's the DL limit. I would rather have slower but unlimited downloading.

 

[Nate]

No personal experience. But one of our customers uses them and after a complete pain in the arse getting up and running they are very happy. Unfortunately they had a lot of teething problems with ports being blocked IP Addresses being swapped and poor speed. After about 3 weeks though it settled down and now seems to be fine. I say it is fine all that means is they have not logged any calls.

Hmm, I'm thinking I might try out the free subscription if only to have one for watching videos and one for playing games. It is £100 to get in still though.

This sounds like a lot of the companies that have started popping up in my part of Spain over the last few years. The paid service will vary from provider to provider and vastly depends on the quality of their own infrastructure. This stuff is normally set up to provide 'decent' internet to places that would otherwise get much worse from the normal providers. By decent I mean be able to browse web pages, make skype calls and send emails and this doesn't mean the ability to watch films on-demand, play games with a low ping or download in bulk. These activities of course could actually be completely possible with this provider but chances are with that kind of setup I highly doubt it.

The 'free' service is not quite like that. That service is paid for by the user(s) that happen to have unsecured wireless networks that are picked up by the antenna/other receivers so the company has no influence over the quality or uptime. The range on those devices/infrastructure can be quite surprising so it's just pot luck as to whether you've got access to some technology-inept person's wifi. Short and sweet - don't bother with the 'free' service.

I don't think that'll be the way the free service works here, you get a receiver put on your roof which is the same with paid subs. I'm not even sure I could access someone elses service without getting the installation done as they have to give you another smaller receiver to put on your router/computer.

I would run a mile, Dataplan 100 GB - I assume that's the DL limit. I would rather have slower but unlimited downloading.

That'd be nice, but it isn't going to happen where I live mate. A 1mb connection being the best I can get, I doubt I'd be able to go over 50Gb, currently I'm limited to 30Gb.