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A dilemma about what broadband options I should take up.....

Hi,

Not sure where this belongs so will post under 'General'.

Where I live I have the following broadband options:

1) ADSL (no VDSL) at about 3Mbps down and whatever infinitesimal small bandwidth up, delivered over OR. Price - no idea - really never, ever, considering going down this hell hole again....
2) Voneus fixed wireless access at about 45Mbps down and 25Mbps up. Price - £35 a month with static IP they forget to charge me for...shhh!
3) Vodafone LTE - 30 to 45Mbps down and roughly 15Mbps up - £20.80 a month on cashback deal.
4) Soon, maybe 6 moths'ish, TrueSpeed FTTP starting at 200Mbps up and down. £47.50 a month.
5) Possibly, but not betting my life on it, GigaClear as part of CDS roll-out at some distant point in the future........

My requirements are:

1) Reliability and resilience. I work from home 4 days a week and need very reliable Internet.
2) For work 10Mbps up and down is probably sufficient.
3) For home use I like to regularly download 'Linux distributions' from Usenet.
4) I backup my server regularly to Backblaze B2, but only photos and stuff, those 'Linux distributions' can be downloaded again if required.
5) Ideally I would like to stick with my current VoIP setup which is SIPGATE for incoming calls and Locaphone for outgoing calls, I have a Polycom SIP deskphone and a Polycom ATA so can support a couple of lines.
6) Support for a Vfe Sure Signal femto cell.
7) 40Mbps down and 20Mbps up is probably quite sufficient for me.

My current config is:

1) Primary broadband using Voneus FWA.
2) Bulk traffic and fail over using Vfe 4G.
3) Running PFSense router with VPN clients and servers, geo-blocking, split tunneling and WAN fail over.
4) Static IP (Voneus WAN only).
5) Multi-line dirt cheap VoIP.
6) Sure Signal working fine and dandy.

My current recurring comms expenditure is £35 + £20.80 a month + about £2.50 on VoIP calls.

I am quite satisfied with my current setup and it is very reliable. It meets my requirements in almost every way. I do have a couple of concerns:

1) If/when Voneus lose subscribers to TrueSpeed (which they will in droves) then will Voneus pull the plug on the FWA in the village because it becomes uneconomical?
2) If I don't sign up with TrueSpeed at the outset will it be difficult to be connected up at a latter date if required?
3) Can I use my existing SIP VoIP accounts on TrueSpeed and not their VoIP phone service?
4) Will TrueSpeed offer me a Static IP on their basic package (no way I can justify their £70 package), and if so, for how much?
5) Can I use my own router with VPNs, fail over etc with TrueSpeed?

I have asked the above ISPs for some input and awaiting some answers. My preference I think is to stick with Voneus/Vfe. It ticks all the boxes. I am not happy to go with TrueSpeed on its own without fail over, and not keen on spending any more than I need to.

If anybody can answer any of my questions or have some suggestions I would be keen to hear.

C
 
Having given this a bit more thought - writing it down has helped, I think I have a plan. The Vfe cellular does have some inbuilt resilience. If the 4G mast I connect to (via directional antenna) goes down I can switch to the router's internal antennas and get slooow 3G. It is not great but it is a fallback option. Some of my neighbors are going with TrueSpeed so I always have the redundancy option of camping in their house with my work laptop if I lose cellular completely. Who knows, they may even provide beer :)

Cancelling Voneus will save me £400 a year and with 40% income tax relief that is another £560 a year I can put in my pension.

Looking at Truespeed at £47.50 a month, that is almost £800 a year added to my pension.

The 4G broadband is new for me (Vfe only recently released an unlimited 4G SIM at a reasonable price) so I think I will use that as primary for a couple of months and see how it works out.

C
 
Last edited:
You've sort of answered your own question there :) . I think you make a good point about Voneus though (as well as other ISPs in that sort of situation), which is the question about what happens when a network becomes economically non-viable.

In Openreach's case they are required to maintain non-viable networks, albeit in their most basic form (allowing for the new 10Mbps USO), but for smaller providers no such protection exists. On the other hand there can be a cost to removing equipment too.

I suspect the biggest consideration for Voneus, leaving aside equipment replacement/maintenance, is the cost of capacity vs take-up in your area. Some of these can be rebalanced by future price rises but only up to a point. Sadly I don't know Voneus's internal market modelling so it's hard to say at what point they or any operator might pull the plug.
 
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Completely unrelated to your query.....

Do I take it from your user name that you are a LOTRO fan??
 
I may add in the TrueSpeed section as well but I did get some very quick answers from TrueSpeed who did understand what I was asking - promising start.

1) On the basic package you MUST use their supplied router. They can (or maybe you c an) configure a DMZ so can put a second router in the primary router's DMZ. Not a great solution as the WAN port of the secondary router has a private IP address which can cause issues.
2) You are not forced into using their SIP VoIP service, you can use your preferred SIP provider. They can turn off stuff like SIP ALG on their router - which can interfere with a lot of SIP providers.
3) They have confirmed that a Vfe Sure Signal should work.
4) A static IP is not available on the basic package.

C
 
One thing I would recommend independent of any other choice you make, is use a L2TP tunnel to give you a static IP independent of the ISP - that means you can seamlessly switch between ISPs and use 4G which may not offer fixed IP.
I use A&A L2TP for £10pm, but others (cheaper) are available.
 
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One thing I would recommend independent of any other choice you make, is use a L2TP tunnel to give you a static IP independent of the ISP - that means you can seamlessly switch between ISPs and use 4G which may not offer fixed IP.
I use A&A L2TP for £10pm, but others (cheaper) are available.

I can't fault A&A having been with them for about 2 years..
 
Could not find TrueSpeed forum to add this to so putting here as somebody may find it and find it useful.


The TrueSpeed VoIP prices are as follows:

Call charges for the Home 200 and Home office 250

Pay as you talk UK
:

10p connection fee
8p per minute on a landline
12p per minute on a mobile

Additional optional call packages:
- Anytime UK
- Unlimited calls to landlines and 0870/0845 £6.99 per month
- Evening and Weekend calls
- Unlimited calls to landlines after 7 pm weekdays and all weekend £2.99 per month
By taking one of the above packages you are then able to benefit from the below offers as a bolt on:
- Mobile 250, 750: Either 250 or 750 minutes of mobile calling - £4.99/£9.99 per month

-International calling
- 750 minutes of international calls to over 40 destinations £4.99 per month
Not going to comment directly on the above, just to mention that Sipgate will provide a no monthly fee incoming service that supports local numbers with number porting (one time £30 fee) and supports emergency calls. Locaphone also offer a no monthly fee service with outgoing UK landline at 0.5p and UK mobile at 1.8p with no connection fee. I don't think you can port your number to Localphone and they definitely do not support emergency call routing. That's why I use Sipgate for incoming (and emergency) and Locaphone for all other outgoing.

I have found both Sipgate and Localphone to be reliable and Localphone have some really good features, I particularly like their 'callback' service which has saved me a lot of money whilst travelling to odd locations.
 
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