Broadband - St Teath in the slow lane?
The heights of the blue/red vertical bars reflect broadband download speeds in St Teath. The range is quite striking with some homes getting speeds more than 10 times faster than others. Please can we have more results, see below. Measure and record your speed here.
Broadband download speeds...
... are measured in
Kilo bits/sec, Kbps,
or Mega bits/sec, Mbps
where 1000 Kbps = 1 Mbps
Typical download speeds are always less than that quoted by your internet service provider (ISP) and upload speeds generally lower again.
With a download speed of 1 Mbps, the upload speed (e.g. for sending emails or documents/photos) will be 0.3- 0.4 Mbps.
Background
Have you found that internet page downloads are slow and that video clips from the popular YouTube website or the BBC iPlayer are punctuated by irritating delays? These problems arise because we are close to the maximum distance the broadband signal can be transmitted over ordinary copper wires from the nearest exchange at St Tudy. Anyone with an 01208 850XXX or 01208 851XXX telephone number is connected to this exchange (X is a digit, zero to 9).
Telephone subscribers in St Teath have the unfortunate distinction of being the farthest sizeable community from the St Tudy exchange, a distance of about 3 miles as the crow flies, but considerably more following the path of the wires. While broadband download speeds of about 8 Mbps are possible in St Tudy, on average they appear to be around 1 Mbps in St Teath. At the other end of the parish, Delabole gets a better deal with some download speeds up to 3 Mbps because of a connection to the Camelford exchange(01840 numbers). Generally you will pay the same for a given tariff whether you can get 8 Mbps or 0.8 Mbps
Postcodes in St Teath - last two digits circled
The government is committed to ensuring that everyone in the country has access to broadband speeds of at least 2 Mbps by 2012 and a recent national poll showed that 70% of the population now consider broadband to be vital to their lives.
The Taylor Review of the Rural Economy and Affordable Housing, commissioned by the Prime Minister and published late July 2008, states that while "Growth in the proportion of knowledge intensive business services between 1998 and 2005 - largely reliant on ICT infrastructure - has increased by 46 per cent in rural areas compared to 21 per cent in urban areas" the performance of broadband in rural areas is markedly poorer than that in urban locations. While the Taylor Review is calling for urgent action, BT announcements indicate that the only way this will happen is through public sector financial intervention.
Unless you know better, we cannot even get the suggested minimum of 2 Mbps (2000 Kbps), but to get a better idea of how speeds vary we would like you to measure your download speed and record it below, along with the last 2 digits of your postcode. All St Teath postcodes have the format PL30 3XY, where X and Y are non-numeric characters. For example, The Square is PL30 3JT, so JT is sufficient to give us the general location in St Teath. Speeds can then be related to the geographic areas.
Measuring download speeds - St Teath area only please
Please use this website to measure the download speed, which takes about two minutes. Then enter the speed and the last two characters of your postcode in the boxes below.
Speeds are measured in Kbps, where 1000 Kbps = 1 Mbps
Results
| Download speed Kbps | Postcode | Download speed Kbps | Postcode |
|---|---|---|---|
| 670 | PL30 3JZ | 472 | PL30 3LQ |
| 352 | PL30 3LF | 2800 | PL30 3LS |
| 1008 | PL30 3JX | 1576 | PL30 3JF |
| 1960 | PL30 3LQ | 296 | PL30 3JB |
| 448 | PL30 3LA | 472 | PL30 3JS |
| 1376 | PL30 3LF | 960 | PL30 3JY |
| 1040 | PL30 3JU | 208 | PL30 3JS |
| 456 | PL30 3JZ | 1064 | PL30 3JX |
| 968 | PL30 3LQ | 1432 | PL30 3LQ |
| 968 | PL30 3LJ | 1688 | PL30 3JA |
| 224 | PL30 3LH | 768 | PL30 3LT |
| 1688 | PL30 3LF | 880 | PL30 3LF |
| 112 | PL30 3JZ | 1400 | PL30 3LF |
| 1400 | PL30 3LF | 1448 | PL30 3LF |
| 480 | PL30 3JF | 456 | PL30 3LQ |
Average download speed = 937 Kbps
2,800 Kbps for PL30 3LS checked twice - amazing!
If your download speed is much less than the average above it may be worth checking whether your router or broadband modem is connected to the master (main) telephone socket in the house. If not, try it. Some routers are a little faster than others, but the main factor is the quality of your telephone line. Caps on download speeds are unlikely to influence the results.
Mobile Broadband
Mobile Broadband is becoming increasingly popular in many areas of the UK. It has the advantage that the user is no longer tied to a fixed line telephone or has to be near a wifi hotspot and makes use of mobile phone providers' 3G networks. Typically, a small device called a dongle will be plugged into a laptop to connect to the service. Unfortunately, St Teath is still at a disadvantage for a check on this website reveals that at best a connection might be obtained outdoors on 3 or T-mobile networks only. Coverage is increasing all the time so it's worth checking, particularly if you need internet access when mobile and don't want to download a lot of data.
The Future
What we need
- optical fibre cable
to St Teath
BT pavement box
in St Teath
Based on the results above we have contacted our local MP, Dan Rogerson. He has elicited a letter from BT which you can read here. It doesn't look as though any improvements are likely in the near future, especially since the letter didn't even address problems in our area. Unfortunately, there seems to be little that can be achieved in the short term, or even get the government's stated minimum standards by 2012. If you live very near the uninspiring BT pavement box in Trehannick Road you might be lucky to get 1 Mbps
Finally, it is worth remembering that download speeds are dependent on the traffic that a website receives and the quality of the web host* connection to the internet.
*the company that holds the website information and connects it to the internet
See here for more information on local postcodes.