Bringing Truespeed to Saltford Village

Saltford Village - last phase(s) When Truespeed planned Saltford it was at that stage quite a large project.  Truespeed had concentrated on smaller more rural areas.  Although Saltford has both BT Openreach ADSL2+ (this includes Sky, PlusNet, Zen, Vodafone etc.) and also Virgin some parts of the village had awful service.  In the older parts the old BT cables are often post war aluminium cables and so even homes close to the Exchange in Norman Road had speeds of around 1Mb/s even if they were paying for 74Mb/s. Even in the more moden North of the A4 parts the wiring is old and poorly maintained.  Saltford Parish Council wrote to both Virgin and BT Openreach to ask when updates they had planned and BT said, none, whilst Virgin didn't respond. Truespeed's investment is a good thing even if you don't use them.  Firstly, they reduce the over-loaded systems from BT Openreach and Virgin.  During lockdown their systems performed poorly especially in the ...

It's been 8 months since we went live with Truespeed in Saltford and the best thing I can say about it in our home is it's allowed me to forget about broadband.  That's just how it should be.  It should just be there when you need it.  Here's a little example; I am helping a friend out setting up a new PC.  He's a prolific email user.  Last night I downloaded 30Gb of email files I didn't even notice it. There was no impact on our network whatsoever. What's been happening with Saltford Truespeed then?  After finishing the North East side of the village apart from a few old "condemned" BT Poles, Truespeed has signed off two more segments of the village.  The South East and North West sides are being built right now (May 2021) with the South East being ready for Service within the next month or two. The local Community is always important to Truespeed.  In Saltford, they have committed to providing a free for life service to Saltford Primary Sch...

Truespeed has announced today that they are going ahead with the next two phases building fibre to the home broadband in Saltford village.  This covers the South East side and the North West side of the village leaving only the South West to follow, hopefully not too far behind. They have told me the budget has been approved, but they will need some who have registered an interest to convert to firm orders before they build.  Of course, this is good news, but they remain a "sell and then build" business and not a "build and then sell".  This means they get enough people to sign up to justify the cost of building the network before they start. It's sometimes frustrating for customers to wait, but it makes business sense.  They are not a huge global business who can absorb a few mistakes along the way, and Saltford is a very brave project for Truespeed.  Previously, they have focussed on rural villages who typically have extremely poor broadband speeds. If yo...

Now I've got Truespeed, what's it like?  A year ago I placed my order with Truespeed and at the same time started to "champion" their investment in the village. This involves spreading awareness of the technology and what it means to the user. It's not for all but if you value fast and consistent broadband it's the best there is. It's taken two years in total from when Truespeed first talked about investing in Saltford to the point of getting installed, set up and running.  Some in the village were lucky and got online three months sooner however the BT Pole close to my house was "defective" and so we had to dig up the drive and use ducting.  Some still don't have access.  Some landowners are preventing installation which to me is incredibly short sighted. Of course, in the middle of this project we had the small issue of a global pandemic but  Truespeed  carried on as best they could.  It obviously caused some delays.  Telecoms counts as cri...

Why I'm a big supporter of Truespeed This is a tricky one. I get accused of being employed by or of the payroll of Trespeed and it pi**es me off. Firstly, I have run my own technology businesses since 1994 and in that time I've created a lot of jobs and opportunities for others. I have lived through dial-up modems, and I recall the first X.400 email service I paid for used to charge me per character or text I use. We used to abbreviate to save money. I remember signing a check for £400 in one month just for email and we would be dealing with less than 100 emails a month. Stamps would have been cheaper. I have also been a buyer of Networks for a major bank and also for a travel business where 9.6kb/s leased lines would cost £30k per annum. When I was a buyer, I had to negotiate with a near monopoly which was not fun. So it's true to say I am not a big fan of all things BT. I have also been a customer of Virgin for 15 years and I have had similar dealing with them. Constant s...

UK 47th in World Broadband Speed According to THIS  2020 research the UK has dropped to 47th in the world ranking of broadband speed tests. Here are a few examples of countries who have faster average broadband speeds than the UK; Latvia ,  Lithuania ,  Romania ,  Slovenia with  Aland Islands ,  Hungary and  Aruba more than doubling the UK's average speed! Now, I know I have written before that it is not all about speed.  Stability and network quality are arguably more important but there's the thing; Our Broadband duopoly is not fit for purpose. We essentially have two dominant providers - BT (Openreach) and Virgin Media.  BT Openreach provides the wholesale market on which most broadband providers sit and so the speed is held back by their investment policies. The be fair to Virgin they probably skew that average as their Docsis (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) technology already delive...

How long does it take to get Truespeed? This is a very common question but there is no simple answer.  If Truespeed is already in your village then it could be a week or two but for this Blog, I'm going to assume you are starting from scratch.  It can be a very long process but there are things you can do. Sell to Build vs. Build to Sell Firstly you need to understand that  Truespeed currently is a Sell to Build business.  What does that mean? It means  Truespeed look at a village or town, work out if they can get their core network there and then start to sell.  They typically need 30% of homes to place an order although this can be less if the cost of installation is less than average. Once they have enough commitment they will plan a detailed build, produce a business case and then decide if and when they will go ahead. Larger ISP's don't do that, so why? The answer is in the question.  Truespeed is not a large ISP.  True they a...

Speed Tests are only half the story We've probably all done it: jumped onto www.speedtest.net to check our connectivity but what is it actually telling us? Broadband speed tests do a number of things when to activate them.  Most send a "ping" message to your selected server.  This measures the latency or delay in milliseconds.  They are also using your IP address to determine your location and most allocate the most local server to you. Then to program sends and receives data to measure the download and then upload. Broadband Speed or Local Wi-Fi speed? Here's the first key issue.  If you are running a test from a phone or Laptop and you are using Wi-Fi you are measuring the speed of both your broadband and your Wi-Fi.  Your Wi-Fi might be slower than your broadband especially where you have unseen interference from, for example, electrical equipment especially microwaves.  Microwaves work at 2,450 MHz which is VERY close...

Fibre to the Premises and Network Quality I wanted to follow up after my last post about Truespeed dedicated fibre to the premisses (FttP).  If you haven't read that post, I suggest you read that first.  Suffice as to say, I am a big supporter of small independent broadband providers who are filling the gaps left by slow monalific duopoly providers - BT and Virgin.  In our area of the South West of the UK that is Truespeed. So far, I don't have the Truespeed service to our home although I am hoping it won't be long.  They have started installing in our village and quite rightly they have prioritised a group of key NHS workers who were really struggling to work from home.  Just stop and think about that for a second.  Can you even imagine BT or Virgin doing that? Truespeed were able to install ultrafast dedicated FttP broadband to ensure that three doctors and a care worker could connect up successfully wi...

Why is Truespeed a big thing for Saltford and  why do we need Fibre to our Homes? Broadband Usage in the Home We are getting closer to having TrueSpeed in Saltford.  In the village we have both BT's ADSL2 service and Virgin Media up to 350Mb/s.  BT's ADSL service will give up to 74Mb/s down and 18Mb/s upload.  Virgin's 350Mb/s will also give you approximately 20Mb/s upload. Straight away there are a few problems here. While most traffic is download your upload is becoming more and more important with technology and social change.   There are a number of reasons for this.  Firstly, if you are sharing your broadband with a number of people in your home that upload speed can decrease dramatically as it's shared between multiple users.   For example; in our house, we have five active users plus a few passive users (work machines and devices which use the net).   When we download a video stream there is also a...