New internet connection - no copper!

For many years, my QTH, being very rural and yet not exactly far from civilisation, has suffered from terrible internet connectivity.

In the years 2008-2010, we had nothing but dial-up speeds, mostly due to the distance from the exchange (about 2km or more).

We then acquired a microwave internet link paid for by the Welsh Government.  In fairness, the Government did what they could to solve a country-wide problem.  But they and the taxpayer simply ended up being ripped off: grants to installers were a maximum of £1000 for equipment, and so, as was entirely predictable, most charged the Welsh Government £999.99!

Free equipment from the Welsh Government - but it was not very good.

This really didn't work very well at all, although when it did work, speeds were reasonable (about 8Mbps).  The service was up and down, and often off altogether.  Worse, the connection from router  to the rooftop antenna generated terrible RFI, which I recorded at the time. The company, having now made its directors a lot of money, was sold off and service standards dropped off a cliff.

We got rid of that system about 2015.

We then bought a mobile wi-fi box from 'EE'.  This worked very well until near the end of the contract, when we suddenly found unusual transactions that we hadn't agreed to.  They tried to take a large amount of money from us, but we complained and eventually recovered all of it.

Good, until we were landed with some mysterious service charges we never used!

That was the end of 'EE' mobile broadband.

We then tried Vodafone.  This worked very well until last month, when the transceiver failed.  During those years of mobile data boxes, the infrastructure locally has improved dramatically.  We now have super-high speed fixed broadband fibre passing in front of our house, and so I decided to connect to this, to end our internet woes.

There was a lot of misunderstanding about the role of copper wires.  When you buy a package of phone and broadband, the network operator insists on copper cable for the phone.  That's OK, so long as no data is transmitted along it, potentially - and as widely reported across the UK - creating RFI.  The main problem is imbalanced line conditions with VDSL2, which causes very wideband RFI, leading to some very sad stories of operators who have operated successfully in urban areas for decades now being wiped out.

The first engineer told me that, despite a fibre connection being fixed to my house last week, all my services would be along copper wire.  "No way!" said I.  "You can take your services and stick them where the sun don't shine!"

Then, later the same day, and entirely unexpectedly, a fibre engineer arrived.  Being female, she was much more helpful!  She installed everything via fibre, with the only wires being power (12V, easily converted to linear PSUs if needed), and a very short WAN cable.

In total, the system, including the two SMPSUs, generates no detectable RFI on any amateur band.

At last, broadband connected by fibre - with no RFI!

So, if you are in the UK and thinking of a broadband package from BT, it is often now available all the way to your indoor connection via fibre alone - no copper wires at all!  Just make sure to bring the engineer in for a cup of coffee as soon as they arrive, and tell them about your radios and ask exactly how the services arrive at your home.  If you don't like what you hear, put a hold on the installation. 

It's also an idea, if you want to be treated like a new build home that will tend to get fibre-for-everything, that any existing copper wire you may have could have 'come down in a storm', if you catch my drift...