By Gary – Willes.
My intention is to make this briefing note accessible to all so please forgive me if it sometimes looks like I’m teaching you to suck eggs, but here goes.
There is often confusion between the terms used to describe getting online or connected to the internet, so first let’s explain the different terms. (Purists might tell me that I’m slightly mis-using the terms, but this will be to make the whole thing more accessible, so please let it go!)
The Internet is the big interconnected mass of computers which holds all of the information you want to connect to whilst online (ie, actually connected to the Internet). It includes films you want to stream to your TV (ie watch on your TV but delivered by the Internet when you want it, not via the aerial at a time determined by the broadcaster), music you want to listen to on Spotify, data on train times from TfL and all those research papers, cat videos and news items you want access to at your fingertips. A lot of that information is held in the cloud which simply means a huge collection of computers somewhere over there that you don’t know or need to know where it is based (as opposed to accessing a letter which you know is stored on your grandmother’s computer, for example)
To access all this data, your device (be it phone, TV, computer, iPad etc.) needs to connect to the Internet and there are two steps to this. Firstly, the house needs to connect to the Internet through a broadband connection. This simply means a metaphorical pipe that is fat enough to get all that data through. In Part One of this article, we’re concerned with the different types of broadband connection, ie the different ways of getting that information to your house or flat. Where it comes into your property, there will be some kind of box (incorrectly but commonly called a modem).
Once the property has access to the Internet, it then needs to be channelled to your particular device. This can happen using WiFi which is a wire-free, radio-wave kind of way of beaming the signal to your device. Alternatively, a LAN (Local Area Network) can be used to pass the signal along using a collection of wires. The piece of equipment that does this function is called a router, and is often combined with the modem into one, single box. It is possible to combine WiFi and LAN into one network so some devices connect one way, and some another. I’ll talk about the routing in Part Two.
Part One – Broadband to the Property
There are myriad ways of connecting a property to the Internet, but in the Inkerman Area there are essentially four alternatives. The company you ultimately chose to deliver the service into your property is know as your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
1: BT Openreach
Openreach is that part of BT (set up as a separate company) that is responsible for the national infrastructure of standard telephone lines. They were charged with laying out the national infrastructure for internet access as well and to make their network available to other suppliers to use.
So the likes of BT, Sky, Vodafone, EE, Talk-Talk, Zen, Plusnet etc. all use the same infrastructure provided by Openreach. If Openreach goes down (fails) all of these providers will fail. If your property can be connected by one, it can be connected by them all and they can all offer you the same range of services. The differentiating factor between them all will be customer service, price and package but the technology will be the same. Some ISPs also offer bundles such as Sky TV, or TV accessed through streaming TV boxes.
Services by Openreach are delivered as follows.
Twisted Copper Wire – ADSL
Until recently, this was the predominant way of delivering broadband and took over from the whistles and whizzes of a dial-up modem. Highly compressed signals were delivered down the plain old telephone network. This often went all the way from the telephone exchange. Speeds achieved were great for text and even streaming TV, but with higher definition television and complex websites, this is now considered a bit slow and is no longer available at all for new installations.
Fibre to the Cabinet – FTC
To upgrade the ADSL signals, Openreach started installing very fast fibre optic cables to the telephone cabinets in the street, greatly improving the speed and amount of data that could be transmitted. But it was still delivered to the property using the twisted copper wire.
To complicate things further, the Inkerman Area has some very unusual properties. Most of lower Willes Road, lower Graton Road and bits of Alma Street (and I think some more but my research isn’t that thorough!) never had their properties connected to a street cabinet, they were connected directly to the exchange and so these properties couldn’t get access to FTC broadband.
Fibre to the Property – FTP
The next stage of upgrade was to replace the twisted copper wires going into the houses and to make sure that fibre (big fat pipes) go all the way into the property. This is being rolled out by BT across the country. They have recently laid fibres in the roads around the area but the network is not yet ready and Openreach will give no commitment other than “before December 2026”. So this isn’t yet an option for us.
2: Virgin Media
This grew out of the cable television market of the 1980s and was the result of companies digging up the roads and laying new cables to take the signals directly into the house. These signals were delivered using co-ax cable (like a TV signal) and can achieve some very fast (but not the fastest) speeds. If you look just outside your property boundary and can see a little box in the pavement that says “CATV” or “Virgin” then you have access to Virgin media. If the box is not there, you don’t have access to it, but Virgin may be persuaded to connect you if you try hard enough.
Virgin offer a variety of “packages” and the broadband speed can vary right up to 1Gb/s which is very fast and should provide a multi-person household with the ability to stream multiple ultra-high definition movies at the same time. However, with Virgin, if a lot of people are using the service at the same time, then the service will be slower.
The infrastructure of this network is now very old and you will have noticed in the WhatsApp chats, it seems to fail fairly frequently. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that customer service from Virgin is poor at best. Full disclosure: I had been a customer of Virgin Media continuously for over twenty years but was only too pleased to dump them at the first opportunity!
Virgin also deliver telephony and cable TV services through the same cables. Anybody with Virgin who then ditches them, will lose access to those TV channels and that telephone line (but if you’re interested in keeping your telephone number and installing a new telephone line, this is possible).
3: g.network
g.network is a relative newcomer to the scene and in the last two years or so dug up the pavements and laid new cables in most of the area. Again, look outside your property and if there is a little square box on the pavement on the boundary which says “g.network”, then you are able to connect to their network. Alternatively, check online, here. Sadly, Alma Street, Inkerman Road, Cathcart Street and some other areas were left out of this installation – I think that’s the price paid for having original York Stone paving in those streets!
The cables run are truly fibre-optic and the company will run a cable containing hundreds of fibre-optic strands into your house from the box in the pavement. They will do this after consulting with you which route you want the cable to take and which room you want the modem to be installed in. They will use only one single strand smaller than a hair’s width, to actually deliver your service (I point this out purely to indicate that there is a lot of expansion capability in this rollout).
Like Virgin, g.network supply different packages at different prices right up to their 1Gb/s service.
I have personally switched to g.network and was thrilled with how quickly and smoothly went the installation and I have had fault-free service since then with excellent UK based customer service. I should also emphasise that I use their cheapest and slowest service (150Mb/s) from which I run my business, conduct Zoom meetings, watch ultra- high definition movies (although there’s usually only one TV on at a time). I would also say that my experience is that service outperforms Virgin’s 250Mb/s service comfortably.
g.network currently will offer to pay up to £150 to buy you out of a contract if you have an early termination fee with another provider.
If anyone does want to switch to g.network, please drop me a DM as I have a referral code which gets each of us £50.
4: Hyperoptic
The newest service available to the area, Hyperoptic also use fibre-optic cables to deliver the service. However, instead of digging up the pavements, they deliver the cable using overhead wires in the way that old telephone wires went into a property. This means that most of the area should be covered. Since there is no box to look out for, the only way to check is therefore using their online tool here
However, a lot of properties Iin the area seem to be told by this tool that Hyperoptic cannot connect them. I have been having ongoing discussions with the infrastructure team at Hyperoptic. They have confirmed to me that the whole area should be available to connect and we are investigating why the tool on their website says not. We are trying to get it updated, but if not, I have a contact who will correct the tool for each and every property that wants it. Please DM me with your full name, address and postcode if you want me to try and do this for you. There is no guarantee, but I and they are very optimistic that everyone in the area can be covered.
I can confirm that all of Alma Street can be connected to Hyperoptic.
Like g.network and Virgin, packages are available at different prices right up to 1Gb/s. I have had only good things about Hyperoptic. Their installation service, customer service and reliability seem to be strong, and I have to say that their willingness to engage with me on behalf of the area is terrific.
Part Two – Routing and Wifi
Whichever provider you use to provide broadband to the property, they will leave you with a modem in a location of your choice. Almost certainly, that modem will also be a WiFi router.
The WiFi router will be responsible for pushing the Internet signal from the modem to any device you want to connect to it. The router will probably also have one to four LAN ports, so that you can physically connect a device directly to the router using a cable.
LAN Connection
There is no question that if you have the ability to do so, a LAN connection between your device and the router will give you the fastest and most stable connection. Even in these days of WiFi everywhere, if I was refurbishing my house I would still ensure that every room was cabled up with a wire that leads back to the router.
If you have more wires than ports, it is easy to extend the number of ports on your router using a small, cheap device called a switch. But not many people have that luxury.
Powerline adapters
It is possible to bring cables from the router to another part of the house even if you’re not wired up. To do this you need a “powerline adapter”. This plugs into an electrical socket near the router, and connects to the router with a LAN cable. At the other end of the house where you want the signal, you can put an additional powerline connector and run a cable from that to your device. What these gizmos do, is use the electricity network in your property to transmit the internet signal. It is slower than a regular cable and may be subject to interference from other electrical devices. Generally, WiFi and Mesh systems (see below) are considered preferable, but there are times when the number of girders and blockages are so great, that this can be a preferred method.
WiFi
This is how most people will connect to their router. However, the most important thing to note is that our houses are old, made of brick and often extended or strengthened using huge metal girders. All these things interfere with the radio signal and will mean that the signal delivered to a far away point may be very weak. If this is the case, your device will not get a strong signal, it may cut out a lot and you will get a very poor service. However, note that this does not mean that your broadband provider is failing. If the broadband connection is good right up to the modem, then that is really all they’re responsible for. They can’t be held responsible for the structure of your house getting in the way of the signal.
There is a difference in the quality of the routers that these ISPs provide to you and historically, the ISPs didn’t care at all beyond the modem, issuing some really poor routers to their customers. However, the ISPs are now trying to differentiate themselves by issuing better quality WiFi routers. Many of them (eg BT, EE, Vodafone, Sky, g.network, Hyperoptic) offer you additional access points to ensure that the signal reaches all parts of your property.
Access Points/Boosters/Extenders
These are little WiFi boosters that often just plug in to a local socket and have an additional aerial. They work by recognising the faint signal coming from the router and then amplifying it and pushing the amplified signal out again so that devices near to this “booster” can get a better signal by connecting to the extender than if they were struggling to connect to the original router. Each device would have to choose whether it wants to connect to the booster or to the main router which can be a little inconvenient. These access points/boosters are now considered old fashioned as the latest technology is a mesh system.
Mesh Systems
Without going into the technology, these are effectively an upgraded version of the extenders mentioned above. They use slightly different technologies and signals to create one bigger, extended network using multiple nodes so the device doesn’t have to choose which to connect to. If each of the mesh nodes can be connected with fixed cables, then this is ideal, but if not, a pure WiFi mesh system is highly recommended.
Historically, I have never trusted the routers from ISPs and thus always treated their devices as a modem and created my own mesh system. I understand now that many ISPs are effectively giving, renting or selling add-ons to turn their routers into mesh systems. I haven’t tried any of these yet, but my advice would be that they’re worth trying as an add-on to buy if you have the ability to return them if no good. However, I would suspect that paying an extra £7-£10 a month for each node on a rental basis is not good value. Better to buy your own mesh and install it (they’re not difficult).
I hope this has been a useful overview and introduction to what is a complex subject. I’m happy to try and help individuals understand their options better or even install their equipment subject to my own available bandwidth and the number of enquiries. Please DM me via WhatsApp (you can find me on the WhatsApp group but forgive me if I don’t publish my number on the website).