Starlink as a landline?

[Steven P]

O2 and Vodafone have merged too.

Telecoms masts: The remote ones will have a back up generator but the ones near town will have a battery back up and that's about all - suspect in a power cut everyone will go onto their phones and off the WIFIs which will drain the battery powered towers. Not sure about whatever exchanges type of things mobile phones use, but if a power cut affects them it will knock it all out.

Apart from the trees, a directional antenna should give you a better service - pointed at a mast somewhere - like a TV areal points to a transmitter 10s of miles away still gets a signal to most places.. but with the trees you would need that above the top of them

 

Sounds like the solution is Starlink to be honest, suffer filling Musks bank account, and you should be able to move your number over - if not wonder if you can get it forwarded to a different phone but that might mean paying for 2 services.

[Mark Bolam]

37 minutes ago, Steven P said:

O2 and Vodafone have merged too.

 

They haven’t.

O2 merged with Virgin Media.

 

[Dan Maynard]

Three and Vodafone?

[Squaredy]

9 hours ago, Muddy42 said:

 

Im not technical but a friend of mine got decent wifi this way and he had poor mobile 4g at his house.  I don't think you need line of sight to an antenna. Id expect the wifi provider to do a desktop survey and maybe come out to your house to make sure it'll work.

 

When I had my 4g antenna fitted a few years back the engineer spent a good couple of hours trying different locations for the antenna and eventually got download speeds of 6mb.  But then the mast he pointed it at was permanently degraded and it has not worked since.

 

There are several people nearby who have Starlink and all have really good things to say about it.  And whereas the UK is reducing the number of masts for mobile phone signal, Starlink are continuing to ramp up their satellites.  Another 11,000 going to be launched over the next few years apparently.  And of course there is no contract.  If it starts to decline in performance I can just back out.  Whereas my stupid 4/5g mast I am still paying for until at least next year.

[Squaredy]

1 hour ago, Steven P said:

Sounds like the solution is Starlink to be honest, suffer filling Musks bank account, and you should be able to move your number over - if not wonder if you can get it forwarded to a different phone but that might mean paying for 2 services.

To be honest I don’t mind making Musk a tiny bit richer.  If he gets rich by providing something no-one else can I take my hat off to him.

 

Contrast that to my current situation where I pay £100 a month to XLN for a barely usable copper line; and £18 to EE for a completely useless 5g router.

[Squaredy]

2 hours ago, Paul in the woods said:

Have you tried different networks

Yes, the most powerful signal where I am is from a mast in Portishead about 15 miles away.  The tall trees are the problem.  It was better years ago when I could see the river Severn from my main building; but since then the trees have grown up a lot and it looks to me like they might just grow some more!

[sime42]

Oh dear. If only you could make contact with some tree surgeons or foresters!

 

 

[Squaredy]

2 hours ago, Mark Bolam said:

Shame we can’t follow the European model of just locking onto the strongest available network.

It’s quite a scandal isn’t it?  I went on a cruise in 2018 stopping in 7 different European countries and then Russia.  With the exception of Russia every country automatically locked onto the best local signal.  Automatic roaming.  And as soon as we were back in the UK I was stuck with the useless network I was on (Tesco who use O2 I believe).

 

I left Tesco mobile soon after and now get better reception, but still really poor at work.

 

Even in the EU it was quite a battle to get high roaming charges removed if I remember correctly.

[openspaceman]

25 minutes ago, Squaredy said:

Starlink are continuing to ramp up their satellites.  Another 11,000 going to be launched over the next few years apparently.

As they are expected to fall out of orbit after 5-7 years I wonder what the refresh rate will be.

[AHPP]

10 hours ago, Squaredy said:

all phones will eventually be VOIP

All phones will eventually be soil. I’m thinking of making an early start. Fhuck all this fhucking nonsense.