The subject of broadband provision in the village has occupied quite a bit of space in recent Ewelme News editions. However, the Parish Council thought that there was room for an article to explain as simply as possible what is going on. Your trusty correspondent was despatched to find out………..
There are three main ways to access the internet – dial-up, broadband via telephone line and broadband via a mobile network.
Dial-up. Until five years or so ago, this was the main way for home users to access the internet. It can be used over almost any standard telephone line, connecting through an electronic circuit in the computer or in a small box. It is suitable for emailing messages and sending and receiving small document files, but even photos from mobile phones take several minutes to transfer. Keeping in touch through sites like Facebook or dealing with government or most companies, which assume everyone has broadband, and load their sites with lots of pictures and video, is very difficult.
Landline Broadband. This is transmitted usually through a normal telephone line to the house, but there is a faster connection from the BT connection box by the bus shelter at Kings Pool to the exchange in Wallingford. Unfortunately, there are less than 200 lines back to the exchange that are capable of carrying broadband signals, all of which we believe are in use. If you are one of the lucky 200, the speed attainable is 10 to 20 times as fast as on dial-up, so a lot of things are possible that can be done only by waiting for a very long time with a dial-up connection. It is (relatively) easy to surf the web, do online shopping, exchange photos or video clips with friends. You can watch video, like YouTube or BBC iPlayer (often with lots of irritating pauses) or listen to radio broadcasts from all over the world, which are all impossible with dial-up. The connections in Ewelme have an annoying habit of not working for a few minutes at inconvenient times.
Mobile Broadband. The mobile telephone networks all operate mobile broadband services, but for us, Three is the only realistic option. You don’t have to have your mobile phone contract with them as well (although you might get a better deal if you do). The speed and quality of the service has improved a lot over the past couple of years and prices have dropped to a level similar to that of landline broadband – in the £10 a month range. Almost everywhere in the village can achieve a speed several times faster than the best landline available here, which makes transfer of large files, web browsing or watching video really easy and pleasant. To get mobile broadband, you need a dongle, which operates like a mobile phone to connect your computer with their network. Three has recently introduced a Mi-Fi dongle, which allows you to put the dongle where it can get the best mobile signal and it will transmit the signal to and from a computer by radio waves, so the computer can be more or less anywhere in the house. Most laptop computers have Wi-Fi built-in to allow this to happen. For most desktops, a cheap adaptor is needed, which plugs into the computer.
Getting Internet Access
If you don’t already have internet access and want it, then the choice in Ewelme at present is between dial-up and mobile broadband. Dial-up is a bit easier to set up (probably just a cable into a phone socket), but the monthly costs are likely to be about the same. You will need an Internet Service Provider (ISP), like AOL or BT, who should provide everything required, give you an email address, provide the means to access the internet and generally make life fairly easy. With Mobile Broadband, the ISP will be Three.
If you have dial-up and want broadband, then at present, unless you have the sort of luck that wins the lottery (in which case, why would you worry?), the only choice for the next couple of years anyway is mobile. This is also the case if you already have Landline Broadband, but want something faster. There is a spin-off benefit to the village, that changing to Mobile would free up one of the precious lines to Wallingford for someone else.
The Future
Oxfordshire County Council equipped nearly all its properties (including our school) with optical fibre connections a few years ago. Optical fibre can transmit huge amounts of data at extremely high speeds, so there is lots of spare capacity in these links, which could be used for you and me to get fast broadband. There is some engineering work, which would cost a fairly small amount of money, to be done (to connect to that box by the bus shelter), but the main problems in bringing this into use seem to be legal and administrative. OCC is committed to making this happen, but needs some funding from the Government as well as sorting out the legal and administrative bits. It’s difficult to know how long this will take, but two years might be a reasonable guess. Once it is, then we should all have access to fast broadband through a telephone line and there will be a genuine alternative to mobile.
What Do I Need to Do?
You need to decide which kind of connection you want and choose an ISP (there are lots, but there’s not much between them, except price. They are also very negotiable on prices – even large organisations like BT). Apart from that, you will probably need to decide whether to have a monthly “pay as you go” contract or a 12- or even 18-month one and how much usage (usually expressed as a number of Gigabytes – GB) per month to pay for. To start with, it’s probably best to go for a Pay as You Go arrangement to see how you get on and start with a low usage level, say 1 GB. It’s much easier to increase the limit if it proves inadequate than decrease it. Once you are happy, it usually works out cheaper to have a fixed-term contract.
Frequently Asked Questions.
Q. I don’t understand what ‘high speed’ means when people and the media talk about broadband.
A. You have to understand that ‘information’ and ‘data’ is sent over the various media described above in a digital form. That is, by means of a stream of pulses or ‘bits’. So, when an email is sent out or a web page is received, it can be defined as being made up from a number of bits. However, such items can consist of thousands (Kilobits, Kb) or millions (Megabits, Mb) of bits. The speed at which an email is sent out or a web page is received can therefore defined as a number of Kilobits per second (Kbs) or more commonly in broadband terms, in Megabits per second.
Q. So, when someone says “We’ve got up to eight meg broadband”, does that mean 8 Megabits per second?
A. That’s right. It means that the person could potentially receive, say, a 1 Mb web page (consisting of some words, pictures and animations) and display it on their PC screen in one eighth of a second. However, a broadband connection rarely transfers data at its maximum speed, but depends on the time of day and how many people are also using it. But it does provide an idea of whether data is travelling down a slow country lane or a fast motorway so to speak!
Q. So, what speeds can we get in Ewelme?
A. Well, if we take the example of downloading that 1Mb web page again, this would take at least 20 seconds to fully display itself on a PC screen using a dial up connection, and between just under 1 and 2 seconds by using the telephone broadband available in Ewelme. In other words, dial up can transfer data at best around 50 kbs, and depending on your location in Ewelme (distance from the BT cabinet at Kings Pool), will transfer from about just under 500 kbs to just over 1Mbs (1000kbs).
Q. What speed can you get with wireless broadband?
A. Speeds in Ewelme have been measured ‘up to’ 7 Mbs. That means that even at its average download rate, that 1 Mb web page would download via wireless 10 times faster than telephone line broadband here, and 100 times faster than dial-up.
Find Out More
Most of the information in this article has been supplied by Neil Blake (01491 826462) and Chris Jenkins (01491 828200), who would be happy to provide more information. Or if you’re really desperate, you could try me (01491 835631). Chris has a mine of information on his own website (www.jenkins-of-ewelme.org.uk). There is other information on the Ewelme website (www.ewelme.info)
If you don’t know what benefit you might get from an internet connection and can’t find a friendly neighbour to show you, then Benson Library has internet-connected computers and is part of the UK Online Centres network, set up specifically to help people get started.
David Cooper
Originally published in the Ewelme News April/May 2011
This website has been set up to provide useful information for Ewelme residents and visitors alike. We hope that it will be of interest to anyone wanting to know more about our beautiful, historic village. 
