why do broadband companies say that I live too far from the exchange, how far is too far?

Question

I am near Wakefield, Morley and Leeds, I have a wakefield post code, a Morley phonenumber and pay the Leeds council Tax.
4 miles from Wakefield, 6 miles from Morley and 9 miles from Leeds. so why cant I get Broadband. When I ask they say I am too far from the exchange.

Cable companies NTL etc say that they are not laying in this area for upto 5years as there is not enough demand or interest.

Also Cable companies, can only supply through the telephone system, which brings me back full circle.

Answer 1

It's all down to line attenuation, proportional to the length of the connection from your property to the exchange. As attenuation increases so the speed capability will reduce until a certain point at which it becomes unusable. According to local cabling this can be between 3 and 5km. And don't assume you have a 'crow flies' distance from your property. I have two phone lines in my house going to the same exchange but the attenuation on one limits it to 512KB while the other one makes 1MB. If you have cable (NTL?) in your area that may be your best option. Or get SKY broadband.

Answer 2

The further you get from a high speed line exchange, the slower and more unstable the line is.
If I was you, i would get cable broadband, the distance doesnt matter with cable, NTL are the best providers of this. Plus they do a great tv.phone.internet deal, like £30. Might save you a bundle, plus theyve upgraded the internet to 2MP connection so its faster and its unlimited, so you can leave the internet permanetly on. This is handy for downloading movies etc

Answer 3

For DSL broadband , anything more then approximately 3 miles from your telephone company's central office presents problems.

At that distance away from the CO, the signal will be to weak to remain in sync.

Answer 4

the distance that they are referring too is the wire distance from the phone exchange to your house.

This can be confusing as it has nothing too do with the real distance. Because the wire has a winding route through different neighborhoods.

A friend can't get DSL were he lives but people 10 house down (farther away from the exchange) can because he is on the return portion of the route.

Answer 5

The signal degrades over distance. The limit is 3 kilometres

Answer 6

confident, the extra you reside out of your serving telephone substitute, the slower your connection would be. the reason at the back of that's spoke of as attenuation. yet one greater reason is the 'equipment' you have signed up for. Your provider provider can and could, cut back / advance the bandwidth provided to you.

Answer 7

it depends where your telephone exchange is, mine is three miles away and i have got b/b but the max speed i can get is only 1mb so i would imagine that anything over three miles is too far.

Answer 8

to get the most speed out of your dsl account you need to live within 18,000 feet of the phone exchange. it falls off gradually from there.

my mother lives 7 miles from it and they said her dsl would only be about 3 times faster than normal dial up. normal dsl is about 50 times faster.

i live 15 blocks from it. maybe someday i'll get a computer :)

Answer 9

Its because you live in the sticks and will cost too much money for the cable company to lay the cables that far out.
if you lived in a more residential area with more demand for thier services im sure it would not be a problem.

Answer 10

I think it may be 5km (but I could be wrong).