Tavistock Internet Connection.

Hello, I am writing to find out how the Internet Connection in Tavistock is, I have checked what Virgin Media and BT have to offer but they never really tell you the truth on what speed you will actually get.

I may be moving to Tavistock soon, I will be looking for a house next to the main town area. I do a lot of stuff online, gaming, live streaming and video editing so a good internet connection is essential.

Does anybody have any problems with the connection there? are there peak times when connection is bad? is there any news of fibre optic / equivalent being implemented in Tavistock any time soon or nearer the future?

Any information you can provide will be very appreciated, thanks for reading.

That's not true at all I'm afraid. The South West is one of the up and coming areas in the digital domain. Bristol has been a digital hub for years and Plymouth is fast heading the same way. Much of Cornwall already has fibre optic - infact iot's been said that Cornwall has (or will have very soon) one of the best broadband connections in the world. Tavistock unfortunately doesn't look like it's going to get it very soon but I find that the connection is completely adequate. I spend a lot of time online and it's absolutley fine. Tavistock is a fantastic place to live so please don't let the above comments put you off!!

I have just checked my internet connections and my download speed is 2.17mbs and my upload speed is 0.32mbs - which I think backs up what I have said previously. - hope this helps.

Hi Chipperx, I think that we do agree that Tavistock and the local villages are behind the times when it comes to technology, there maybe parts of the South West that do have far better service, but the original question was about Tavistock, not Bristol, Plymouth or Cornwall. The Tavistock area is beautiful, and I certainly wouldn't put anyone off, but facts is we do not and are not likely to have anytime soon the internet speeds that you can get else where in the country - I moved here over TEN years ago, and my internet speed in Sussex (a small village near Eastbourne about 25 to 30 miles to the nearest City) was far superior than what I am experiencing now, TEN years later on. I was only trying to be honest with Mcurtis_7, as they were not getting any help from service providers. I use the internet for both personal and business use, I have a couple of websites, one of which is a free family history site, which I have to upload (photos and updates, etc) and I have had several very early mornings trying to get the site to publish due to my internet upload speed. I guess if you don't have anything of any size to upload then you would not have experienced the bleary eyed early hours praying that the internet does not drop out again! If you are just down loading and using the internet for basic general use then I guess its not that bad. After living in a remote village in the South East, I feel that living about 15 miles from Plymouth City we should have a better service and the local Councils should be more involved in improving internet access for business users to encourage people to this area and not Exeter or Bristol, where they have superior internet speeds. As for my comments about larger companies not being interested in the South West.... well if it wasn't for Sky I would only be able to receive 5 Freeveiw TV chanels - no other choice, no BT Vision as the internet speed is to slow, no Virgin etc. as for the mobile signal well I could go on all night....... no hard feelings just trying to be honest if you have lived somewhere with better internet speed - then you do notice a difference especially if you need to upload things, hopefully Mcurtis_7 can read our comments and make his own conclusion from them :-)

Hello, random 'digital home worker' recently arrived in Tavistock here. I've just started renting a place near the town centre in Tavistock, partly on the promise (from the usual WWW sources) of a reasonable broadband connection. BT says that a historical figure (not anyone in living memory) once used the line I can see as I write, so I have to have a new one installed. No I don't understand either. I'm told it'll take 2-3 weeks before someone will do the 20 minutes' work required.

I got some work done yesterday using a USB 3G stick (at up to 300KB/s once I taped it to the window - good enough for me) but this morning the Fair Usage Policy has kicked in and I can only read emails pleading for me to do work, but not actually exchange the tens / hundreds of MB needed to get anything done.

There are plenty of FON / Openzone access points around me, but they also have Fair Usage Policy which appears to be even more restrictive than my 3G provider. I might pop out in a minute to buy a bag full of SIM cards and attempt to rotate them in the 3G stick. Maybe that will work?

There is one (uintentionally) open WiFi Access Point nearby, but aside from legal considerations I would feel bad about working the owner of it into FUP hell. I think my only other option (I would be delighted to hear of other options!) is to knock on my new neighbours' doors to ask if any of them would mind me using their Access Point by WiFi and sponsoring their bill for 2-3 weeks. It's against usual home broadband T&Cs though...

I imagine once my landline is connected I'll think Tavistock is a perfect place for digital cottage industry. Ask me in 3 weeks' time. Right now I'm feeling more than a little frustrated! I hope this helps, though I can't immediately imagine how...

Done it (neighbour), done it (register interest)! If a single observation helps OP, my neighbour's broadband is 11.5Mbit/s down, .7 up. Something more symmetric would be better for me, but that's the best broadband I've seen in the last 3 places I've lived in the UK.

The 3G speeds I get here (300KB/s down was T-Mobile, I got 5-600KB/s down from Vodafone, near Catholic church) are also better than I've had elsewhere, though a combination of occasional dropouts and Fair Usage Policies make them unusable for work.

Thanks for the feedback guys, Like I said I upload to YouTube and WCM alot, with the gaming videos I do "http://tinyurl.com/8yvepcb and now I am looking into Live streaming while I play as that has been the request of people who follow & watch my stuff.

@Sean4u am I able to get your postcode if at all possible because for Live Streaming I will need a minimum of 3MB, so 7+MB upload is almost perfect and more then enough till 4G hits the South West, which is dated to be releasing to 98% of the UK within the next couple of months (late 2012 I presume)

@Sean4u Does your neighbour experience any problems with the internet at all? like disconnects a lot or maybe peak time internet traffic slows down his/her connection, would be great to know, thanks you :D

Thanks to everybody so far for the feedback and input, really appreciate it!

PL19 8EE

I am experiencing dropouts a few (1-3) times a day (my use - SSH, remote X, video / sound - is almost continuous, so I'm 99% it's not more than this) of about 20 seconds to 2 minutes. I'll ask my neighbour, but it may be something that wouldn't be noticed during occasional surfing and may be due to using wireless in someone else's house. I wouldn't expect dropout-free wireless networking anyway - I hope they don't bring 4G here before FTTH!

I'll update when I get my own line - I'm told it's coming on Wednesday.

Sorry Sean4u hopefully it will get sorted for you - i would add on a completely seperate note, although not that distant I recently had a problem with my home telephone all though it worked, it wasn't my number that I was using, from what I can gather a lady in yelverton had changed to a different supplier, and some how the plugs got put in the wrong place and I ended up with her number, which would not have been a real issue except my home number was linked to my disabled fathers' alarm system, my fathner had just been discharged from hospital after a bad fall, I contacted my phone company at approximately 8 am in in the morning after noticing the broad band was not working, to cut a long story as short as I can, my phone provider that sponser X factor did not do anything about the problem - they told me if I was ringing from my home phone this must be my number :( after numerous calls to try and get my number back I finally spoke to a lady at BT although I was not there customer, and against the rules she understood my concern for my father (who lives the other side of Devon and I was the nearest relative) and gave me a direct number for a BT Open reach engineer who I rang at about 9pm, he promised and did sort the problem out first thing the next morning. A manager from my supplier at that time called my partner, and told him that T T had sorted out the problem - which they didn't - it was only down to our persistance. Although not internet related, I think it is important that other people are aware that not all companies treat consumers in the same way - I have refused to pay the disconnection fee from T T as they have put me through so much stress, and didn't seem to care, where as BT although not there customer at that time did offer me that support.

Finally - BT connected my line today and Zen seemed to have arranged Internet to start immediately. Speedtest.net says 13.8Mbit/s down, 0.9Mbit/s up. That 13.8 is reliable too: I upgraded Ubuntu on my desktop this evening and 1.5GB of software updates took about 15 minutes to download.