I sympathise entirely, Thea. We also live 'in the sticks' and had to put up with 1mb or 2mb on a good day. We now have a wireless dish on the roof thanks to a local company called Boundless. We only receive a modest 5mb but that's perfectly fine for our needs. Thankfully we're the 'folks who live on a hill' so no need for a mast or all that digging. Best of luck with Userve, hope they serve you well.

Thank you very much for the useful advice Julie. Unfortunately cable broadband isn't available in our neck of the woods as we did explore all possibilities and drew a blank. However, this new company, who has put the wireless mast on a large hill near us, is our best option I think (if it works!). They delivered the cable reel to us yesterday and all we have to do is dig in about 50metres of the stuff (tricky). I'm afraid rural areas get totally forgotten. We politely cough up our council tax and for that we get......errr... ah, yes, rubbish collection. Nothing else - no street lighting, no road cleaning (although it is frequently covered in mud from tractors), the council doesn't repair potholes in the road, no gritting in bad weather (as far as they are concerned we can slide all the way down the hill to the main road), no snow plough, etc, etc... and the annoying thing is that most of the houses in our village are quite large and probably pay over the odds in council tax. However, I can put up with all that if I can get a decent broadband speed and the promise of 15-20Mb is like winning the lottery as I will not longer have to go off and make a cup of tea to fill the time until a page loads. As for spammers - well you have to feel sorry for the poor mindless little souls, don't you. They are probably sad little people holed up in dark and musty bedrooms with headphones clamped on their heads and their eyes red and bloodshot from staring at a computer screen! They obviously have dull and boring lives and all they can think of to amuse themselves is to annoy other people. The site has suffered from them and multiple posters for as long as can remember - although spookily, multiple posting seems to have stopped. Wonder why? Anyway, thank you for your very helpful response. It was very nice of you to try and help. I suspect that loads of POL members struggle with broadband, so any advice on how to improve things will always be welcome.

I'm unsure if this link below helps you at all, Thea, but it might be worth considering. I thought the download speed was so slow that I'd missed your blog post (only joking, it didn't take three days to appear online!), anyhow I think the gaming "spammers" may be causing our painters-online blog to get a little sidetracked and pieces seem somewhat out-of-context! I'm confident, however, that Dawn will sort out these IT gremlins and rid our blog of the trolls!! If it's any consolation, due to austerity measures, we subscribe to Virgin Media basic Broadband package which "supposedly" downloads at 50Mb, but even this can be intermittent with poor customer care back-up and regular downtime. This link may give you a further idea of the fibre optic options available near your village: https://www.cable.co.uk/local/broadband/shropshire/shrewsbury/ Best Wishes JAM PS It is a pleasure to see the young Thea!