Scargill

Archive for December, 2025

A lot has happened since this original post in December a year ago but I’ll update it rather than start a new post which no doubt will happen before the end of 2025.

Over Christmas 2024, we were back in Bellingham for a while – lots going on around the turn of the year 2024-2025 – eye operations – simple enough (cataracts, both of us – now resolved) but with attendant healing delays before any travel.

Back then we were having visits from relatives and visiting friends, watching the ever-present drizzle and waiting as usual for Internet providers…

Maureen and I are both well, but not unusually we’re continuing the struggle to get broadband here in Bellingham. Having managed on a 4G connection for some time, just, we’ve been keeping up to date with broadband promises and disapointments in the area. Recently I’ve noticed ads for a company called B4RN (that’s not a spelling mistake) and back in the summer they started pushing their service down our postal throat, I contacted them and to cut a long story short, they are making inexpensive fibre a reality in Bellingham – but only if you live in the right place.

After a few emails they owned up that they have no plans to kit out our side of the Bellingham bridge… how they get away with that is beyond me – so as has been my long-term experience in rural parts of Northumberland, we’re stuck with the lack-lustre 4G option (poor signal) or something based on Openreach landlines.

Earlier in December 2024 we decided to go with a company called OneStream who it seemed could finally offer a medium speed broadband option at sub-£20 – handy if you’re not here all the time.

The service was to go live on December 24, 2024 – and we’re told it did – however we were also supposed to receive a modem mid-December – which we didn’t despite numerous “chats” with the company. December 28, 2024 – still no modem. By now I was beginning to think this was going to be another waste of time. Thankfully the 4G held up well enough to get our fair share of christmas TV, always handy when the weather is poor.

Update August 2025

In the end, the OneStream connection as proven reliable since installed – with only one outage. Speed is however painfully slow as it is based on the soon-to-be-abandoned-for-good BT landlines. Remember, just under £20 UK pounds a month for slow broadband in Bellingham. Meanwhile back in Spain, we’re enjoying fast 5G – faster by some way than even Starlink. The 5G SIM from Digimobil curently costs around 15 euros a month all in.

I’m hoping that by the end of 2025 we can get some decent fibre or 5G in the tech-abandoned-end of Bellingham. Stranger things have happened. For more on our current activities including our recent trip to the USA, see the spanish site.

Update December 2025

But now it’s becoming increasingly obvious my earlier prediction for fibre was wildly optimistic, and I think we’ll be on the old BT line for a little while longer in Bellingham. Meanwhile, it’s 4 a.m. in the morning on December 5th. I commented higher up on the price of 5G in Spain – again a lot has changed – my bill now comes to around 16 euros a month there and that includes totally unlimited use of both my phone and router – a far cry from the situation in the UK. It’s 5am in the morning on December 6th, 2025 and I suddenly got the urge to update this blog. We are returning to the UK later this month, and we’ll be there over the Christmas period.