Three UK - 4G Home Broadband - any users here?

[Troubleatmill]

Dodsy said:

I average 250gb a month not bad for £18.75 a month !

I have EE unlimited for £32 a month. Bargain.

[beko1987]

Remembered it was still in 3g mode this morning, after my 11am teams call had connection issues during it.

Quick flick back to 4g when it finished and its working fine now, back to 30mb.

I chose 4g only though. This is so if it happens again itll fully die and I can switch it, rather than have it bouncing around trying to flit between the 2, it obviously did a rubbish job at it!

[barryrs]

Mines giving me problems again so it’s getting replaced later today!

Would it be a bit tin foil hatter to suggest these problems have occurred since the Huawei 5g infrastructure issues

[page3]

Can anyone help with my confusion.

Home broadband gone down again. Even when working i get 26/3 max. Therefore I’ve been reading this thread with a view to switching to 4G broadband.

I’m currently an EE customer for two mobiles, so they seem the obvious choice.

For home wireless broadband, a sensible option appears to be getting the ‘unlimited 5g plan’ at around £31.50/month and either a Huawei B525 or B618. Is that correct?

I’m also worried about being locked in if it isn’t any good. Any way to go monthly to start, then move to a longer contract if all works out good?

I am out of contract on my iPhone though, so there might be a cheaper way to have two plans.

As you can tell, I’m confused!

Edited by page3 on Friday 14th August 13:36

[IanA2]

page3 said:

Can anyone help with my confusion.

Home broadband gone down again. Even when working i get 26/3 max. Therefore I’ve been reading this thread with a view to switching to 4G broadband.

I’m currently an EE customer for two mobiles, so they seem the obvious choice.

For home wireless broadband, a sensible option appears to be getting the ‘unlimited 5g plan’ at around £31.50/month and either a Huawei B525 or B618. Is that correct?

I’m also worried about being locked in if it isn’t any good. Any way to go monthly to start, then move to a longer contract if all works out good?

I am out of contract on my iPhone though, so there might be a cheaper way to have two plans.

As you can tell, I’m confused!

Edited by page3 on Friday 14th August 13:36

I kept my land line BB for a couple of months before switching completely, I was nervous/confused too!

That was best part of 2 yrs ago. I started with a B315 which was pretty good, but later moved to a B618 which is excellent. Not bothered with antennae, and get good speeds (anything from 30 to 60 daily).

We have a Three u/l everything for twenty quid a month, but all other devices are on EE. This is because if one provider goes done we're not dead in the water.

Very glad to have made the move, so much better and cheaper!

[Lemming Train]

page3 said:

Can anyone help with my confusion.

Home broadband gone down again. Even when working i get 26/3 max. Therefore I’ve been reading this thread with a view to switching to 4G broadband.

I’m currently an EE customer for two mobiles, so they seem the obvious choice.

For home wireless broadband, a sensible option appears to be getting the ‘unlimited 5g plan’ at around £31.50/month and either a Huawei B525 or B618. Is that correct?

I’m also worried about being locked in if it isn’t any good. Any way to go monthly to start, then move to a longer contract if all works out good?

I am out of contract on my iPhone though, so there might be a cheaper way to have two plans.

As you can tell, I’m confused!

Edited by page3 on Friday 14th August 13:36

Nobody here can help with your confusion . We've all been through the same thing and there are no definitive answers, only possibles, maybes, could dos. You have to put on your man pants, try it and see.

Some general tips and advice picked up along the 4g journey :

1. doing a speed test using speedtest.net is a waste of time as the website is given priority by the ISPs to give artificially good speed numbers in an attempt to get you to switch to them. Use thinkbroadband.com/speedtest instead.

2. doing any preliminary 4g speed tests using your phone is largely a waste of time as the tiny antenna doesn't give a true picture of the actual speeds you'll get with a dedicated 4g router designed for the job. Anecdotal evidence here : my phone doesn't even get a constant 1 bar of signal inside the house and wouldn't even run a speed test. I went ahead and got a B525 anyway and was pleasantly surprised to find I get a consistent 80/10Mbps for the majority of the time.

3. positioning of the router doesn't follow any sort of logic. Putting it in the highest place and the side of the house where you believe the mast is often doesn't increase your signal strength, nor a reduction in noise. In fact it often makes things worse. You will need to set aside a full day to keep moving it around to different locations - even unlikely ones, like inside cupboards - and keep running speed tests until you find consistently good speeds.

4, don't fall for the patter that buying a directional or omni-directional antenna will improve your speeds. You might think you know where your nearest mast is, but that might not be the one your router is connecting to so pointing your antenna in that direction won't help you. Also, other buildings and structures cause the signal to bounce around and reflect, so you might find you get a better signal pointing your antenna to eg. the big apartment block to the west when the mast is to your east.

5. don't think that the rabbit ears which come with the B525 will improve matters either. Experience with mine in various positions and angles found that they reduced my SNR and also my speed by about 25%. I get better speeds using the internal one.

6. contention is generally more of a problem over a 4g connection than with a fixed line. Don't expect to get anything remotely like a consistent speed unless you live in the middle of nowhere. In a residential area you'll possibly see it go above 100Mbps through the late evening and night time, but through the afternoon and evening 40Mbps is probably more to be expected (certainly is in my case).

7. Viz top tip: it's not the end of the world if you get really bad speeds. Being completely mobile means you can sell your house and buy another one in an area where there is a good signal and you can just plonk down your B525 and away you go without the rigmarole of ringing up Sky, BT, VM etc and waiting 3 weeks to be connected.

Edited by Lemming Train on Friday 14th August 18:49

[Troubleatmill]

Lemming Train said:

....
4, don't fall for the patter that buying a directional or omni-directional antenna will improve your speeds. You might think you know where your nearest mast is, but that might not be the one your router is connecting to so pointing your antenna in that direction won't help you. Also, other buildings and structures cause the signal to bounce around and reflect, so you might find you get a better signal pointing your antenna to eg. the big apartment block to the west when the mast is to your east.

Edited by Lemming Train on Friday 14th August 18:49

I have to challenge you on point 4 with the directional antenna.
From having 1 bar and less than 10Mb down - it provided 30-40Mb down ( IIRC )

I was living in the middle of the sticks - but it really did make a difference.

As I have now moved to nearer civilisation - getting 4 bars on the router - adding the directional antenna didn't make a jot of difference.

[Lemming Train]

But I never said "will". I said "might".

I mentioned it because some posters earlier in the thread stated that such an antenna would improve their speed, but that is certainly not a given, mostly for the reasons I've provided. YMMV etc, hence caution needed.

[page3]

Great tips and advice guys. Thanks

Our internet is still down (from 7:30pm yesterday) and I’ve no idea when it’ll be back. Tie-pair issue near DSLAM apparently.

I usually only get 26 down, 2.5 up and drops every day it so, so 4G should be an improvement.

I’m tempted to get the Huawei B311 from Amazon because it’s cheap and use a Smarty sim just to get going. Can be delivered tomorrow if I’m quick. My 12 year old is complaining.

* 535 doesn’t appear to be much more than the 311. Also the tplink gets ok reviews. Don’t need the WiFi as have UniFi router/access points.

Edited by page3 on Friday 14th August 20:01

[Lemming Train]

I advise caution before taking out a contract with Three/Smarty and DYOR. A significant number of users have had problems with them and their reliability is average at best. The mobile broadband sub-forums on the thinkbroadband.com website and also the ispreview websites are well worth reading before making any decisions. EE generally get the most approval. They are not perfect by any stretch and I've had a few rough days with them which have tested my patience, but overall they've been very reliable and caused few issues.

[page3]

Thanks. I’m with EE now, so could just get a payg just to test.

Do any of these routers allow a DMZ to be set? I currently run a router for modem/pppoe duties and a UniFi USG for firewall, routing etc. I enter the UniFi USG IP in the DMZ of the modem. Works better for me than bridge mode, as the UniFi pppoe is quite buggy. I don’t game, but this setup allows Plex to works well.

[IanA2]

Lemming Train said:

I advise caution before taking out a contract with Three/Smarty and DYOR. A significant number of users have had problems with them and their reliability is average at best. The mobile broadband sub-forums on the thinkbroadband.com website and also the ispreview websites are well worth reading before making any decisions. EE generally get the most approval. They are not perfect by any stretch and I've had a few rough days with them which have tested my patience, but overall they've been very reliable and caused few issues.

In balance, whilst I know some folks have reported issues with Three, I have had a pretty good experience. In two years I've only had the occaisional short interuption.

Must be because I live in the middle of field!

[Lemming Train]

page3 said:

Thanks. I’m with EE now, so could just get a payg just to test.

Do any of these routers allow a DMZ to be set? I currently run a router for modem/pppoe duties and a UniFi USG for firewall, routing etc. I enter the UniFi USG IP in the DMZ of the modem. Works better for me than bridge mode, as the UniFi pppoe is quite buggy. I don’t game, but this setup allows Plex to works well.

No idea about your second bit - too technical for me. I know that with EE the B525 doesn't work with SIP phones due to some EE configuration which can't be changed. There was a big thread on ispreview forum about it and I checked it on my Sipura SIP phone and sure enough, it didn't work.

[page3]

For anyone using an EE unlimited SIM (£31.50 /month for existing customers) can you confirm this is allowed to be used in a 4G modem rather than having to use their data sim, which appears to be more expensive and have a low data cap.

[Troubleatmill]

page3 said:

For anyone using an EE unlimited SIM (£31.50 /month for existing customers) can you confirm this is allowed to be used in a 4G modem rather than having to use their data sim, which appears to be more expensive and have a low data cap.

Its what the EE sales person suggested I buy.

Works fine. I have 2 of them running in 4G Routers. ( Been running them for over a year )
I have a third one in my phone.

Edited by Troubleatmill on Saturday 15th August 10:02

[Lemming Train]

page3 said:

For anyone using an EE unlimited SIM (£31.50 /month for existing customers) can you confirm this is allowed to be used in a 4G modem rather than having to use their data sim, which appears to be more expensive and have a low data cap.

Yes. That's what I use. You need the normal phone SIM, not the data SIM. The data SIM has caps. The phone SIM doesn't. Just stick it in your phone first to activate it (you get a few text messages and then have to switch off and on your phone a couple of times for it to register on the network), then take it out and stick it in your B525 and it should work. I made the error of putting it straight out of the packet into my B525 and it wouldn't work which required a call to EE, but they set me straight.

[NDA]

page3 said:

For anyone using an EE unlimited SIM (£31.50 /month for existing customers) can you confirm this is allowed to be used in a 4G modem rather than having to use their data sim, which appears to be more expensive and have a low data cap.

Yes I can confirm this.

I found the different tariffs a little confusing and think the 'data sim' is designed for business use where multiple devices are connected. That was the only possible explanation I could find. I read a thread somewhere that said if you had over 12 devices connected, then you'd be put on the data sim.... I doubt this to be true as I'm not sure how EE would know how many devices are connected to a sim.

However, I can most definitely confirm that the EE unlimited at £31 a month works absolutely fine in a 4G router with no issues at all.

[page3]

Thanks all. Really helpful.

[Troubleatmill]

NDA said:

page3 said:

For anyone using an EE unlimited SIM (£31.50 /month for existing customers) can you confirm this is allowed to be used in a 4G modem rather than having to use their data sim, which appears to be more expensive and have a low data cap.

Yes I can confirm this.

I found the different tariffs a little confusing and think the 'data sim' is designed for business use where multiple devices are connected. That was the only possible explanation I could find. I read a thread somewhere that said if you had over 12 devices connected, then you'd be put on the data sim.... I doubt this to be true as I'm not sure how EE would know how many devices are connected to a sim.

However, I can most definitely confirm that the EE unlimited at £31 a month works absolutely fine in a 4G router with no issues at all.

I have circa 30 devices - IP Cameras, 3 PC's, TV, etc - all running through my EE SIM. No issues.

[page3]

That’s great. One last question if I may (!) does EE give me a public IP address as I would want to use Plex, Nest, Arlo and Ring remotely? Not sure if these services work without. The answers I’ve found tend to contradict each other.

Edited by page3 on Saturday 15th August 15:52