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

[Merry]

NDA said:

Is there an advantage to doing this? I have a mobile which does everything - and is unlimited calls... via wifi at home.

If you get a sim with inclusive minutes you can use them....

[IanA2]

Merry said:

NDA said:

Is there an advantage to doing this? I have a mobile which does everything - and is unlimited calls... via wifi at home.

If you get a sim with inclusive minutes you can use them....

Exactly, and in our case it means we have a phone in most rooms which can be handy.

[megaphone]

After some advice on the other thread about unlimited data etc, I'm now looking at testing Three for my home BB. I'm looking at trying a used router off eBay or similar to start with, just incase it doesn't work for me. Can someone tell me which router I should be trying? Ideally one with external antenna option, I'll be running it into my own router so it will need to have a 'modem' or Bridge mode.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

[bitchstewie]

As a FYI I was just on Uswitch and Three have an unlimited 12 month Advanced plan SIM for £18/month.

Goes back to the question what do Three consider unlimited and at what point do they throttle?

Am I stuck in the past where 5-6GB/day on weekdays and maybe 20GB/day on weekends just isn't that much any more if you're streaming rather than downloading stuff at full pelt?

[rfsteel]

megaphone said:

After some advice on the other thread about unlimited data etc, I'm now looking at testing Three for my home BB. I'm looking at trying a used router off eBay or similar to start with, just incase it doesn't work for me. Can someone tell me which router I should be trying? Ideally one with external antenna option, I'll be running it into my own router so it will need to have a 'modem' or Bridge mode.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

I'm using a Netgear LB2120 in bridged mode with a 3 4G SIM connecting into a TP-Link ER5120 Load Balancer.

[IanA2]

bhstewie said:

As a FYI I was just on Uswitch and Three have an unlimited 12 month Advanced plan SIM for £18/month.

Goes back to the question what do Three consider unlimited and at what point do they throttle?

Am I stuck in the past where 5-6GB/day on weekdays and maybe 20GB/day on weekends just isn't that much any more if you're streaming rather than downloading stuff at full pelt?

We’re been Three heavy users (around 500GB pm at a guess) for way over a year. Never been throttled.

HTH

[NoComment]

NoComment said:

Is this Threes cancellation period?

I moved house in October and I'm literally 100 yards from the three mast, consistently get 40-50mb download on my phone but my AI Cube struggles to get over 5mb most days. I'm onto my 2nd Cube now and 2nd SIM and its not improved.

I was hoping to cancel as the girl in the store told me i would get speeds better than my phone due to the antenna in the Cube but this isn't the case whatsoever.

Be interested to know if i can cancel as i was told in store purchases cant be cancelled.

Thanks

NoComment.

As a follow up to this after speaking with Three over the last few weeks again and complaining they have agreed to cancel the Home Broadband contract as its not performing as it should. No financial penalties to me and all i have to do is return the hardware to them.

Great result as they could have held me to the 2 year agreement if they wanted to.

I still don't understand however why Broadband speed would be different to my mobile phone speed.

I'm now going to look into buying a used 4g router and go through the different providers to see which is best for my location.

Any recommendations for a used 4g device?

NoComment

[IanA2]

NoComment said:

NoComment said:

Is this Threes cancellation period?

I moved house in October and I'm literally 100 yards from the three mast, consistently get 40-50mb download on my phone but my AI Cube struggles to get over 5mb most days. I'm onto my 2nd Cube now and 2nd SIM and its not improved.

I was hoping to cancel as the girl in the store told me i would get speeds better than my phone due to the antenna in the Cube but this isn't the case whatsoever.

Be interested to know if i can cancel as i was told in store purchases cant be cancelled.

Thanks

NoComment.

As a follow up to this after speaking with Three over the last few weeks again and complaining they have agreed to cancel the Home Broadband contract as its not performing as it should. No financial penalties to me and all i have to do is return the hardware to them.

Great result as they could have held me to the 2 year agreement if they wanted to.

I still don't understand however why Broadband speed would be different to my mobile phone speed.

I'm now going to look into buying a used 4g router and go through the different providers to see which is best for my location.

Any recommendations for a used 4g device?

NoComment

I've tried two Huawei routers. The B315 and the B618. Former is good, latter is excellent.

HTH.

[beko1987]

I'm in the odd position where my house gets mediocre copper speed (no FTTP here) and average mobile signal. Mines been happily pulling down 20/25mb/s since I fitted it, although granted it is sat in the loft facing in exactly the right angle where it's happiest.

Until last week when the speed dropped right off. Messed about with the admin page, rebooted it, even chatted to 3 to no avail. I then went into the loft and it had fallen over, and was sat on 1 bar (admin console showed full strength).

Oops, picked it back up and it's fine now. Can't say I won't re-look at other options when the contract is up but in a year or so who knows what will be out there. Plus I've got a nice cat6 cable threaded through the house now...

[NDA]

IanA2 said:

If you can get a signal for Three, you can buy truly unlimited everything for 20 squids (or less) a month.

The router came with a SMARTY SIM - but I won't know for a while if the new property has a 4G signal from 3. It does from EE I am told.

But I am still struggling with what's on offer from EE.

They have two distinct deals - Data Only SIM - which is quite expensive and capped and designed for a 4G router as far as I can tell. And a SIM Only Plan, which is unlimited and a competitive price. Will the SIM Only SIM work in a 4G router? If so, why would they have two plans?

It would appear (using common sense) that EE would rather not have customers using a SIM only unlimited plan in a 4G router - but how would they know?

[IanA2]

NDA said:

IanA2 said:

If you can get a signal for Three, you can buy truly unlimited everything for 20 squids (or less) a month.

The router came with a SMARTY SIM - but I won't know for a while if the new property has a 4G signal from 3. It does from EE I am told.

But I am still struggling with what's on offer from EE.

They have two distinct deals - Data Only SIM - which is quite expensive and capped and designed for a 4G router as far as I can tell. And a SIM Only Plan, which is unlimited and a competitive price. Will the SIM Only SIM work in a 4G router? If so, why would they have two plans?

It would appear (using common sense) that EE would rather not have customers using a SIM only unlimited plan in a 4G router - but how would they know?

My Three SIM is u/l everything. I imagine both EE's offerings will work in a 4G router.

I've long since given up trying to work out the logic of provider's sales ploys/strategies.

[NDA]

I finally got to the bottom of the 'Data Only Sim' Vs 'Unlimited Data Sim'. The unlimited data SIM, is designed for use in a handset, but will work perfectly well in a 4G router PROVIDED no more than 11 devices are connected (i.e. live at any one time) and provided that you don't exceed 1000GB a month. If you go over that, then they deem it's gone beyond personal use and you have to buy a data only SIM. Mystery solved.

[bitchstewie]

NDA said:

I finally got to the bottom of the 'Data Only Sim' Vs 'Unlimited Data Sim'. The unlimited data SIM, is designed for use in a handset, but will work perfectly well in a 4G router PROVIDED no more than 11 devices are connected (i.e. live at any one time) and provided that you don't exceed 1000GB a month. If you go over that, then they deem it's gone beyond personal use and you have to buy a data only SIM. Mystery solved.

How would Three know this given it's presumably a function of the router?

[NDA]

bhstewie said:

NDA said:

I finally got to the bottom of the 'Data Only Sim' Vs 'Unlimited Data Sim'. The unlimited data SIM, is designed for use in a handset, but will work perfectly well in a 4G router PROVIDED no more than 11 devices are connected (i.e. live at any one time) and provided that you don't exceed 1000GB a month. If you go over that, then they deem it's gone beyond personal use and you have to buy a data only SIM. Mystery solved.

How would Three know this given it's presumably a function of the router?

I really don't know how they would know how many active connections there are to a router - and I seriously doubt there's some bloke in Luton in front of a bank of screens. But this is what EE told me - so who knows?

[techguyone]

I expect they figure it'll be in a phone being used as a hot spot, if it's connected to a router, I'd doubt they can see anything beyond that.

[thetapeworm]

On the "unlimited" thing I received my final bill through from Three in the post today (presumably because they can't send me a text with it now). I hadn't paid any attention to the previous ones but I found the "outside of your allowance" bit interesting as I was on an "unlimited" package and had no knowledge of an allowance.

[DuckSauce]

NDA said:

The router came with a SMARTY SIM - but I won't know for a while if the new property has a 4G signal from 3. It does from EE I am told.

But I am still struggling with what's on offer from EE.

They have two distinct deals - Data Only SIM - which is quite expensive and capped and designed for a 4G router as far as I can tell. And a SIM Only Plan, which is unlimited and a competitive price. Will the SIM Only SIM work in a 4G router? If so, why would they have two plans?

It would appear (using common sense) that EE would rather not have customers using a SIM only unlimited plan in a 4G router - but how would they know?

I'm on EE for my phone and Vodafone for my unlimited sim in the router. I couldn't get my EE sim to work in the Router, don't know why, but the Vodafone works fine

[NDA]

DuckSauce said:

I'm on EE for my phone and Vodafone for my unlimited sim in the router. I couldn't get my EE sim to work in the Router, don't know why, but the Vodafone works fine

I have set up both 3 (SMARTY) and EE in my new router.... this is in advance of my move to a new property.

The 3 SIM worked immediately - the EE one needed to be put in my iPhone and then activated. Maybe this?

[DuckSauce]

NDA said:

I have set up both 3 (SMARTY) and EE in my new router.... this is in advance of my move to a new property.

The 3 SIM worked immediately - the EE one needed to be put in my iPhone and then activated. Maybe this?

My EE sim is my phone contract, so it's normally in my phone. I put it in the router, to see what speed I could get, but it wouldn't work for some reason

[NDA]

DuckSauce said:

My EE sim is my phone contract, so it's normally in my phone. I put it in the router, to see what speed I could get, but it wouldn't work for some reason

That's weird.... as a recent entrant into this relatively niche technology, I would be interested to find out why.