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

[Lemming Train]

Why is it whenever I post in this thread mentioning how great EE are, my service goes to shlt? Currently getting a maximum of 3 Mbps. I was wondering why youtube was taking ages to buffer. That'll be why then. A check of the EE status page on my post code does however tell me that there is scheduled maintenance underway - "network upgrades" apparently, due to be completed within 12 days. This mast I connect to has been flaky for a long time and I've filed plenty of reports about it so fingers crossed they're actually fixing it properly this time and not just bodging it again.

[Troubleatmill]

page3 said:

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

Without a service like dyndns - I can switch my smartplugs on remotely ( eg Kasa ), access each of my cctv cameras etc.
Your mileage may vary - but worst case - subscribe to something like dyndns if you don't get the results you want.

[Composer62]

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.

Hi all, glad I found this thread !

I currently have an EE 4G router and am on their 100gb a month plan which is now becoming very limiting. Looking at their unlimited SIMs today I see they now have a 5G version at £35 a month. I can't see any mention of a 4G unlimited SIM at £31 a month.

Would a 5G SIM work in a 4G box ?

Thanks

[Lemming Train]

Check your router specs.

[Troubleatmill]

Composer62 said:

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.

Hi all, glad I found this thread !

I currently have an EE 4G router and am on their 100gb a month plan which is now becoming very limiting. Looking at their unlimited SIMs today I see they now have a 5G version at £35 a month. I can't see any mention of a 4G unlimited SIM at £31 a month.

Would a 5G SIM work in a 4G box ?

Thanks

A SIM card is a SIM card.
It is the router doing the work.
If you have a 5G router - and 5G is not in your area you will get 4G ( if 4G is in your area )

[Lemming Train]

Troubleatmill said:

A SIM card is a SIM card.
It is the router doing the work.
If you have a 5G router - and 5G is not in your area you will get 4G ( if 4G is in your area )

Is it as simple as that? 5g runs on different frequencies. If your router doesn't have the hardware to 'talk' on those frequencies then he won't be getting 5g at all. ?

[Composer62]

Lemming Train said:

Troubleatmill said:

A SIM card is a SIM card.
It is the router doing the work.
If you have a 5G router - and 5G is not in your area you will get 4G ( if 4G is in your area )

Is it as simple as that? 5g runs on different frequencies. If your router doesn't have the hardware to 'talk' on those frequencies then he won't be getting 5g at all. ?

Thanks for the advice so far.

To give a bit more context. This will be in a holiday home where I have no expectation of getting 5G for quite a while. I'm under contract on the 100GB EE plan until November. When that runs out, thanks to this thread I was thinking that something like a Huawei B535-4G router with an EE unlimited 4G SIM would be a better alternative going forward.

However, looking at the EE site today I can't see an unlimited 4G SIM only an unlimited 5G SIM at £35 per month which still seems a good price. (Unless I'm not looking in the right place on the EE site) Hence the question.

Thanks

[Lemming Train]

Composer62 said:

Thanks for the advice so far.

To give a bit more context. This will be in a holiday home where I have no expectation of getting 5G for quite a while. I'm under contract on the 100GB EE plan until November. When that runs out, thanks to this thread I was thinking that something like a Huawei B535-4G router with an EE unlimited 4G SIM would be a better alternative going forward.

However, looking at the EE site today I can't see an unlimited 4G SIM only an unlimited 5G SIM at £35 per month which still seems a good price. (Unless I'm not looking in the right place on the EE site) Hence the question.

Thanks

Ring the upgrades folks at EE. Your contract is up in a couple of months so I'm fairly confident they'll upgrade you to the phone SIM with a fresh 12 month contract if you ask them.

[Troubleatmill]

They probably wont even send you out a replacement SIM.. Just switch you over.


Im a very happy customer.

[Composer62]

I'll be giving EE a call and reporting back here .. Thanks everyone.

[page3]

Three days with no internet and counting so I finally caved and ordered the Huawei B535 and an EE PAYG SIM (for testing). If it works well I’ll sign up to the EE unlimited monthly. Was trying not to spend as going through redundancy consultation, but a working internet right now is a must!

[Yabu]

Composer62 said:

Thanks for the advice so far.

To give a bit more context. This will be in a holiday home where I have no expectation of getting 5G for quite a while. I'm under contract on the 100GB EE plan until November. When that runs out, thanks to this thread I was thinking that something like a Huawei B535-4G router with an EE unlimited 4G SIM would be a better alternative going forward.

However, looking at the EE site today I can't see an unlimited 4G SIM only an unlimited 5G SIM at £35 per month which still seems a good price. (Unless I'm not looking in the right place on the EE site) Hence the question.
Thanks

EE seem to like playing games with the monthly costs of plans, have a look at offers via app/signed into your EE account as web exclusive offers will show up from time to time

Currently on 4g unlimited plan for £25/month that was on offer in June, EE call centre was a nightmare to deal with though.

[Composer62]

Lemming Train said:

Ring the upgrades folks at EE. Your contract is up in a couple of months so I'm fairly confident they'll upgrade you to the phone SIM with a fresh 12 month contract if you ask them.

Just to close this off. I called EE to discuss this. To upgrade at the moment would cost around £100 as I'm still in contract. If I wait until mid Oct they're perfectly happy to upgrade to an unlimited data phone SIM at around £25 a month. That sounds like a good deal to me so will be doing that when the time comes.

Thanks All.

[page3]

Day 6 of my home broadband being down.

My Huawei B535-4G arrived so set it up with the Smarty SIM for now while I wait for the EE one to arrive. Getting 26/20 compared to my usual 26/2 VDSL, and that’s without trying different positions for the router. I think EE should be better still.

My UniFi USG supports load balancing/fallover so will decide if to keep both (but move to a cheaper isp) or go solely 4G once I’ve tested it for a bit.

[TameRacingDriver]

I hope you have better luck than me; I had the exact same setup and it was pretty poor, the most common issue being web pages stalling / not loading randomly, and I ended up locking the router to 3G instead of 4G as it was faster! I spent quite some time on a big thread on the three forums trying their various suggestions, to no avail. Hopefully you will not have the same issues, but if you do, take advantage of the cooling off period.

[IanA2]

Interesting that everybody seems to rate EE as fastest.

Just done an Ookla with an:

1. iPhone 8 on EE (12.00 & 1.13)
2. Same on wifi with Three (33.80 & 9.78)

Phone in same position on both test & router (Huawei B618) in same room.

Proves nothing, but interesting.

[Lemming Train]

IanA2 said:

Interesting that everybody seems to rate EE as fastest.

Just done an Ookla with an:

1. iPhone 8 on EE (12.00 & 1.13)
2. Same on wifi with Three (33.80 & 9.78)

Phone in same position on both test & router (Huawei B618) in same room.

Proves nothing, but interesting.

Ian, where has "everybody" rated EE as fastest? A cursory check of the last few pages on the thread and I cannot find any such claims.

[page3]

Smarty is a 1 month plan, and I just needed internet.

I’m fully expecting to go with EE as I’m already with them and get 40/20 on my iPhone so expecting the router to do similar or better.

I’m currently with A&A who while helpful, aren’t any more successful in getting openreach to fix the problem. If I move to someone like Zen (also good) that’ll save £15/month which almost pays for the EE connection.

[IanA2]

Lemming Train said:

IanA2 said:

Interesting that everybody seems to rate EE as fastest.

Just done an Ookla with an:

1. iPhone 8 on EE (12.00 & 1.13)
2. Same on wifi with Three (33.80 & 9.78)

Phone in same position on both test & router (Huawei B618) in same room.

Proves nothing, but interesting.

Ian, where has "everybody" rated EE as fastest? A cursory check of the last few pages on the thread and I cannot find any such claims.

Here:

https://www.speedtest.net/legacy-awards/gb/carrier...

and plenty other places.

[Lemming Train]

IanA2 said:

Here:

https://www.speedtest.net/legacy-awards/gb/carrier...

and plenty other places.

Oh I see now, I misinterpreted your post, apologies. Well, I'd say that on a local level the numbers are going to vary from place to place, but for the UK as a whole, I am not surprised to see EE come out top. Certainly from my experiences of travelling around through work (which is 90% rural farms in N Lancs and N Yorks), EE is the network where I always seem to have a minimum of 1 bar of signal when the other networks frequently have no service at all.