Three UK - 4G Home Broadband - any users here?
Discussion
Dan_1981 said:
megaphone said:
Dan_1981 said:
If I tether my phone and connect from my xbox will that give the same experience or do I get something different once the sim is in a router?! (idiot question?)
just to test it out i guess.
Worth a try. What speeds do you get when you run a test on your phone?just to test it out i guess.
on the BT WIFI Connection - Down 29.2, up 11 ping 14ms, jitter 1ms
on 3 4G - Down 102, up 7.24 30ms ping 6ms jitter.
Dan_1981 said:
Dan_1981 said:
megaphone said:
Dan_1981 said:
If I tether my phone and connect from my xbox will that give the same experience or do I get something different once the sim is in a router?! (idiot question?)
just to test it out i guess.
Worth a try. What speeds do you get when you run a test on your phone?just to test it out i guess.
on the BT WIFI Connection - Down 29.2, up 11 ping 14ms, jitter 1ms
on 3 4G - Down 102, up 7.24 30ms ping 6ms jitter.
Great thread. Glad I found this as currently researching! 
I'm in a rural position currently on FTTC broadband with speeds around 20 / 1Mbps (down/up), my line length is around 1.5km from the cabinet in the local village - I'm basically at the end of the line! Our connection has generally been fine but we do have times when the connection can be a little intermittent, in the past 5 years we have had to have our drop wire changed due to tree rub and this has helped improve things. While I would jump straight to FTTP given the opportunity, I do not believe we're likely to get it for the next 2-3 years at least.
This has led me to look at mobile broadband for a faster connection, especially on the upload! I'm on O2 and the signal is not great here, but my partner is on Virgin Mobile (EE network) and has full signal. A few speedtests indoors and outdoors during peak times (weekends/evenings) results in speeds around 55 / 25Mbps (down/up). A considerable improvement on our FTTC connection.
A little research reveals that the EE mast is 460 metres away from us towering over some farm yard storage buildings (I'd imagine 25 metres high?) with almost a clear LoS with no trees in the way and just the rooftop of our neighbours house to contend with, which we can easily overcome with an external Poynting aerial if required (yeah I strapped my phone too a long pole and waved it precariously above the roof to check the LoS!!).
This EE mast is on bands 3 and 20 - 2 of the cells on these bands broadcast over our house with one showing as LTE-A. With a modern 4G router such as the Huawei B818 (Cat19) I assume we should be able to use CA for 4G+ so would likely see an increase in speed with EE over the Virgin Mobile sim (which doesn't offer 4G+ from what I understand). As this is a mainly rural area, and based on speed tests run already, I'd imagine contention won't be too much of an issue.
My FTTC contract is up in June next year so I'll probably look at getting a router and an EE sim to try before making a decision on whether to get rid of the landline. I can also imagine I'm more likely to see 5G than FTTP in the coming years so should also see a further increase in performance without too much additional effort!
I'm in a rural position currently on FTTC broadband with speeds around 20 / 1Mbps (down/up), my line length is around 1.5km from the cabinet in the local village - I'm basically at the end of the line! Our connection has generally been fine but we do have times when the connection can be a little intermittent, in the past 5 years we have had to have our drop wire changed due to tree rub and this has helped improve things. While I would jump straight to FTTP given the opportunity, I do not believe we're likely to get it for the next 2-3 years at least.
This has led me to look at mobile broadband for a faster connection, especially on the upload! I'm on O2 and the signal is not great here, but my partner is on Virgin Mobile (EE network) and has full signal. A few speedtests indoors and outdoors during peak times (weekends/evenings) results in speeds around 55 / 25Mbps (down/up). A considerable improvement on our FTTC connection.
A little research reveals that the EE mast is 460 metres away from us towering over some farm yard storage buildings (I'd imagine 25 metres high?) with almost a clear LoS with no trees in the way and just the rooftop of our neighbours house to contend with, which we can easily overcome with an external Poynting aerial if required (yeah I strapped my phone too a long pole and waved it precariously above the roof to check the LoS!!).
This EE mast is on bands 3 and 20 - 2 of the cells on these bands broadcast over our house with one showing as LTE-A. With a modern 4G router such as the Huawei B818 (Cat19) I assume we should be able to use CA for 4G+ so would likely see an increase in speed with EE over the Virgin Mobile sim (which doesn't offer 4G+ from what I understand). As this is a mainly rural area, and based on speed tests run already, I'd imagine contention won't be too much of an issue.
My FTTC contract is up in June next year so I'll probably look at getting a router and an EE sim to try before making a decision on whether to get rid of the landline. I can also imagine I'm more likely to see 5G than FTTP in the coming years so should also see a further increase in performance without too much additional effort!
My fibre broadband has just turned its toes up for the second time in a month. Last time it was a regional outage and took about a day for them to sort it out. This time they reckon its a fault between the exchange and my house and Openreach will have it fixed “within 2-3 working days”. Not ideal. When it is working I get a steady 37mbps down and something like 8mbps up, which is more than enough.
I’m considering getting one of these 4G setups initially as a backup for this kind of thing and then with a view to moving to it permanently when my contract expires next year. I’m happy to buy the router outright, but I don’t want to sign up to an 18-month contract for the SIM and be paying double rates during the overlap period. It there some sort of PAYG solution available for the data SIM that would enable me to play about with it but it would be costing me nothing if the main system is working OK?
I’m considering getting one of these 4G setups initially as a backup for this kind of thing and then with a view to moving to it permanently when my contract expires next year. I’m happy to buy the router outright, but I don’t want to sign up to an 18-month contract for the SIM and be paying double rates during the overlap period. It there some sort of PAYG solution available for the data SIM that would enable me to play about with it but it would be costing me nothing if the main system is working OK?
Silverage said:
It there some sort of PAYG solution available for the data SIM that would enable me to play about with it but it would be costing me nothing if the main system is working OK?
Don't buy a 'data SIM' - just a regular SIM. A data SIM seems aimed at business with higher tariffs and capped data. If you have signal from 3, take a look at SMARTY. £20 a month and no contract. Alternatively a PAYG from EE would work for you.
I am not using my 4G router at the moment, but EE costs £30 a month for unlimited.
Silverage said:
It there some sort of PAYG solution available for the data SIM that would enable me to play about with it but it would be costing me nothing if the main system is working OK?
There are some reasonable ones as a backup - 24 Gb for £45 and lasts 2 yearshttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Mobile-Pay-Broadban...
Silverage said:
My fibre broadband has just turned its toes up for the second time in a month. Last time it was a regional outage and took about a day for them to sort it out. This time they reckon its a fault between the exchange and my house and Openreach will have it fixed “within 2-3 working days”. Not ideal. When it is working I get a steady 37mbps down and something like 8mbps up, which is more than enough.
Good luck with that. Mines been down 5 weeks now, and BT/OpenReach don’t seem particularly bothered in fixing it any time soon.As it turned out it wasn’t just me affected, most (but not all) of our village was off, so that must have prompted Openreach into action and it was back on within 90 minutes.
I’m still going to look at this though as an alternative. It looks like if I do go for an unlimited data deal it’s going to be a fair bit more expensive than the £22.50 I’m currently paying TalkTalk for their standard fibre.
I’m still going to look at this though as an alternative. It looks like if I do go for an unlimited data deal it’s going to be a fair bit more expensive than the £22.50 I’m currently paying TalkTalk for their standard fibre.
Silverage said:
As it turned out it wasn’t just me affected, most (but not all) of our village was off, so that must have prompted Openreach into action and it was back on within 90 minutes.
I’m still going to look at this though as an alternative. It looks like if I do go for an unlimited data deal it’s going to be a fair bit more expensive than the £22.50 I’m currently paying TalkTalk for their standard fibre.
Not had a chance to check but 3 unlimited data sims were £20.I’m still going to look at this though as an alternative. It looks like if I do go for an unlimited data deal it’s going to be a fair bit more expensive than the £22.50 I’m currently paying TalkTalk for their standard fibre.
towser said:
Silverage said:
As it turned out it wasn’t just me affected, most (but not all) of our village was off, so that must have prompted Openreach into action and it was back on within 90 minutes.
I’m still going to look at this though as an alternative. It looks like if I do go for an unlimited data deal it’s going to be a fair bit more expensive than the £22.50 I’m currently paying TalkTalk for their standard fibre.
Not had a chance to check but 3 unlimited data sims were £20.I’m still going to look at this though as an alternative. It looks like if I do go for an unlimited data deal it’s going to be a fair bit more expensive than the £22.50 I’m currently paying TalkTalk for their standard fibre.
I tried 3G for a day, I had around 40mb download and 10 up on a 4g signal.
The only reason why I cancelled the contract was due to a fault on my current line; Vodafone contacted me with an update. Although I have a connection at 11mb - 16 below my guaranteed minimum openreach said they won’t investigate as they are upgrading all the lines in my area by October.
I was impressed with the speeds, but it vastly varied on location of the router.
The only reason why I cancelled the contract was due to a fault on my current line; Vodafone contacted me with an update. Although I have a connection at 11mb - 16 below my guaranteed minimum openreach said they won’t investigate as they are upgrading all the lines in my area by October.
I was impressed with the speeds, but it vastly varied on location of the router.
An update.
My totally broken 26/2 FTTC line was finally fixed yesterday after 5 weeks down. It’s still going to be unreliable though as an ongoing intermittent fault has been traced to a degraded cable from ground to pole, but BT aren’t prioritising fixing it. It took almost 12 months to get that far.
I’ve been monitoring 4G initially intended as a backup. On average I get 50/20, peaking at 90/30 overnight. Lowest is around 26/15. Pings in the low 20’s. No down time at all in the last month.
The 4G has been reliable at a critical time for me - going through redundancy and trying to attend virtual interviews. Plus an autistic son trying to access online learning resources, while attempting to deal with all this change. It was a terrible time for my wired connection to be down, but BT/OpenReach didn’t care.
I have therefore ceased my FTTC line and am going 4G only. I am using the AAISP L2TP VPN to give me a fixed IP and bypass CGNAT.
Monthly savings will be in the region of £20/month and I get some additional data I can gift too.
My totally broken 26/2 FTTC line was finally fixed yesterday after 5 weeks down. It’s still going to be unreliable though as an ongoing intermittent fault has been traced to a degraded cable from ground to pole, but BT aren’t prioritising fixing it. It took almost 12 months to get that far.
I’ve been monitoring 4G initially intended as a backup. On average I get 50/20, peaking at 90/30 overnight. Lowest is around 26/15. Pings in the low 20’s. No down time at all in the last month.
The 4G has been reliable at a critical time for me - going through redundancy and trying to attend virtual interviews. Plus an autistic son trying to access online learning resources, while attempting to deal with all this change. It was a terrible time for my wired connection to be down, but BT/OpenReach didn’t care.
I have therefore ceased my FTTC line and am going 4G only. I am using the AAISP L2TP VPN to give me a fixed IP and bypass CGNAT.
Monthly savings will be in the region of £20/month and I get some additional data I can gift too.
What’s everyone’s router or choice at the moment? I currently have a TP Link MR200 but I’ve been contemplating upgrading to benefit from 4g+. Unfortunately I don’t have a device which will confirm if 4g+ is even available but I’m hopefully.
I looked at the Netgear Orbi LBR20 as recommended earlier in this thread but it’s a touch on the expensive side for an experiment. TP Link MR600 is favourite at the moment but it would be good to hear about experiences with the Huawei kit.
I looked at the Netgear Orbi LBR20 as recommended earlier in this thread but it’s a touch on the expensive side for an experiment. TP Link MR600 is favourite at the moment but it would be good to hear about experiences with the Huawei kit.
JC06 said:
What’s everyone’s router or choice at the moment? I currently have a TP Link MR200 but I’ve been contemplating upgrading to benefit from 4g+. Unfortunately I don’t have a device which will confirm if 4g+ is even available but I’m hopefully.
I looked at the Netgear Orbi LBR20 as recommended earlier in this thread but it’s a touch on the expensive side for an experiment. TP Link MR600 is favourite at the moment but it would be good to hear about experiences with the Huawei kit.
I have one of these:I looked at the Netgear Orbi LBR20 as recommended earlier in this thread but it’s a touch on the expensive side for an experiment. TP Link MR600 is favourite at the moment but it would be good to hear about experiences with the Huawei kit.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06ZZL966Q/ref...
Works perfectly. I bought this model, in preference to others, because it accepts an external antenna - which you may not need.
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