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

[audi321]

I bought the Hauwei B311 and it's great (alongside an ID mobile sim only £16/mth Unlimited).

Not seen any throttling yet, but there's time. I'm 2 weeks in and used 150gb already.

The only disappointment to the B311 was that I hoped the ethernet port on the back would be ok to plug into some powerline adapters, but it seems it doesn't (or at least I couldn't get it to work).

[anonymous-user]

I see various routers being discussed, and I want to ask what people recommend for rural areas where signal strength may be a little less than perfect?

I presume some of these routers can accept an external antenna, and if so, can anyone recommend an antenna. I know there are loads of 4G/LTE antennas on Ebay etc but I suspect most of them are just Chinese junk with a couple of wires inside them and probably do more harm than good to the signal strength.

[audi321]

My B311 doesn't have an external antenna option I don't think

[S6PNJ]

Lord Marylebone said:

I see various routers being discussed, and I want to ask what people recommend for rural areas where signal strength may be a little less than perfect?

I presume some of these routers can accept an external antenna, and if so, can anyone recommend an antenna. I know there are loads of 4G/LTE antennas on Ebay etc but I suspect most of them are just Chinese junk with a couple of wires inside them and probably do more harm than good to the signal strength.

I might be able to provide a recommendation in about 4-6 weeks time - I've ordered a B818 and an external omni aerial from a well know (or perhaps little known) Chinese website. I can barely get a 3 signal indoors but outdoors I can often get 3/5 bars so I'm hoping an omni on my roof into the B818 will be sufficient - if not - onto eBay it will go.

[NDA]

Lord Marylebone said:

I see various routers being discussed, and I want to ask what people recommend for rural areas where signal strength may be a little less than perfect?

I presume some of these routers can accept an external antenna, and if so, can anyone recommend an antenna. I know there are loads of 4G/LTE antennas on Ebay etc but I suspect most of them are just Chinese junk with a couple of wires inside them and probably do more harm than good to the signal strength.

I bought this combination, which works perfectly in a house that has zero 4G signal on a mobile phone... the router sniffs out about 2 bars of signal with the antenna which is enough for 30Mbps download speeds and is very stable.

I am not sure why EE have abandoned their 4G SIM only deals - I have a contract that is £30 a month for unlimited 4G data, but that is now £37 a month as you have to have 5G - even though 5G is not available in most of the country.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06ZZL966Q/ref...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00C1DGFPS/ref...

[oilslick]

Lord Marylebone said:

I see various routers being discussed, and I want to ask what people recommend for rural areas where signal strength may be a little less than perfect?

I presume some of these routers can accept an external antenna, and if so, can anyone recommend an antenna. I know there are loads of 4G/LTE antennas on Ebay etc but I suspect most of them are just Chinese junk with a couple of wires inside them and probably do more harm than good to the signal strength.

I've got one of these gathering dust in a cupboard since I moved somewhere with silly fast internet.

If you decide you need one after you've bought a router drop me a PM and I'll stick it in the post.

[IanA2]

audi321 said:

My B311 doesn't have an external antenna option I don't think

It does.

[IanA2]

oilslick said:

I've got one of these gathering dust in a cupboard since I moved somewhere with silly fast internet.

If you decide you need one after you've bought a router drop me a PM and I'll stick it in the post.

Did the Poynting make any difference?

[oilslick]

IanA2 said:

Did the Poynting make any difference?

I put it on an inside window and it bumped me up from approx 20mb to 30mb.

[anonymous-user]

oilslick said:

Lord Marylebone said:

I see various routers being discussed, and I want to ask what people recommend for rural areas where signal strength may be a little less than perfect?

I presume some of these routers can accept an external antenna, and if so, can anyone recommend an antenna. I know there are loads of 4G/LTE antennas on Ebay etc but I suspect most of them are just Chinese junk with a couple of wires inside them and probably do more harm than good to the signal strength.

I've got one of these gathering dust in a cupboard since I moved somewhere with silly fast internet.

If you decide you need one after you've bought a router drop me a PM and I'll stick it in the post.

That is very kind. Thanks.

I will be in touch if I get sorted with a router and decide to go down this route.

[anonymous-user]

NDA said:

<snip>
I am not sure why EE have abandoned their 4G SIM only deals - I have a contract that is £30 a month for unlimited 4G data, but that is now £37 a month as you have to have 5G - even though 5G is not available in most of the country.

EE abandoning unlimited 4G data unless you pay £37 a month has basically ruined my plans.

The area I'm moving to gets reasonably strong EE/O2/Voda signal, but extremely patchy Three reception, and Three are the only ones offering unlimited data for a sensible price.

Very annoying.

[IanA2]

oilslick said:

IanA2 said:

Did the Poynting make any difference?

I put it on an inside window and it bumped me up from approx 20mb to 30mb.

Not bad at all. I've tried rabbits ears (on a B311) and a square mimo thing, neither of which gave much improvement. Cheap and not much use. Can't complain really as we usually get a minimum of 30Mbps.

[IanA2]

Lord Marylebone said:

NDA said:

<snip>
I am not sure why EE have abandoned their 4G SIM only deals - I have a contract that is £30 a month for unlimited 4G data, but that is now £37 a month as you have to have 5G - even though 5G is not available in most of the country.

EE abandoning unlimited 4G data unless you pay £37 a month has basically ruined my plans.

The area I'm moving to gets reasonably strong EE/O2/Voda signal, but extremely patchy Three reception, and Three are the only ones offering unlimited data for a sensible price.

Very annoying.

Can you have the actual signal checked in the new location. I ask as I have Three and EE. Three's coverage checker says I'm just about ok. EE says all is excellent when actually the Three signal is much much stronger. See below, Three is red and EE is blue


[url]


|https://thumbsnap.com/NhsjUWMh[/url]

[anonymous-user]

IanA2 said:

Can you have the actual signal checked in the new location. I ask as I have Three and EE. Three's coverage checker says I'm just about ok. EE says all is excellent when actually the Three signal is much much stronger. See below, Three is red and EE is blue

I don't know anyone with a Three phone, but I suppose I could buy a Three PAYG sim and try it out.

[DuckSauce]

I've just received my new Three sim (unlimited data £26pm on a 1 month rolling contract)

I've swapped out the Vodafone sim into my Rut240 modem, which has an omnidirectional antenna on the outside wall. My speed test is giving me only 4.65Mbps which is really poor.
If I put the sim in my phone and stand by the window, I get 33.7Mbps with 4g+

I'm going to guess the Rut240 doesn't support 4g+

Can anyone recommend a router/modem that would give me the higher speeds?

[anonymous-user]

DuckSauce said:

I've just received my new Three sim (unlimited data £26pm on a 1 month rolling contract)

I've swapped out the Vodafone sim into my Rut240 modem, which has an omnidirectional antenna on the outside wall. My speed test is giving me only 4.65Mbps which is really poor.
If I put the sim in my phone and stand by the window, I get 33.7Mbps with 4g+

I'm going to guess the Rut240 doesn't support 4g+

Can anyone recommend a router/modem that would give me the higher speeds?

A quick Google suggests that the RUT240 is 4G.

[DuckSauce]

Lord Marylebone said:

A quick Google suggests that the RUT240 is 4G.

Yeah, which was fine with Vodafone, but need 4g+ with Three

[NDA]

Lord Marylebone said:

I don't know anyone with a Three phone, but I suppose I could buy a Three PAYG sim and try it out.

Get a card from SMARTY. Costs nothing and is on the 3 network

[anonymous-user]

NDA said:

Lord Marylebone said:

I don't know anyone with a Three phone, but I suppose I could buy a Three PAYG sim and try it out.

Get a card from SMARTY. Costs nothing and is on the 3 network

Thanks!

[MM]

Thought I would give my take on this as this thread inspired me to try 4g at home. I moved to a new house at the end of January. So I moved in and ordered FTTC from ee after install, the download speeds were around 12meg. Worked grand, but working from home and the arrival of a 4K tv, sent me down the path of more bandwidth. I started with a local company that supplied a WiMAX service, advertised at 50meg. I had used them a few years ago at another house and it worked rather well. However after the install the speeds where piss poor. Generally anywhere between 8 and 25meg. This it seams is down to their poor backhaul network. I bought a tp link load balancing router, (later changed to an edgerouter x, then USG) and ran the two connections. This worked for a while until I seen this thread.

Looking out the window I can see an ee tower, however Speedtests on my iPhone XR on ee, didn’t appear good, during the day you could get anything from 10 to 20meg and 90 to 100 in the middle of the night. However I decided to persevere, I bought a 4gee router second hand on eBay, bought an unlock code and ordered a smarty sim. Checking the ofcom website 3 was the only other network that showed 4g and I liked the 30 day contract of the smarty sim. Got the whole lot connected up and was getting anything from 35 to 50meg with the 4gee router. At this point I was using a usg which limited me to 2 wan connections so I disconnected the fttc one.

All was going well until I noticed some websites were not loading on first click, I got it into my head that this was due to me having a double Nat, the 4gee doesn’t work in bridge mode. Couple this to it crashing on me twice. I decided I need to invest in a good 4g router that could work in bridge mode. So I did a bit of searching and the general consensus was a b535 from Amazon. So I bit the bullet and order one. It arrived and I set it up in my roof space where the 4gee router lived. After a bit of testing the results weren’t good. Max speed had drop to about 30meg. I tried it with the bunny ears I had it on the 4gee router, it was even worse. I bought a 4g outdoor antenna, again worse than the internal aerial. So I kept the internal antenna, flicked it into bridge mode and stuck the 4gee router on eBay. While overall speed was down, however I noticed websites appear to load quicker. Ping was also down from about 110ms to 90ms.

The drop in speed from the 4gee router to the b535 had left a sour taste. I knew there was more speed to be had. So I went back on the hunt again. After some research and seeing constant ads on Facebook for guys offering 4g broadband using MikroTik 4g routers i decided I wanted one. So I bit the built and bought a mikrotik lhg lte 6 kit, it gets bad press because it only has a 100meg network port. But I though if I can get close to 100 I’ll be over the moon.

The mikrotik arrived, back up to the roof space, pointed it in the direction I roughly knew where the tower was, it locked on with ca and I did a speed test. Boom, 57 to 60meg. Though it does drop to about 50 in the evenings. So I stuck the b535 on eBay.

During all this I had started to notice that some times Netflix wouldn’t load on me. After a bit of testing I realised that the WiMAX connection I had on wan1 of the usg was pulling both connections down. The simple answer was to turn it off, I fitted it onto WiFi power switch and when the internet got poor I turned it off and all was good. I put this down to the usg randomly picking what connection to use and somethings the WiMAX connection was poor.

Most of the time I was running off the 4g, however i was paying for 2 other connections that I never used. Then I seen a post on think broadband about openmptcprouter. Instead of traditional load balancing it uses multipath TCP to combine multiple internet connections into a single connection and seems to work well with 'unbalanced' connections of different speeds/latencies.

all connections appear on the internet from a single IP - no problems with SSL and able to get full speed on a single stream.

This bonds my 3 connections for the monthly price of a vps, cheapest I could find was £4 month. I’ve see 88meg on speed test. so far it works well..

Overall I’m happy with the results. I will look to move the mikrotik onto my chimney breast the next time hire a cherrypicker. When I’m out of contract on the WiMAX I’ll bin it. Now I Just need to buy a raspberry pi4 to run openmptcprouter on properly as Ive been testing it out on an old pc I have