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

[Murph7355]

beko1987 said:

....

Has anyone had any success with 3 at upgrade time? Having done some thought I'm minded to just renew my contract when it's up in a month or so and maybe focus on the router a bit more. Either a cheaper renewal and no new kit/buy the router thats been mentioned above or negotiate a renewal including the router for ideally the same £22/month...

Its the zero cap that's the deciding factor for me, I've never hit a download cap, never had a letter for torrents etc... To get anything the same via the copper wire (no fttp here) I'm at £40ish a month

I can't recall whether you've tried it already, but try an EE sim. You can test them really cheaply.

Think I noted it earlier, but I get 4x the speed with EE than I did with 3.

Then I'd consider a router upgrade.

[beko1987]

Murph7355 said:

I can't recall whether you've tried it already, but try an EE sim. You can test them really cheaply.

Think I noted it earlier, but I get 4x the speed with EE than I did with 3.

Then I'd consider a router upgrade.

No not tried that yet, will order one and see, and close the tab about the huawei b818's... Thanks!

[beko1987]

beko1987 said:

No not tried that yet, will order one and see, and close the tab about the huawei b818's... Thanks!

I'll quote myself here but am I due a parrot?

EE - The cheapest I can get an unlimited SIM for monthly is £36 and that's only when logged into my EE account (my mobile is EE).

I went down the list of MVNO's too (Plusnet, BT Mobile, Virgin Mobile (I was on Virgin Mobile payG in the early 2000's!) and Asda mobile... All are at least a tenner more expensive a month than 3...

I suppose I could buy a microSIM to normal sim adapter and try and get my phone's SIM into the Huawei, although I accidentally ran a speedtest on 4g in the loft and only got 23/24mb (note 10 lite).

Is it as simple as pay a tenner more and it's 4x better? Will adjust my search to finding a £10 topped up SIM or similar for testing I think

[Murph7355]

beko1987 said:

I'll quote myself here but am I due a parrot?

EE - The cheapest I can get an unlimited SIM for monthly is £36 and that's only when logged into my EE account (my mobile is EE).

I went down the list of MVNO's too (Plusnet, BT Mobile, Virgin Mobile (I was on Virgin Mobile payG in the early 2000's!) and Asda mobile... All are at least a tenner more expensive a month than 3...

I suppose I could buy a microSIM to normal sim adapter and try and get my phone's SIM into the Huawei, although I accidentally ran a speedtest on 4g in the loft and only got 23/24mb (note 10 lite).

Is it as simple as pay a tenner more and it's 4x better? Will adjust my search to finding a £10 topped up SIM or similar for testing I think

I pay £24 a month, but do have a business phone with them.

You don't have to have a home broadband specific sim...

You could try the adapter route briefly...the device being used will play a part in what speeds you can get. Just ran a very quick test (and one test does not mean much) but my Note 10+ gave me 25% less speed than my B818 router...both on EE. Both roughly in the same location in the house.

Note that depending upon which mast etc you are getting your signal from, different sims may work better in different locations (both within the house and nationally ).

[page3]

beko1987 said:

EE - The cheapest I can get an unlimited SIM for monthly is £36 and that's only when logged into my EE account (my mobile is EE).

Note that EE don’t do any unlimited plans any more, you’re limited to 600Gb (personal) or 1Tb (business) before heavy traffic throttling and potentially being told to leave. They also don’t offer bandwidth tracking or allowance gifting on these plans.

Edited by page3 on Monday 26th April 18:32

[boxst]

page3 said:

Note that EE don’t do any unlimited plans any more, you’re limited to 600Gb (personal) or 1Tb (business) before heavy traffic throttling and potentially being told to leave. They also don’t offer bandwidth tracking or allowance gifting on these plans.

Edited by page3 on Monday 26th April 18:32

There is a £41/month one that is unlimited. Not sure that it is three times better than, erm, three...

[Yabu]

boxst said:

page3 said:

Note that EE don’t do any unlimited plans any more, you’re limited to 600Gb (personal) or 1Tb (business) before heavy traffic throttling and potentially being told to leave. They also don’t offer bandwidth tracking or allowance gifting on these plans.

Edited by page3 on Monday 26th April 18:32

There is a £41/month one that is unlimited. Not sure that it is three times better than, erm, three...

Currently paying for sim only, £25 a month for EE 4g “unlimited”
Just had a look at sim only, looking on EE 5G “unlimited” is £28 a month with one smart benefit included, Apple Music, Apple TV, Amazon video, video data pass etc

[theboss]

boxst said:

There is a £41/month one that is unlimited. Not sure that it is three times better than, erm, three...

That must be the one I'm on which I'm assured is unlimited. Currently juggling that with Voda LTE and Airband fixed wireless. I'll have to dump more than 1TB across it and see what happens.

[page3]

theboss said:

boxst said:

There is a £41/month one that is unlimited. Not sure that it is three times better than, erm, three...

That must be the one I'm on which I'm assured is unlimited. Currently juggling that with Voda LTE and Airband fixed wireless. I'll have to dump more than 1TB across it and see what happens.

If EE unfortunately it’s not. 600Gb (or 1Tb for business) “fair use” policy. Traffic heavily throttled above this, with option to terminate your account. Unlike proper capped tariffs this is actually worse because you cannot see usage from the EE app and you cannot gift data from other accounts, even if you have plenty spare. To show how mercenary EE are, they reduced this limit from 1Tb at the start of lockdown. Nice guys.

Ps. I’m paying £21/month for EE “unlimited”. £10/month for AAISP VPN (for fixed IP) and optionally use Smarty PAYG unlimited (£20/month) once I run out of EE unlimited data.

Edited by page3 on Tuesday 27th April 08:33

[theboss]

page3 said:

If EE unfortunately it’s not. 600Gb (or 1Tb for business) “fair use” policy. Traffic heavily throttled above this, with option to terminate your account. Unlike proper capped tariffs this is actually worse because you cannot see usage from the EE app and you cannot gift data from other accounts, even if you have plenty spare. To show how mercenary EE are, they reduced this limit from 1Tb at the start of lockdown. Nice guys.

Ps. I’m paying £21/month for EE “unlimited”. £10/month for AAISP VPN (for fixed IP) and optionally use Smarty PAYG unlimited (£20/month) once I run out of EE unlimited data.

Edited by page3 on Tuesday 27th April 08:33

I'll find out soon enough.

The router I use tracks the data transferred to each service provider and can remove the link from the routing table once a threshold is reached within a defined billing period. I hope I don't have to use it.

[beko1987]

I might go back to plans of sticking with 3 and upgrading the router then!

Looks like the 3 SIM is the only proven truly uncapped offer left for sub £30... hope it lasts

[IanA2]

beko1987 said:

I might go back to plans of sticking with 3 and upgrading the router then!

Looks like the 3 SIM is the only proven truly uncapped offer left for sub £30... hope it lasts

I'd be very surprised if a B818 did not increse your speeds considerably.

I was impressed by the huge difference I got when I moved from a B311 to a B618.

[Murph7355]

page3 said:

If EE unfortunately it’s not. 600Gb (or 1Tb for business) “fair use” policy. Traffic heavily throttled above this, with option to terminate your account. Unlike proper capped tariffs this is actually worse because you cannot see usage from the EE app and you cannot gift data from other accounts, even if you have plenty spare. To show how mercenary EE are, they reduced this limit from 1Tb at the start of lockdown. Nice guys.

Ps. I’m paying £21/month for EE “unlimited”. £10/month for AAISP VPN (for fixed IP) and optionally use Smarty PAYG unlimited (£20/month) once I run out of EE unlimited data.

Edited by page3 on Tuesday 27th April 08:33

Have you actually reached the limits? What did they throttle the speed back to?

Business tariffs are still 1Tb FUP.

Personally I don't think their speed and FUPs are coincidental...

beko1987 said:

I might go back to plans of sticking with 3 and upgrading the router then!

Looks like the 3 SIM is the only proven truly uncapped offer left for sub £30... hope it lasts

Do you know how much data you use?

There are two of us working from home here with two kids who watch most things through streaming services now and we're not quite hitting 600Gb per month at the moment (520Gb-560Gb range I think).

I'm on a business tariff so have the 1Tb FUP...there's no way I would downgrade the speed unless I could see I was going to regularly hit the limit and EE were definitively going to throttle my account.

I would still recommend trying an EE sim for a month. See if the speeds improve materially and check what data you're using.

[beko1987]

Murph7355 said:

Do you know how much data you use?

There are two of us working from home here with two kids who watch most things through streaming services now and we're not quite hitting 600Gb per month at the moment (520Gb-560Gb range I think).

I'm on a business tariff so have the 1Tb FUP...there's no way I would downgrade the speed unless I could see I was going to regularly hit the limit and EE were definitively going to throttle my account.

I would still recommend trying an EE sim for a month. See if the speeds improve materially and check what data you're using.

Fair shout, 358gb last month, so way under any 600gb hard limit...

I've amended my plan to just buying a sim adapter to turn my nanosim into ye olde style size. Doing a speed test in my garden on 3 bars of 4g I still hit a higher speed test than the router in the loft.

[page3]

Murph7355 said:

page3 said:

If EE unfortunately it’s not. 600Gb (or 1Tb for business) “fair use” policy. Traffic heavily throttled above this, with option to terminate your account. Unlike proper capped tariffs this is actually worse because you cannot see usage from the EE app and you cannot gift data from other accounts, even if you have plenty spare. To show how mercenary EE are, they reduced this limit from 1Tb at the start of lockdown. Nice guys.

Ps. I’m paying £21/month for EE “unlimited”. £10/month for AAISP VPN (for fixed IP) and optionally use Smarty PAYG unlimited (£20/month) once I run out of EE unlimited data.

Have you actually reached the limits? What did they throttle the speed back to?

Yes, I regularly exceed 600Gb. Pretty easy for a three person family to do. First time I went around 100Gb over and didn’t notice a difference. Second time was massively throttled so as to be unusable, so I popped out the SIM and put a month on my Smarty PAYG SIM. EE should be upfront, it shouldn’t be a service lottery.

[megaphone]

page3 said:

Murph7355 said:

page3 said:

If EE unfortunately it’s not. 600Gb (or 1Tb for business) “fair use” policy. Traffic heavily throttled above this, with option to terminate your account. Unlike proper capped tariffs this is actually worse because you cannot see usage from the EE app and you cannot gift data from other accounts, even if you have plenty spare. To show how mercenary EE are, they reduced this limit from 1Tb at the start of lockdown. Nice guys.

Ps. I’m paying £21/month for EE “unlimited”. £10/month for AAISP VPN (for fixed IP) and optionally use Smarty PAYG unlimited (£20/month) once I run out of EE unlimited data.

Have you actually reached the limits? What did they throttle the speed back to?

Yes, I regularly exceed 600Gb. Pretty easy for a three person family to do. First time I went around 100Gb over and didn’t notice a difference. Second time was massively throttled so as to be unusable, so I popped out the SIM and put a month on my Smarty PAYG SIM. EE should be upfront, it shouldn’t be a service lottery.

Are you using a 'phone' sim or a proper 'BB' sim? Do same limits apply to a proper 'BB' sim?

[Murph7355]

megaphone said:

Are you using a 'phone' sim or a proper 'BB' sim? Do same limits apply to a proper 'BB' sim?

I don't believe they're allowed to differentiate any longer.

The FUPs are clear in their t's and c's. Perhaps calling it "unlimited" is a stretch...I live out in the sticks and suspect there isn't much congestion on the mast out here...I might have to try downloading harder and see what they do

[Gad-Westy]

Murph7355 said:

megaphone said:

Are you using a 'phone' sim or a proper 'BB' sim? Do same limits apply to a proper 'BB' sim?

I don't believe they're allowed to differentiate any longer.

The FUPs are clear in their t's and c's. Perhaps calling it "unlimited" is a stretch...I live out in the sticks and suspect there isn't much congestion on the mast out here...I might have to try downloading harder and see what they do

I've been keeping an eye on our usage. Family of 4, kids streaming, parents WFH, cloud backups etc. We're definitely running close or over 600gb/month (combination of up and down). I'm going to move us over to a business contract when I get around to it just to give us some headroom.

The 2 things that leave a sour taste about this are a) calling it unlimited. Yes, we should all read the small print but that is deliberately misleading. and b) if your internet slows down, you have absolutely no idea if it's a temporary fault that will last 5 minutes or EE throttling you for however long deemed necessary.

And the most annoying thing is that for us, it still seems to be head and shoulder the best option. Arrrrghh.

[page3]

Murph7355 said:

megaphone said:

Are you using a 'phone' sim or a proper 'BB' sim? Do same limits apply to a proper 'BB' sim?

I don't believe they're allowed to differentiate any longer.

The FUPs are clear in their t's and c's. Perhaps calling it "unlimited" is a stretch...I live out in the sticks and suspect there isn't much congestion on the mast out here...I might have to try downloading harder and see what they do

Phone SIM.

The t&c’s couldn’t be less clear or hidden, in my opinion. First you have to find them. Then the right ones, which aren’t obvious. Then if it applies to your contract date. Then of course they change them retrospectively after signup (which is what happened in my case). Additionally they use pretty woolly and undefined terminology, eg their definition of the term “tethering” appears after investigation to be their own definition and not that of common understanding.

Agree totally with Gad-Westy, it’s still by far and away the best for us, coming in at under half the latency of Three and three times the speed.

Btw we managed 71Gb yesterday just doing Mac/iOS/software updates!

Edited by page3 on Thursday 29th April 08:01

[Murph7355]

Gad-Westy said:

...

And the most annoying thing is that for us, it still seems to be head and shoulder the best option. Arrrrghh.

page3 said:

...
Agree totally with Gad-Westy, it’s still by far and away the best for us, coming in at under half the latency of Three and three times the speed....

Same here. Literally 4x faster than 3.

As noted before, I do not think these things (FUP and speed) are unrelated. It sounds like a firm fully managing its network.

Whether the FUP limits make the "unlimited" tag dishonest or not I'm not sure....I think that will depend on how often they elect to throttle connections/cut people off. I suspect, if network management is behind this, that will also depend on your location. I agree it's very borderline regardless.

https://ee.co.uk/help/help-new/offers-and-services...

(That was linked to from the "Full FAQs" link here - https://shop.ee.co.uk/price-plans/unlimited-data-p...

Granted it's at the bottom of the page

The Legal Bit said:

Unlimited Plans: Uncapped and Unlimited data - If you're outside the UK you'll be subject to the data fair use policy cap (given in your roaming plan). Personal, non-commercial use only. If you regularly tether 12 or more devices, we will consider this non-personal use and have the right to move you to a more suitable plan. We will consider usage above 600GB/month to be non-personal use and have the right to apply traffic management controls to deprioritise your mobile traffic during busy periods or to move you to a business plan....

It isn't saying they definitively will cut you off at the knees, just reserving the right to. How many people on these plans that impacts I don't know.