Hi guys,

Going to be moving into our new home which is having extensive groundworks undertaken which means a physical landline cannot be put in for Internet just yet.

I was looking at the sim routers with 4g and wondered if anyone uses them for tv streaming such as bbc iplayer.

It’s sole use will be to entertain a 3 year old with cbeebies.

Kind of hoping my daft idea will work. We get good 4g connectivity here….

Does anyone have any experience of how it works that could advise?

Cheers 🙂

Yes that will work. Check for data usage limits and any excess costs. FYI we can stream stuff using a 3G wifi dongle (from Three), not ideal but do-able. IMO its better to download the programmes as watch later rather than stream live which of course you can use a normal tv for. For 9 months I used the dongle instead of house broadband as we weren’t around much and so cancelled the BT. Fine-ish for web browsing, email etc. FWIW I am thinking of upgrading to a 4G dongle, I think my 3G one is 5 years old now. You can put the dongle on a window sill for best reception and/or leave it plugged into the charger

If you buy one from Three I could be interested in taking it off you once you are done with it

Nice one thanks Jambalaya. I’ve been looking at the routers that accept the 4g sim to allow multiple devices to connect at once.

Seems like it will be the best option.

Thats what I have, was called something like a “mobile wifi hub” its from Huawei

As Mrs B is French with French phone contract she uses it when in uk for ipad/phone data works very well. IME much better solution than buying say an iPad with a SIM and contract

Something like this would work well:

If you keep a lookout EE do a 50gb for £25 mobile broadband sim offer every month or so.

I use one for broadband outages. The biggest challenge will be finding a tariff thay will alow you to stream video. Mine is capped at ‘reasonable use’, which is entirely unreasonable…

A router like this is good:

Basically a standard WiFi router that allows you to plug a usb dongle in the back. Handy if you need to connect stuff via an Ethernet cable, which the mini 3g modems (huawei etc) usually don’t have.

This is what I’ve got after reading some reviews http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/tp-link-m7350-4g-mobile-wi-fi-device-a87tc

Has good reach ie upstairs and pretty simple , I think you could sell it on eBay afterwards for a decent price (I looked at buying 2nd hand off eBay but they were going for not much less than new).

Sounds like you’ll want a monthly SIM deal if it’s only temporary, which means that you won’t get a fantastic deal. I’m paying £20 for 10gb with Vodafone on a payg monthly deal as I only need it for a few months. On a thread yesterday some people were paying £13 for 20gb but on a 12 month contract. You might find that streaming telly might eat data very quickly.

I have a Draytek modem/router that will also take in a USB cellular modem but it’s a bit selective as to which USB modem it’ll take.

We did a huawei thing with three for a while, we had a shit phone signal where we lived so it was pretty ropey but worked much better away from home. Still needed switching on and off occasionally, you wouldn’t mistake it for a proper broadband connection. With a good 4g signal I expect it will work out pretty well for you. Up to 5 devices connected seems pretty standard.

Ever thought of an aerial on top of your chimbley?
Perfect for telly but not much else…

Thanks guys that’s awesome and really appreciate the help.

I’ve been up there and run in satellite cable and have a free view box on loan so that’s the tv sorted.

Did think about using a usb dongle in my laptop and turn it into a wep protected hotspot but I can’t seem to locate the dongles wep code annoyingly.

Will do a bit more research into it tomorrow. Thanks so much for the help.

if you’ve already got an all you can eat data plan on your phone – you could get a chromecast and just cast the phone to that.

you can pick up a 2nd hand chromecast for peanuts these days although if it’s iplayer I’m not 100% if that will let you cast it so this could be an issue.