Mrs FD is going to be living away in rented accommodation for the next 6 months during the week.

Her mobile currently gives her 2gb per month data (under contract) with wifi hotspot, ok for accessing email etc but not enough for iplayer etc.

What is the most cost effective way of get reasonable data quantities etc? i.e. Getting a dongle, increasing current data allowance, signing up to a landline broadband package (there is a telephone line in to the house)

This will all then happen again immediately for another 6 months however in a different part of the country so we assume this rules out taking out a 12 month broadband contract

Ta

The bundled WiFi offerings from O2 / BT / Sky etc.
Are you already a customer that offers this and can you get that flavour in the new accommodation?

As a BT customer, I use the free BT Wifi hotspots A LOT.

Sky have Hotspots but the first house is in a small village so 99% certain there will be no hotspots

Edit: just checked and no hotspots for about 10 miles !

If theres 4g available, something like this?

It’s a one month contract, so you can probably suspend it and reactivate next time you need it?

Huawei HomeFi 40GB.
1 month contract

40GB data
Huawei HomeFi
1month contract

Includes:

Go Binge

£24
per month. *
* Price includes £5 monthly discount for paying by a recurring method, such as direct debit. Each May, your monthly package price will increase by an amount up to the RPI rate, published in the February that year.
Plus £59.99 upfront cost.

https://www.tentel.co.uk/bundles/broadband

One of our family uses it – and it is excellent.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M3VJ2B2 were great value around Xmas, ~£30 for 24GB pre-loaded to use as you pleased over 24 months iirc, but I’ve not seen them in stock now for a while.

Got an EE phone sim with 20Gb for £20 a month (plus VAT) – it was a black friday deal but the sometimes come up at other times. EE has it at £21 although with a 12 month term :

https://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-phone-deals/sim-only-deals

EE allow tethering as well.

Got one for the ex and she only uses that for her Internet and phone and doesn’t bother with a land line, and she reckons the amount of data is OK, and she gets 30-40mb download speeds.

Are you sure moving house requires breaking a contract?

People move house all the time, I’m sure there would be more fall out if everytime you did you got stung by a exit clause fee for every utility.

You can move connection easily enough.

Tell her to ask around locally,
there might be only one network available if it’s quite rural. I bought a TP link m7350 for £70 at maplin and sold it on eBay for £56, when finished.
Data only SIM, I managed with 16gb a month,
but that was no streaming TV or much YouTube type stuff.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/4g-mobile-broadband-for-the-house-experiences

Well it looks like we are going for a Three solution.

4g Home Fi Wifi box (needs plugging in to the wall for power) 40gb usage per month for £24. A local store said you can get a 100gb version too, but after a bit of rinning around I havent managed to find this…

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devices/Huawei/HomeFi

FD thats a good deal, we have a mobile 4G dongle from Three and its £24 a month for 20gb on a 2yr deal

You but the Mifi box cheap on ebay and then if you want to use 3 go for this.

All-you-can-eat Data.

500 Minutes.
3000 Texts.

No contract.
Valid up to 30 days.
When you Top-Up
£25

Ah wait.

Some of our other Pay Monthly plans as well as Pay As You Go plans come with all-you-can-eat data, but they don’t allow tethering.

😥

Yep three allow up to 30gb max tethering, so I discounted it.

However surely it would be possible to use an iPhone (we have a iPhone 5 just sat in a cupboard) attached to a hdmi lead ? After all it’s using iplayer etc that will take the data.

30gb of tethering data would be fine for work purposes etc, just a bit faffy.

I guess that would also mean having to get the iPhone unlocked from EE

That looks too good to be true funkyD, but I might be missing something (haven’t really scrutinised it). Can’t help thinking that there must be some catch, as on the face of it they will send you a Huawai mifi box and SIM and in theory you only have to use it for a max of one month? Shirley there’s something in the small print about the cost of the hardware?

EDIT: Ah, £60 upfront cost. So, write it off over 6 months = £29 pm for 40gb pm?.

I guess that would also mean having to get the iPhone unlocked from EE

I’m not sure about that. Mine acted like a normal home broadband router. So, my phone was PAYG vodafone 4G blah de blah no tethering, but linked to my mifi box like was wifi on a normal home broadband. data only SIM cards in a MiFi box aren’t the same as Data/calls/texts SIM cards in a phone, they act like home broadband routers IME. NB I’ve never owned an iphone, ipad etc, but they should just use it like a home broadband wifi router.

Have the same issue – went for a proper BB unlimited connection from TVnow as it was the best value. 30 days notice.

You can generally migrate ADSL between properties so I’d just phone your preferred provider and ask, but some ISPs (such as mine, https://aa.net.uk/broadband-home1.html) do six month minimum term on broadband.

So got the 40gb Homefi from 3 for £24 (12 month contract)

At home we are getting download speeds of about 15mbps from it. Not bad

Apparently they are about to bring out 100gb for £30!

Unfortunately not quite enough data for us to get rid of the home land line

15mbps was what I was getting last year with my Mobile wifi box with EE Data SIM, Skipton area (Carleton in Craven village, to be precise)

vodafone is £25 a month for 50Gb – with a bit of cash back on top if you shop around. 30 day rolling contract. Just get your own 4g router / wingle and that’s it.

I know I’ve come late to this but:

However surely it would be possible to use an iPhone (we have a iPhone 5 just sat in a cupboard) attached to a hdmi lead ? After all it’s using iplayer etc that will take the data.

Yes, there’s a lightning to HDMI dongle that would do this.

When I was in a similar Mrs FD I had a Vodafone dongle for the first six months, which was OK (bearing in mind this was pre-4G). For the next nine month stint I stayed in a friend of a friend’s spare room as a lodger and used their wifi, which frankly was better on so many levels. Bearing in mind anaesthetic rota patterns may differ from orthopaedic ones, I wasn’t actually there that much anyway.

A lot restict tethering on mobile sims though, which is why the 3 mifi is a good deal. Although somewhat expensive it’s a good alternative.

It’s to stop people using thier phones as hot-spots in lieu of proper broadband and saturating the 4g bandwidth with video streaming, torrents and news groups, the network can’t cope.
If you start using 200gb a month on a 4g mobile, they’ll soon throttle your connection.

A lot of people were doing that, and constantly downloading torrent and other bandwidth intensive activities on 4g, and it was spoiling connectivity for normal users.

The mifi is specifically aimed as a broadband substitute, but it’s limit in terms of total downloads per month for the same reasons. It doesn’t have the same restrictions on the account, but you are capped at 30-50gb a month total.

Mate ran his office for 8 people on PAYG data SIMs in a router whilst waiting for a permanent connection. It took 6 months but there again he was in a rural backwater (0.5 miles from Leeds station).

Are sky doing their £9.50 a month unlimited broadband and lne rental still?