We're moving house next month and are trying to take our internet with us. We live in Edinburgh where almost every house has a Virgin Media connection so, when the usual providers told us there was no capacity for fibre at our current house we went with Virgin expecting to be able to move easily.
Somehow we found the one house that doesn't have a Virgin connection. No problem they said, the engineer will be able to install that easily. Virgin called today to say that the new installation will be more complicated than that- it requires digging up the pavement and they can't say how long that'll take but in the meantime we can't leave the contract without paying £250 (our remaining bill amount for the rest of the contract) but they also won't charge us until the new service is up and running. My experience of Streetworks licenses means this could take three or four months. Can they really lock us in with this? There's no results on Google that I could find for this situation.
In the meantime their suggestion was to get a dongle and use that for internet. We stream TV with a Chromecast and music and do normal internet stuff. Will this sort of thing do that? I've seen 4g internet recommended on here before- is there any particular companies that do good month by month internet this way?
Thanks.
Three do an unlimited data plan (sim only) for £29 a month. Just chuck the sun in a wingle or a 4g router and off you go. Works really well.
That’s what we have (well we signed up for 2 years but that’s because the chance of Fibre ever being delivered here is similar to waking up and seeing a herd of unicorns in the field 😉 ). Had it a week and it’s been great. Things to note
- it’s not as consistent as a fixed line.
- it is definitely affected by the weather
- If you’re on the edge of a cell or the house has thick walls, you’ll need to try a few locations
We’ve been getting approved 20 mbps/sec. Thats easily enough to stream netflix on the tv and a stream amazon prime to my mac full screen. Jitter/latency does not appear to be a problem.
I used a smarty SIM when I moved waiting for connection. £25 for a month. I just used an old phone but if it was longer for a month a would buy a 4g router with an external directional antenna and have it outside pointing at whatever mast is strongest. Ideally mount it on the roof next to your tv antenna.
Yeah ours is a router and we’ll be getting an external antenna. Since the TV signal is broadcast off the ridge transmitter and that’s where the cell service is hosted, that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.
I say ‘we’, I mean someone who doesn’t mind getting on the roof. That’s not me!
What routers would you guys recommend? I've had a google but I know genuinely nothing about this so don't know where to start. There's small cheap ones that are about £25 but will they work? There's some up to £100, but that ends up being a lot of money for a few months' internet use. I think I'll go down the Smarty SIM option for now.
We're in a flat with thick walls but could stick an antenna out of a window onto the flat roof below us - any recommendations for one of these? Do you just plug it into the router?
You're paying for a service you're not receiving, I think if it were me I'd be pushing it straight back to Virgin asking what they plan to do to provide you with connectivity in the interim. A 4G router sounds like a great idea, when are they sending you one?
Either that or they put your account on hold for the time you're without, and resume the contract again once they've connected you back up.
Cougar- they have confirmed I won't be paying anything til the service comes back online.
Fair enough, that's something at least.
The huawei LTE routers work pretty well and also support an external antenna. Depending on the model they are in the £80-£100 range and can be sold off via eBay after a few months use.
Update for anyone that’s interested. The LTE service was a bit patchy. And the router started hanging up. I’ms sure three would have given us another one, but we bought an external ‘omni’ antenna and matching router from Solwise. Antenna needs to be mounted on the chimney stack but I’m not going up there!
Short term ran round the house testing it and ended up on a Velux at the top of the house. Consistently receiving 40+mb down and about 6 up. We did occasionally get close to that on the internal ariels but this seems far better regardless of weather conditions!
I expect another boost once it’s on the stack and away from house obstructions and above the tree line. Just had our final BT bill and packed up our BT phones. Makes me very happy.
Oh also connected up an old SIP phone I had via SIPGATE. No rental/free incoming/pretty cheap outgoing tariff. Works great.