Is anyone using 4G in the home as a replacement for traditional or fibre broadband?

My Virgin deal (Vivid 100) has come to an end and shot from £29 to £50.50 a month.. I refuse to pay that much for internet and it’s not even very fast IMO.. they said they’d “do me a deal” and drop it to £49.. jokers.

Anyway, it appears if you want fibre in my area it is Virgin or nowt.. then I’m onto traditional broadband through the phone line (BT, TalkTalk, etc. all coming up as a No for fibre).

This has got me thinking about just ordering a 4G box for the house. Three are offering unlimited data for £22 a month. I can’t see to find any detailed signal strength checkers to compare the different suppliers – it’s all just Yes/No on availability and that’s it.

Our use isn’t exactly heavy. Worst it would get would be Netflix on the tellybox and me on work laptop. Just the two of us and baby in the house.

Any advice greatly received.
Cheers

I know someone who does. But they live in the sticks where they get at best 2mb down, and less most of the time.

We got the Three package earlier this year. It’s crap 90% of the time but I think that’s down to the router that they supply. I’m also on Three for my mobile phone and that works very well.

Three customer service is rubbish.

I’d only recommend it if you’re prepared to buy a better router.

That’s what I do. There’s no fibre up here and broadband through the phone line was £30 a month for speeds that dropped to 0.5mbps in the evening. Now using 4g via a basic plug and play router and getting around 15mbps. A virgin sim card only contract gets me 200gb per month for £22.

I’ve just got a Three one, unlimited data, Huawei box..seems fine tho the Wi-Fi is a bit weak, but that could be the solid stone walls where I live. Fast enough to not notice, and can stream Netflix etc

I’ve tethered from phone using Three unlimited data before due to the Home broadband going down. I actually get 3 times the speed of my home broadband so it works very well.

I have the Three 4g at home using the little white router they provide. The connection can be temperamental to say the least, sometimes FTL while glacial at best at others. It can also drop in and out at random which can be a nuisance. My thoughts are firmly in the “is great when it works but the router is pants” camp so following with interest to see what router recommendations come up.
Conversely we use this when we go camping, Cornwall mainly, without any issues at all yet struggle in a suburban area.

Works well assuming coverage is good.

The big catch is that you need to be sure the plan you’re using is suitable for this sort of use, a typical phone plan won’t cover the data usage you’ll hit and if they notice they’ll able to just cut you off.

For Three for example, enter your post code into http://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband. They’ll give me a Huawei HomeFi on a contract (boo) for £22/month (which is quite a lot less than my BT landline plus ADSL!). Wifi is most likely a bit pants, but easy enough to just plug it into a router with a decent wifi AP.

For bonus fun you could disconnect the landline entirely and port the number to a VoIP provider (https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/voip-information/?) , plugging a VoIP phone into the router. Or just disconnect the landline if nobody actually uses it…

Hmmm.. seems mixed at the moment. Thank you for the responses all. I’ve also uncovered another problem with standard broadband. It seems I may have been a bit keen pulling out the old phone line and now I’m left with this mess.. bollocks.

Also – we don’t have a landline as such (just that mess pictured above). Got rid of the house phone years ago.

The basic three router isn’t great.

Best route to take is:

– buy a three unlimited sim for £20 a month (less if you via TopCashback and sign up for a year)

– buy a huawei router from amazon but make sure it has external antenna ports – cost £80 ish

– buy an external antenna and cable

With that you should have no problems getting 20-40Mbps (or higher – I’ve managed 140Mbps) downloads in most parts of the country.

This will work fine for most households but if you’re running apps or devices that require a constant upload e.g. home security cams you may get occasional connection problems.

The fair usage on Three’s plans (you can use a phone plan or a data plan) is 9999Gb a month.

We ditched the shitty landline/broadband/poor excuse for fibre and went with EE 4gee.

Not cheap but easily see 30mb. The checker for 3 says we’ll not get 4g.

The landline broadband was about 1 mb, upgraded to fibre and we got 2mb. The joys of being in the sticks.

We had much the same issue. So i cancelled the contract, then the day it expired, I became a new customer on an attractive deal. Being without the broadband for 4 days isnt a great hardship.

This business of gouging existing customers to fund your acquisition of new customers should be considered fraud in my opinion. Downright shady practise that Virgin Media are particularly bad for.

If you want, I’ve a netgear 4g router with plugs for antenna etc..
My new flat gets really good virgin bb so i went with that over the 3g sim… So router sat doing nowt….

Can do for £45 posted if you want?

DrP

My mum has 4G broadband with EE to replace the 2mbps she previously got down the phone line out in the sticks on Exmoor.

She streams a load of stuff and never gets close to the limit, and I clocked it at over 100mbps last time I was there.

Thank you for the continued responses all. Some really interesting and detailed points above. I totally agree that gouging existing customers to get new ones is a load of shit.

For ~£20/month and no up front costs, I think I may just order one of the Three/EE/etc boxes and see what it’s like. If the speeds are crap I’ll just wing it back to them in the 1st 30 days and get traditional broadband through the phone line (once I fix the dogs dinner I have created above!)

Thank you for the offer DrP – I’ll decline for the moment while I try and get sorted without the need for an antenna, drilling holes, climbing on the roof etc. Mind you I am about the go up there to put the Xmas lights up….

I had a TPlink m7350 in 2016 for home broadband whilst in rented accomm. I changed sim deal at least once (vodafone to EE I think), then sold the tp link at the end for near same price I paid new. I think I was getting upto 13meg download speed on both networks and mifi range was fine from TP-Link to upstairs and in adjoining rooms. It was very handy being able to also use it on the go in the car and on trains etc. I didn’t do much streaming cos I was on 16gb per month limit and then 20gb pm both of which were a bit of a struggle to stay within. The only downside I recall with the TP Link was that it always defaulted to dormant when nothing linked, even when plugged into mains power. So getting home from work you’d have to go to the tp link and press a button on the side to wake it up, minor issue but still slightly annoying especially if you’re upstairs wanting to use the laptop and the mifi box is downstairs dormant. Other mifi boxes may differ. Must admit I did consider continuing with mifi when I moved back home, but decided not.

We are going to go down this route I think on the house we are about to take ownership of.

Only EE or Vodafone signal in the area but both are really pretty good.

Question – is there any way to put a quota on data consumption so it can be divvied out over the month? Part of the property is a holiday cottage and I’d like the punters to be given access too it. But worried that the punter in week 1 of the month does not gobble up all the data. Only option would be to use the vodafone unlimited service at £50pm which is quite eye watering price wise.

I think the vodafone app lets you block devices, but not sure it lets you limit consumption…

THe TPLink M7350 I had def had some sort of data usage settings option in the admin settings menu, cant recall how extensive the function was tho.

Convert. I’ve also remembered that there was an app to go with all the tplink mifi boxes which is probably a simpler alternative to going into the admin settings UI. I’m pretty sure you could do all the same stuff from the app including controlling data usage settings. Think the app is tpmifi in the play store. I’d expect all the companies doing these mifi boxes will have these functions. I’ve got a feeling tplink was a fairly simple single limit setting, which you might have to reset everytime you have a new guest.

EE provide a proper router (pretty sure it allows data limits to be set per device) and will probably be faster than Vodafone for equal coverage, as they own more 4G frequencies.

I’ve just cancelled our EE fibre as they can’t supply our new house. Currently they offer either slow ADSL or the 4G option. However it did come up in conversation that they are in the final stages of testing a dual ADSL/4G system that should be available to buy soon.

Yeah we have that. Thread here: https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/broadband-internet-a-thrilling-update-including-a-picture-of-a-man-on-a-roof/

Three is a strange network. Where we are – very rural – it’s really good. In cities, it appears to be very congested. Some of it apparently is due to 5g upgrade. I’ve found them useless on the one time I’ve called them, but very good helpful in the local shop.

Since we had the Antenna, we’ve never dropped below 50/20 and a max of 76/25. It definitely suffers from the weather – rain especially but 50meg at £22 a month, that’s fine.

I was watching 4k Apple TV+ on my desktop while the better half had bake-off on catch up. Router was showing 40meg+ inbound and neither of us had any buffering.

The fibre (gigaclear) we’re due to receive is so late, it’s beyond funny. Now potentially provisioned for end 2021. Originally due early 2019. I’m glad we didn’t wait.

Oh and WiFi was a problem for us as well. Now we have the Netgear Orbi setup, it’s been rock solid.

Convert – you can just use a 12m sim only phone contract on vodafone. If you buy via fonehouse you can probably get a 12m deal for £18 a month after cash back.

Best to try Vodafone for 30 days first though – their network still isn’t great and download speeds can be an issue in the evening – less so on EE.

seems to be the most relevant thread for resurrection…..

virgin contract runs out end of december so time to rethink. its £32 pm and we only want b/b (not heavy users), altho as per usual they throw the phone line in which we dont use. we’re quite happy with bog standard tv from humax, dont need a tv package.

our phones are on three, tried using the hotspot tethering option, and did a speedtest. virgin 100 mb/s, three sim just 5 mb/s. however, im wondering if their new 4G hub (stated possible speeds of 300 mb/s although almost certainly would get nowhere near) may be better than the phone sim.
its £20 p/m for 12 month contract, and a B535 Gateway hub if that means anything to anyone?

i’ll almost certainly cancel virgin anyway, and would expect a phone call with an offer later, but would be prepared to cancel anyway if not, or if the offer was still sh1te. just wondering how much faster the Hubs likely to be over my phone sim if anything? or if my phone sim only gets 5 mb/s, is this all the hub would get too?

thanks

If you buy via Topcashback, you can get 12 month contact unlimited data/calls/texts Three SIM for £16pcm, with the promo ~£53 cashback it makes it ~£11.50pcm… But no router supplied.

You could tether a mobile with the SIM in to a laptop/pc while offering wifi to other household gadgets, or buy a router separately.

As to whether a router would improve your signal, I suspect not, but a beefier antenna may help.

You could tether a mobile with the SIM in to a laptop/pc while offering wifi to other household gadgets, or buy a router separately.

thats what i just tried with my mobile, and got 5 mb/s which is a bit grim.

As to whether a router would improve your signal, I suspect not, but a beefier antenna may help.

so is it the built in antenna on my phone thats the limiting factor? how could i get a beefier antenna into that setup?

thanks

Try a different network. EE are good for me, but depends which masts are nearby.

Speeds can be a bit up and down but according to the ee assistant I spoke with the other day we’re currently using 300gb+ per month on our 4g home broadband. Streaming in 1080 on Netflix and 4k on Disney+.

It’s worth noting that when we first took out our ee 4gee package it was £55ish, now I’ve seen a 24 month SIM deal for unlimited data £25 with them.

And I’ve taken out the cheapest SIM only for my phone and I’ll just gift the data over from the home 4gee plan.

I have it and it works well, £20 a month from Smarty with no contract. Download and upload both between 25 – 30mb with a Huawei router

I’m actually changing though to Plusnet this week. I’m only doing that though as I’ve been running some presentations for online investigator meetings and I want my back up laptop on a completely independent connection, i.e hotspotted to my phone which is with 3. I don’t want to be relying on one mast for both laptops. At the moment I go into the office when I need to do them but given that I may need to be working at any time of the day or night that’s not ideal. Otherwise I’d stick with the 4G router

It’s worth noting that when we first took out our ee 4gee package it was £55ish, now I’ve seen a 24 month SIM deal for unlimited data £25 with them.

thanks, got a family member who works for EE so just asked if she can wangle a family discount.

I have it and it works well, £20 a month from Smarty with no contract. Download and upload both between 25 – 30mb with a Huawei router

just looked on smarty, so these are three sims in your phone then yep, exactly the same as three itself but cheaper? they dont appear to do broadband, so you bought a separate router to get a better antenna than your phone and just plopped the phone sim into it?

thanks

Do you guys get 4G+ there is just common or garden 4G?

OP – I was in the same boat as you 6 months ago – Virgin contract about to expire and therefore monthly cost to be doubled. I just phoned them and said I can get BT for £25 so I’ll cancel – they said “ok no probs how about a new contract staying at £25 pm”

What speed would you get over copper? We have Zen Internet (far lower contention ratio than others so speed stays high at peak times) and I get 60-80mbps. Way faster than I’d get with 4g and no worry about data allowances.

Costs me £35p/m including line rental. Zen’s customer service is excellent too.

It’s worth noting that when we first took out our ee 4gee package it was £55ish, now I’ve seen a 24 month SIM deal for unlimited data £25 with them.

just heard back from my ‘family member’, the plans shes shown me are way more than that, where did you see this if you dont mind me asking?

We have a Three Sim broadband deal. Unlimited and £22/Month on a 2 year contract. Threw away the supplied router, fitted an external antenna and a decent router. We get between 40-70 down and 15-20 up.

It does vary more than fixed line, but for us it was the only option as we’re so far from the exchange. In the 18 months since installation,  we’ve probably had 10 outages. Most of those are Three tho, and they tend to last a couple of hours.

Other things to note, we’re close to the mast and it’s very rural here so there’s not much contention for the cell bandwidth.

If I remember LTE+ is the actual standard for 4G.  But terms LTE / LTE+ tend to be used interchangeably.

Threw away the supplied router, fitted an external antenna and a decent router. We get between 40-70 down and 15-20 up.

so how would i do this? how would i fit ‘an external antenna’, i assume this isnt just connecting to a digital aerial or something…..and what make and model routers are the ‘goto’ and how much do they cost?

thanks