Been offered £37 per month for ee unlimited
Remote area so copper line is poor.
Anyone else on on 4g – what’s the best deal

I used GiffGaff for a while at £35/month unlimited – really comes down to who provides the best reception locally E.g. BT/EE, O2/Virgin/GiffGaff or Vodafone/Lebara

Thanks
Been quoted 37+vat which seems a lot
Will check out the connection

£37+VAT does sound expensive to me. For example, I’ve got an unlimited data deal with Lebarra for £25 a month inc vat, and no contract.

As dovebiker says, you need to work out which provider will give the best reception in your location. You could start by looking here: https://www.signalchecker.co.uk

Then I’d get a cheap ‘pay as you go sim’ to check the specific network/reception before commiting to anything more. Most mobile networks have cheaper brands. (e.g Lebarra actually runs on Vodafone). You may also need to investigate an upgraded router or external aerial to get the top speeds.

There are a couple of good deals at the moment:

3 – unlimited / 12 months for £16 a month with £65 cashback via TopCashback – works out at £10 a month

Lebara (Vodafone) / 12 months for £22.50 a month with £42 cash back as above – works out at £19 a month

As per the post above – use a router with an external aerial. If you’re in a 5G area you won’t get decent speeds unless the router indoors can connect to a good 4g signal as it’s used for signaling and uploads.

Anyone with an existing router can get it improved by Router-Mods.Co.uk to enable additional antennas to be fitted for 4g – makes a lot of difference in areas with iffy coverage.

Cover is the most important thing, then price.

If Three will give you cover, then Smarty is one of the cheapest resellers out there for unlimited data.

3 are doing a really good deal, £10 pcm for x ammount of time (6/12 momths?) and then £20 thereafter.

I’m moving to a new place and I dont think the phone line is active, so that would be a really good option for me… pretty much instant internet (next day delivery of router) rather than the traditional way of pissing about trying to get a phone line activated, and then getting your service online, arguments between BT wholesale and your ISP, waiting for missed engineers appointments etc.

..however the reviews don’t look too pretty (even going by ISP satisfaction rates which are usually on the negative side anyway) stories of it starting out fast but slowing down after a while like slower than 5 or 10mbps and/or no service at all, at times.

3 offer a no quiblle return/cancel contract policy, but it expires after a few weeks or a month, so it’s no good if the stability goes to pot after that as you’re locked into a contract then.

Starlink.. £89 quid a month expensive but very fast, unlimited and reliable.

Just so you know the dish eats £15 of electricity each month….

Starlink.. £89 quid a month expensive but very fast, unlimited and reliable.

Just so you know the dish eats £15 of electricity each month….

Haha, I think I might pass.

Could be an option for a street or neighbourhood to share a connection, with one dish/contract serving several properties, but that is contractually problematic as everyone would have to sign up for a fixed term deal, and it might all fall apart after 24 months or whatever with people moving house or people wanting a different provider.

Starlink fast? I thought it was around 300mb down?

I’m looking at starlink as well. Aside from building my own wifi antenna out of an old satellite dish and pointing it at the Mcdonalds in the Team Valley, it’ll be the only way I’ll be able to work. BT “guarantee” all of 1mbps to our intended new home. 3, O2 and EE have 0 coverage. With vodafone I should be able to get 4g (I’ve tested this outside and it seems to be ok), but inside a 200 year-old stone barn I reckon we’ll struggle to get basic phone signal.

@oldmanmtb2 are you using the starlink router or did you get the enthernet adapter?

Starlink fast? I thought it was around 300mb down?

It may not be ultra fast but if you’re in an area where the only options are sub 5mbps ADSL, or a non existent 4g signal, 300mbps download will be a godsend.

We moved into a rural stone cottage 6 months ago. As above BT only guaranteed <1mbs via ADSL and no fibre. So we are now on 4g. Just ordered this router below and stuck an unlimited vodafone SIM in after checking which network gave best coverage (verified by wifes mobile as shes on vodafone). We put it at the end of the house with the best reception and use 4 google mesh wifi’s to bounce the signal through the house (not a massive area but thick stone walls hence needing 4). Got a black friday deal on the google mesh’s so overall cost about £200 ish. The data SIM is about £20pm on some offer they had. We get 8-10mbs so not great but we can stream TV, music and I can do Teams calls if WFH. It’s gone down once when the mast had a problem but was back on a few hours later. Overall it does us. Our neighbour is just getting starlink but I baulked at the £90pm!

I would prioritise speed over price everyday. I’ve used:

Vodafone – Good (work paid for it)
ID Mobile (on 3 network) – Poor (£13 pm)
EE – best so far (£18 pm )
This is for 60GB / month or thereabouts

Having said that, on EE I still only get 4mbps download speed, so don’t get excited!

the point-to-point or Wide-are-Network providers are much better if you can afford it.

Four x Top tips for anyone trying to use 4g for phone broadband.

1. To work out the max speed you could get – try the sim in a decent phone but outside the house / flat and work out which side is faster. Use a speed test app to test the speeds. Go on speed rather than signal strength because the bars on a phone don’t always equate to the fastest connection.

2. Try and set your router up on the fastest side of the property and as high up as possible.

3. Connect the internal Wi-Fi router to wherever the 4g router is fastest – rather than setting up the 4g router in the middle of the house

4. If your router has antenna mounts use them – ideally on the exterior of the property or up in the loft