4g mobile broadband for the house – experiences?

New abode in the frozen north turns up predicted b/b speeds of 0.75-2.5Mb/fortnight due to rural location.

However it should just squeak into EE’s x2 4g coverage. Being an existing customer I can get their mobile broadband thing for £21 or £26 (dependent on allowance) theoretically giving up to 60Mb/s. Looked set O2 and they were similar ( but just out of their 4g area…)

This would be cheaper (and faster) than a landline/broadband combo.

Anybody any experience of this kind of set up?

£26 for a 100GB allowance would be ok

I’d check you actually get a decent signal in the house. Even down south saturated in 4G signal round my house, the walls of the house cripple the signal a fair bit.

Yeah, there’s a 14 day no risk cancellation period if it doesn’t actually work.

Will need to check mobile signal inside when I get the chance, but the device can be placed where reception is best….

What’s the useage allowance ?

Expensive, but you could put a Yagi (directional antenna) up on your roof pointing at the nearest 4G cell tower and use a repeater for indoor coverage.

4G Mobile Phone Signal Boosters

I have a T Mobile unlimited usage in deepest darkest Austria and I get 35 – 50MB. Absolutely no problem and I can take it with me whenever I need internet. It means I don’t need a phone cable.

Allowance is 16 or 32. I’m currently on copper direct to exchange and getting humped for just shy of £50/month by sky on 20Gb capped at sllloooooooowww.

Speeds too crap to stream at present so thinking 16 will suffice for starters.

And as iolo points out, it’s mobile so if I go elsewhere I can take it with me 🙂

Is that 16Gb a month for £21 ?

Seems expensive to me. For home use anyway. If you do want to stream TV that won’t last long at all.

Just over 2 hours of UHD TV
Or just over 5 hours or HD TV.

I just posted on this.

I use EE 4g and get about 28-40 meg d and about 1.5-5 ul.
I use the 30 day rolling contract at the moment and happy with it but im sure its highly area dependent.
fwiw i dont get full signal, probably half according to my phone but seems to always stay on 4g at reasonable speeds.
im on 16gb cap but its a consideration if you stream movies as wont be enough.
Also as far as i know, BT mobile, plusnet and vigin mobile all use EE network.
And the cheaper sky fibre package was listed as being capped at 25gb if i recall and the reason i wasnt going that option.

Worked well for me which was done in a short term let apartment. I bought the box separately and then did SIM only. Now moved back home so the mobile box is now for sale in classifieds if anyone is interested.
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/tp-link-m7350-4g-lte-mobile-wifi-router-network-unlocked

Thanks dobo and B.A. Actual experience in use was what I was after 😀

Sounds like it’s worth trying at least (and should be significantly better than the copper b/b option).

I don’t currently stream (no TV) and no (current) intention to. Never hit my current 20Gb cap in three years so no reason to expect things will change.

Re cost, at most it’s only half what I’m paying atm. Oh the joys of rural living!

Same here, i just use internet for the odd forum, news, eBay, emails, weather, so managed with the 16GB pm i had. I did miss regular YouTube type stuff and had to think twice sometimes if i wanted to do iPlayer or an akrigg video or something. Used mine for 8 months, but i was making sure i did some stuff on works broadband ie updates, backups etc.
My mifi box had good range and worked fine upstairs, with it downstairs at other end of the apartment. I kept it plugged in, but battery lasted 8-10 hrs with use and standby was days before needing recharging. Only draw back i can think of with mine other than the data limit was that i had to press a button on the box to activate it when it was in standby whereas a home broadband router would be constantly live and and automatically connect to your phone or laptop. A bonus is that you can stick it in your pocket and a standard tablet becomes a 4g LTE enabled tablet. I was getting 17mbps download speed with EE which is good for most things

Also i bought a separate mifi box rather than going all in so that i could shop around for SIM only deals and sell the box at the end (there was always an end for me as i was temporarily out of my home).

Mobile box from 3 here in rural mid Devon. 40gb a month for 22 quid on a rolling one month contract. Works fine for everything we need, and no need for a land line. Awesome.

I’m interested in this also, but for the perverse reason than our new build *only* has a super fantastic mega fibre connection (FTTP) which frankly we don’t need but we’re still obliged to pay £47.49 a month for as Barratt ‘unfortunately’ neglected to install a normal broadband connection also*.

Thankfully we’re on BT’s introductory rate of £27.49/month at the moment, but it’s good to know that we could at least go 4g broadband, gives me some ammunition next year when we try to negotiate a lower monthly rate from BT.

*entirely unrelated to Openreach offering free FTTP installation to developers, in the sure knowledge that BT are the most reasonably priced supplier as Sky/Virgin/Talktalk etc. don’t do it 👿

Well, I got a 4g wifi mobile broadband thingee and I was up past the new place today so took it try out and see what like.

Well, at the back of the house I’m getting full bars 4g on the phone and a test of a YouTube video loaded approx 50% of a 14 minute video in seconds, waaaaay faster than my landline based one here.

So looking promising.

Guess I’ll see how it works over the long term, but less than half the price of the old…. 😀

^^ yep my 4G three mobile wifi device is way faster than my home bt broadband. BT is unlimited data whereas Three is 20gb per month, if there was no limit I wouldn’t bother with a broadband connection.

My parents have been doing this for years on 3G signal only. Something you may not think of – is the best signal near to a plug? My parents have to keep the dongle in the bathroom so only have internet while it has charge!

Interesting story, they did used to have standard broadband until openreach installed a new line with thinner diameter copper, suddenly there goes our internet! ~10 technician visits to persuade them to return it to original state before a phone call “sorry we can no longer provide a service to your property”. Insert swearwords here!