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Mobile Broadband trial...


Westward
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We have the usual fibre broadband on BT kit + landline phone. Our ISP is Zen Internet and I can't fault them. Excellent customer support, good router and guaranteed never to go up in price. However, from Three I can get a 4G hub with 4 ethernet ports capable of handling 64 wifi devices at once with unlimited data and all for nothing up front and a monthly charge of almost £11 p/m less than I'm paying now because obviously there's no BT line rental.

There is a 14 trial period and if not happy back it goes.

I'd be interested to hear opinions from anyone else who's done the same.

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So with fibre to the BT street cabinet  and copper wires to your house the fastest BT Fibre packages are quoted at around 75Mb/s, reality is probably nearer 70Mb/s.    BT also do full fibre to the premise at around £60/month (negotiation required!) - there is no line rental - circa 920Mb/s 

4G broadband max speed in 31Mb/s and you'd have to be virtually line of sight to the mast for that to be a reality.  It's a 14 day trial so you haven't got much to lose.   Mobile data signals like all wireless technologies are affected by interference and atmospheric conditions so it most certainly will not be more reliable than the current set up.

 

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1 hour ago, Cosmicblue said:

So with fibre to the BT street cabinet  and copper wires to your house the fastest BT Fibre packages are quoted at around 75Mb/s, reality is probably nearer 70Mb/s.    BT also do full fibre to the premise at around £60/month (negotiation required!) - there is no line rental - circa 920Mb/s 

4G broadband max speed in 31Mb/s and you'd have to be virtually line of sight to the mast for that to be a reality.  It's a 14 day trial so you haven't got much to lose.   Mobile data signals like all wireless technologies are affected by interference and atmospheric conditions so it most certainly will not be more reliable than the current set up.

 

Right now I'm getting 31Mb download, 8Mb upload. That's on fibre but not superfast fibre and seems adequate for our needs. Keep in mind that data signals travel end to end at the same speed regardless of whether it's copper, fibre or through the ether. Large values for Mb describe data volumes per second rather than actual data transfer speed and even 100Mb/s can't fix congestion and slow sites. In the event Three claim 50-100 Mb download, but as I say, I'm not looking for bragging points about download rates but reliability does matter to me and if it's patchy I'll report back here and cancel the deal with three.

1 hour ago, CharlieT said:

That offer sounded tempting so I just looked it up........... regrettably we have no service here, what a ******.

The home broadband signal uses a different spectrum within the 4G bandspread than mobile phones. Did you use the Three coverage checker?

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13 hours ago, Westward said:

 

The home broadband signal uses a different spectrum within the 4G bandspread than mobile phones. Did you use the Three coverage checker?

I went onto their specific broadband site, entered my details and it told me broadband was not yet available here yet..........but their working on it!!

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18 hours ago, Westward said:

but as I say, I'm not looking for bragging points about download rates but reliability does matter to me and if it's patchy I'll report back here

No question, FTTP if available, if not stick with your current setup.

 

20 hours ago, Cosmicblue said:

Mobile data signals like all wireless technologies are affected by interference and atmospheric conditions so it most certainly will not be more reliable than the current set up.

So much this.  Is it really worth the aggro of saving £11/month to get an inevitably worse service only to switch back?

 

18 hours ago, Westward said:

Keep in mind that data signals travel end to end at the same speed regardless of whether it's copper, fibre or through the ether.

Incorrect.  Fibre = signal is travelling at the speed of light through the medium, and minimal processing overhead (and therefore latency) turning that light back into an electrical data stream, and not subject to atmospheric interference.  The point of fibre optic technology is to create as close to an ideal path for the light as possible, after all.

4G being a radio wave also travels at the speed of light but through the air, but there is considerable processing overhead as it is pulling off very clever tricks to keep the data rate high, and subject to atmospheric interference.

Current setup....Well you've got a DSL modem taking IP packets and doing some some very clever tricks to squeeze them down an ancient, oxidised phone line then it gets reconstructed at the other end.  Overall throughput speed will be lower than fibre certainly, and possibly slower than 4G.

18 hours ago, Westward said:

Large values for Mb describe data volumes per second rather than actual data transfer speed and even 100Mb/s can't fix congestion and slow sites.

The word you're looking for is bandwidth.  Why advertisers are continually allowed to refer to it as 'speed' is a mystery.

 

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5 hours ago, udderlyoffroad said:

The word you're looking for is bandwidth.  Why advertisers are continually allowed to refer to it as 'speed' is a mystery.

I know what the word is. I originally qualified in electronic engineering. I deliberately didn't use it.

The 4G router is running okay so far. getting a full 5 bars signal strength and close to 40Mb/s download. I'm using it right now...

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We had to use a router on 4g for the last year…. We were in a relatives barn while we sold one house and looked for another.  We would have had BT but the only line in meant a cable 10ft up across the main house front so got vetoed.

I tried 3 but couldn’t get it to work so went on giff gaff unlimited not as cheap but worked.  Netflix and two children on iPads worked fine. 

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On 22/07/2021 at 17:49, Cosmicblue said:

4G broadband max speed in 31Mb/s and you'd have to be virtually line of sight to the mast for that to be a reality.  

Not sure where you are getting that from, 4G will do up to about 100 Mb/s. 

On 23/07/2021 at 20:18, Westward said:

The 4G router is running okay so far. getting a full 5 bars signal strength and close to 40Mb/s download. I'm using it right now...

Good for the price then! I use a 4G router with a Vodafone SIM and it's around £30 per month for unlimited, and I'll get anything from 30Mb/s up to about 60Mb/s download. FTTP is on the way to me though, just need to bide my time......

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My Three 4G started off fairly good, about 10 meg which as I am in a rural area is not bad at all. From there on in it gradually got worse and worse and very often it could be half of the day where there was no internet at all and dropouts every 5 minutes were far from unusual. This was over the course of 18 months and was I glad to be at the end of that 24 month contract. In the last 3 months I gave up and put a GiffGaff sim in even though I still paid for Three.

The internet service to rural areas in this country is a joke. One of the richest nations on Earth and anything more than 5 miles from a city there's no internet, my landline is so bad that I have no internet, my neighbours brag about their 1meg download which is about as useful as dial up. Not a cat in hells chance of fibre, no reliable 4G from any provider. Most PC utilities require cloud backup, how do you do that with no internet. Lack of internet is one of the most miserable things, and if that is the case I should be grateful.

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