Looks like it’s £249 at the moment in Amazon. Surely you’re paying more for the fact that it’s a mobile unit?
I need to look into this on the Isle of Man. I don't use the landline at all, but need internet when I'm there for both work and things like Netflix etc.
I don't see the point in paying a fixed line fee every month, for nothing, on top of the internet package - it shouldn't be compulsory.
It's just a matter of time...
I bought this for a starter a couple of months ago.
So far so good, I have placed the router in the middle of my house downstairs and plugged my cat5 cables into it for the tv’s but as I’m getting around 23mbs I probably could just use WiFi for the tv. I might add a couple of antennas at some point but so far I haven’t felt the need.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Huawei-unlo.../dp/B06ZZL966Q
What an excellent thread.
I've just joined the club today with one of these (as recommended above) and a smarty sim deal and it's as sweet as a nut !
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
There is an added small extra bonus to using 4G broadband in a rural area too....
There is a nice sense of satisfaction when you upgrade your mobile phone contract and at the end they try to sell you their latest broadband deals. Telling them you have just cut it off as the line was so slow and you are fed up of waiting for a decent service to arrive feels good somehow.
With 5G on the way, I do wonder how many more years wired connections for telecoms will last.
Great thread and previous questions been answered.
I am going down this route for my mobile home in a rural area so what are my options linking this to a Sky box.
I have read the Sky Q box can be difficult to link...i am better with the old Sky Plus box...anyone using either ???
Any help
Thanks
Just a quick question. How log was it between ordering the Smarty SIM card and receiving it.
I ordered mine last Saturday and still haven’t received it yet.
For those (slowly) reading this thread enviously in a 'not-spot', the wheels continue to grind forward... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50179195
The linked article in there on 5G is also worth checking out if you haven't already seen it.
Bought myself an O2 pay as you go data sim to try for reception here. Good speed with wifi connection to the Netgear MR1100, about 8Mbps. Pleased with that. I have three bars and 4G showing. This one's a goer as well. Just Vodafone to try next month.
Thanks. I think that's better than I get with my fibre broadband (not massively so but certainly better).
Short answer, as usual, with my new SIM is I haven't got "a round tuit"!
I was going to try in a phone first but an old Android one I have must be 3G not 4G! I was originally thinking about a portable router but my broadband contract is up soon so thought I might try the D-Link.
I've borrowed an old-ish iPad with a SIM slot so I'll give that a go in the first instance.
Cheers!
Just a heads up. Amazon have the Huawei B525 4G router currently on sale for £99 rather than £150. Not sure it’ll get cheaper than this so I’m going to get one ordered ASAP.
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Just a heads up. Amazon have the Huawei B525 4G router currently on sale for £99 rather than £150. Not sure it’ll get cheaper than this so I’m going to get one ordered ASAP.
This looks really good, although I’ll keep with my fibre broadband for now.
That said, with 5g gaining traction I can see mobile broadband being the way to go!
Interested in this. Currently paying £36 a month for broadband and landline from sky and only get around 3meg speed as i live out in the sticks.
Three are currently doing unlimited for £20 a month with a free Huawei B535 if you're happy with a 24month contract.
Anyone know if the B535 is any good? Any different to the B525?
Do these work ok with a sky Q box?
My reservation would be that mobile data towers seem to have more connectivity issues that a traditional phone/fibre line. Also the walls of our house are quite thick so I'd worry about that causing issues as well. For me I think I'll stick with the cabling for a while longer!
I have used 4G networks for my home broadband for over 2 years now. Initially with EE, now with SMARTY. In all that time the ONLY outage I have experienced was recently when the 3 network went down nationwide for about 9 hours overnight. Other than that 100% reliable. As far as thick walls are concerned; I live in a converted barn with 2ft thick outer walls. Place the 4G modem/router near a window facing the nearest mast.
Fair enough points. I also live in an old stone house and was.concerned about connection issues. I have 70mb speed on my fibre and it's connected into a ubiquiti network system with ceiling mounted access points - at the moment I'm still happy to pay more for my line so that I have great coverage throughout the house and can setup multiple profiles for security. For example all potentially hackable smart devices are on their own WiFi network so if one is hacked then all of our normal internet traffic is carried on another and is still safe.
Yes I suppose if I had the 4g hub wired into the ubiquiti security gateway then it wouldn't know the difference. 👍
Right at the top, superb timing.
I've been trialing O2 pay and go this month and the result - don't waste your time.
The signal quality is poor but worse, the £15 top-up has failed, thus I have spent £15 and have nothing this month. I might drag myself back in there with the receipt and ask the over-confident and cocky sales assistant to explain what's happened, or I might just go next door and try another operator. Either way the signal quality of O2 is pants where I am and the top-up system, f you go into an O2 "shop", seems rather prone to problems.
Summary, O2, could do better, don't waste your time.
Received a Three sim card to try out yesterday. Put it in an old phone and did some speed tests around the house.
Current speed on Sky 3mb
Three sat on the sofa 6mb
By the living room window 9mb
By the bedroom window 14mb
That combined with a price of £20 a month compared to £36 for sky, i'm gonna cancel sky today and go for the 24mths Three contract with the free Huwawei B535. wife is ok with losing the landline, so all good.
From the little research i've done, the only difference between the 535 and 525 is that the 535 is a medel specific to Three (though is allegedly unlocked) and it doesn't have the phone socket that the 525 has.
Sky cancelled last week, only a 2 week cancellation period, so i ordered the Three deal straight away so i could try it out before being cut off.
Router arrived next day and i must say i'm over the moon with the speeds were getting. I've placed it out of the way, near to, but a bit below and to the side of a window to keep the wife happy, and i'm getting speeds from as low as 9 up to a heady 24mb, average seems around the 14-16mb mark. I'm sure i could get better by optimising the location, but coming from 2-3mb i'm well happy with that and wife isn't keen on having it sat on the window sill. £16 a month saved and also a happy wife as no cables trailing from the BT socket.
Thanks for the thread.
Brighty
Previous on copper ADSL maxed at 1.1mbps and now on the 3 it’s marvellous and stable
IMG_4064.JPG
Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app
Possibly too late for you now, but when you ditched the landline, you could retain your old landline number by porting it onto a VOIP service provider.
We barely used our landline before we ditched the wired connection, but my wife was keen to keep the old landline telephone number. It cost us £30 to port it over to Sipgate (basic) and then the service if free from that point (ie no 'line' rental). We only use it for incoming calls for those rare occasions when someone does not have our mobile numbers. All outgoing calls are made from our mobiles as they have unlimited calls included.
The porting service took about a week, but the fixed line MUST still be in service when the port takes place and it can take a couple of weeks dependent upon provider. Some will port for free, but then charge a monthly line rental.
HTH
Vodafone does quite a good deal on 4g/5g Mobile Broadband services. (£50 per month) for unlimited service. I can attest to the quality of Vodafone's Mobile network as I have all EE/ BT/ 3/ O2/ Vodafone 4g service at home (multiple personal and work phones) and I get the best speeds on Vodafone. I now get about 30MBPS from Vodafone's 4G service at home. Hoping to get access to 5G services by Vodafone / 3 mobile for home 5G Broadband. I live in South East London near Tower Bridge but I'm on a measly ADSL copper line.
I'm using a 5G enabled mobile on Vodafone and can get up to 150 MBPS where a 5G service is available. I also plan to tether my Vodafone mobile through a ASUS router as my mobile price plan includes unlimited data/ tethering. I pay £32 per month for my mobile package. (apparently the fair usage policy is in Terabytes, which I'm not going to hit unless I'm constantly watching movies in 4K.
I had a look at Smarty and it seems to be running on the 3 Network and also a subsidiary on 3? I'm not too keen on their quality of network coverage and speeds at the moment. However the 5g home broadband for £35 a month seems a great value for money.
For a home broadband solution 'quality of coverage' is only relevant at the home in question. Additionally, the difference between 60/35Mbps (that I get via SMARTY) and 150+Mbps is largely irrelevant for home use; yes, you could download a film more quickly but so what? £50/month isn't, in my opinion, good value when compared to £18.75/month. 5G is only currently available in major cities and I suspect will take years rather than months to reach me.
I’m on my last operator trial, Vodafone. Getting a reliable 10Mbps out in the sticks in Dorset, very pleased with that.
Picked up a 30 day SIM in town for 99p, and with a £10 top up got 3g but they’re offering triple data at the moment so actually paid £10.99 for 9g, which ain’t half bad and enough for my trials.
Last edited by catch21; 27th November 2019 at 07:12.
I have a question please. I use my phone as a hot spot and it’s not great. Would plugging my phone sim in (for the days I work at home) into a router improve the quality of the signal.
Also is the only disadvantage that I don’t have a phone to make and receive calls for that time?
Thanks
You are almost spot on with your assumptions.
As you say, if your SIM is in the router, calls to your mobile would not be able to get through to it, but text messages can - so they may be omitted off your phone if received by the router (I have never tried that) myself.
The 4G signal strength will be subject to the router location, so is no different in that respect to moving your mobile phone around the house and trying different locations. The aerial may be slightly better in your router though, but that varies between phone/router models to some extent.
HTH
Thanks Maysie, signal strength is poor everywhere in my home and I live in London. Will give it ago.
I bought a TP Link M7350 MiFi portable thing and put in my Smarty SIM.
The M7350 is a bit plasticky and insubstantial but small and light.
I was thrilled at the screen showing 176MB!!
Quick speed test earlier on the iPhone. Download speeds tested 7 times over 10 minutes ranged from 0.56(!) to 9.92. Mainly 4.5 to 6.5.
Just tried now: 1.38Mbps Upload 2.18
Just tried a speed test on my desktop and get 0.52 down, 4.51 up.
The 176MB was total data for the session!
So, is it the M7350 or am I just in a poor area for Three/Smarty?
EDIT: Per the Three site, I am should get as good as they can deliver!
Last edited by David_D; 27th November 2019 at 23:17.
Can you log into your router from your device to see what is going on? It will show whether you are connected to 4G or 3G and your signal strength too (or rather mine does).
Sounds like only 3G is working at those speeds.
Your signal strength also makes a HUGE difference, so get the router moved around to some window cills and try again. I did some tests with my THREE sim card in my mobile first to work out where worked best for the router.
Not sure the router in question can accept a external aerial it one of the small portable hot spots. I’d try using it outside, this sight might help you work out your nearest mast as directionality can play a part in speed.
https://www.mastdata.com/
Agreed, but I don't think Samswatch mentioned a specific router(?).
Apologies if I missed it.
I used the mastdata site to locate my nearest mast and was surprised to find that I could see it from my upstairs windows with a pair of binos, so went for an external directional aerial for my router. Signal strength has always been a consistent 100% since installing.
Thanks. I'll have a look later.
The TP-Link kit does show "4G" in the display, despite the speeds. I ran a few speed tests sitting in my car at Tesco and got a range of (download) speeds from 0.31 to 10.16 but averaging about 6. I tried the test on my Tesco Mobile 4G (which is O2) and got 34.4! When I get a chance I'll switch the Tesco SIM into the TP-Link and see what happens. As I said, the Three signal map suggests I should be good signal. Shame as I was loving the £18.75 pm unlimited everything idea!
Thanks to this thread I now use 4G for my broadband at home, provided by smarty for £18.75 a month. All is going very well with no issues. I have just seen an offer from 3 that works out £140 cheaper, but has a 2yr contract.
Has anyone moved from smarty after finding a better deal?