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Moving to mobile broadband at home?

11 replies

Homesunderthehammer27 · 21/10/2023 13:46

We live in a house with a very poor broadband speed - if we get 4mbps on Wi-Fi, it’s a time for celebration, but it often drops to less than 1mbps (where we reset the router to get it working a bit faster - and I know this can cause other issues down the line), or it judders a lot when streaming, and listening to music is often impossible. Openreach have been out many times and every engineer has difficulty finding two wires to connect to give us any service but they won’t replace the very old cable which runs up the road to our house presumably until the rollout of a full fibre network which could take years given the amount of sucking through teeth we hear when asking the question, and there is no scope to use Virgin or any other service in the near future.

As a result, we have started looking at Mobile Broadband since our phones give around 13mbps on a 4G connection and it looks like we have 5g coverage in the area too. However, both 3 and Vodafone say that their Home Broadband service won’t work in our postcode but a Mobile Broadband service would.

Does anyone know what the restriction is to prevent us from having Home Broadband as I would have expected that a SIM from a network provider in one device would work very much like their SIM in another device if there was coverage?

Can Mobile broadband services be plugged in permanently without causing issues to the battery as some of our Wi-Fi enabled devices work 24/7?

DP has a room with a hifi that’s all wired up with Ethernet connections - could we use a Ethernet connection plugged into a Mobile Broadband device or would they all have to work wirelessly?

Is there another solution we could look at? A router with a SIM? If you can recommend specific ones, that would be great.

I think we’re pretty light users, would like to have a couple of Zoom calls running simultaneously or stream TV to one television at night, listen to Tidal without any gaps in the music, but we do have a number of Hive and Tapo controls running permanently on Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi extenders and that would take us pretty close to the 32 devices that Mobile Broadband allows.

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Dbank · 22/10/2023 16:56

Bump

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Dbank · 22/10/2023 17:02

Be aware that when you reboot a modem / router on ADSL (i.e. open reach) it takes some hours to optimise the connection.
if you have 5G coverage, i.e. you have actually tested the speed inside your house. Then this could be viable, although modems (or contracts) can be expensive.
It might be worth considering Starlink. (satellite connection)
You can use your own router if there's an issue with maximum connections
No issue with batteries if you use a mains powered 4/5G router / modem.

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ebts · 22/10/2023 17:11

I'm not very au fait with technical details, but I have mobile 4g broadband from ee, and am very pleased with it. I gave up my Talktalk Broadband at the same time as my landline, as I only ever seemed to get spam calls on the landline, and their broadband only really worked well in the same room as the router.

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nachdemregen · 22/10/2023 17:15

I've got a Vodafone Gigacube. I'm in London but also can't get a decent wired connection.

Very happy with it overall and doesn't seem to struggle with 10+ devices being connected to it.

One watch out - I'd definitely get one with unlimited data. It's amazing how quickly you can chew through it.

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Homesunderthehammer27 · 24/10/2023 17:44

Dbank · 22/10/2023 17:02

Be aware that when you reboot a modem / router on ADSL (i.e. open reach) it takes some hours to optimise the connection.
if you have 5G coverage, i.e. you have actually tested the speed inside your house. Then this could be viable, although modems (or contracts) can be expensive.
It might be worth considering Starlink. (satellite connection)
You can use your own router if there's an issue with maximum connections
No issue with batteries if you use a mains powered 4/5G router / modem.

Sorry for not responding before to say thanks, I’d missed the replies. I’ve just ordered a new 5g phone so will check what the coverage is like inside with that. Our postcode is literally at the edge of Three’s 5g coverage map and I think our house will be in it.

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Homesunderthehammer27 · 24/10/2023 17:46

nachdemregen · 22/10/2023 17:15

Definitely unlimited data - I don’t want to be caught out streaming too much tv. We’ve got nearer to 30 devices with radiator controls and smart plugs 😳

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BasicDad · 27/10/2023 20:48

You 100% have to make sure you get a top quality 4/5G router. The cheap ones are rubbish as they use cat4-6 modems in them.

The heat 4g modem I've used is the huawei b818 cat 19 modem. Bar the gigacubes for 5g, it's the best option for 4g.

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Mumaway · 27/10/2023 20:50

We have Three 5G broadband and it works really well, despite my husband being a very heavy user. We had dreadful wired broadband.

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Wallywobbles · 27/10/2023 21:04

We use tp link 4g modems. They are better than anything we could get via broadband.