What's a good 4G EE data deal these days?

clv101 · 7 Nov 2020 at 23:38

I live out in the sticks, ADSL ~4mbps. I also have a 4G router which gets around 30mbps on EE, however it's limited to 30GB a month for £16. Had this 1 month data SIM only deal over 2.5 years now. I really need more (fast) data now 100GB at least, 200GB or even 'unlimited' would be nice.

What can I expect to pay for such deal? How's the best way to get it out of them? Black Friday?!

malccy · 8 Nov 2020 at 08:32

I have a 24 month deal with EE on a 4g sim with unlimited download for £25 per month. You get a better deal over the phone than going into one of their shops - in shop it's £30 per month.

safc10g · 8 Nov 2020 at 09:14

Yeah about 25/month for ‘unlimited’ but they aren’t truly unlimited, 1TB/month max.
Which you could easily hit if you get decent speeds!

Edit, they’ve reduced it! 600GB now...

malccy · 9 Nov 2020 at 12:34

I've been using mine for 12 months and never hit a 'limit'. I play online most days, download from Steam etc and use Youtube for music. I don't actually think EE are one of those who have a 'fair usage policy' and are actually unlimited.

safc10g · 9 Nov 2020 at 12:37

malccy said:
I've been using mine for 12 months and never hit a 'limit'. I play online most days, download from Steam etc and use Youtube for music. I don't actually think EE are one of those who have a 'fair usage policy' and are actually unlimited.

What is your data useage?

They very much do have a fair usage limit, it was 1TB and they've now reduced to 600GB, so they must be keeping an eye on it.

Three 100% do not have a limit, altho sometimes they may accidently start slowing you down....but it does change back after "technical support investigate the issue"

malccy · 9 Nov 2020 at 15:28

Just checked and my EE deal is unlimited.

safc10g · 9 Nov 2020 at 15:30

malccy said:
Just checked and my EE deal is unlimited.

"Unlimited" - notice the quotation marks....

From their T&C:

"UNLIMITED PLANS 50GB fair use policy applies outside UK. Personal, non-commercial use only. If you regularly tether 12 or more devices, we will consider this non-personal use and have the right to move you to a more suitable plan. We will consider usage above 600GB/month to be non-personal use and have the right to apply traffic management controls to deprioritise your mobile traffic during busy periods or to move you to a business plan. You can gift up to 100GB. Data usage on an unlimited plan will decrement from giftable allowance. Any data boost allowance will be added to the giftable allowance."

Source: https://ee.co.uk/content/dam/ee-help/help-pdfs/EE-Price-Guides/ee-monthly-price-plans-102020.pdf

malccy · 9 Nov 2020 at 15:34

I think 600gig is just about enough but thanks for your search and post. I was sure it was 'unlimited' as no asterix was present.

gpuerrilla · 9 Nov 2020 at 19:30

I think @safc10g is correct. I tried playing hard ball when my broadband contract was coming up with EE. No matter what I did they wouldnt drop below £30 for their 4G sim unlimited, so I think hes right - you are on a fair usage pool as I was trying to avoid that.

I went with 3 in the end as they are 'unlimited' you jsut have to put up with the service maintenance, and floods of users sharing the speed as they all gegg in on the cheap action.

They have dropped the 'go binge' and draining packages now as they realise people are taking the ****. I live very rural so its far better than BT twisted copper ********. Cant wait for all these folks to jump onto 5G and free up some of the hoggers. Thats my useless theory anyway..

WJA96 · 10 Nov 2020 at 06:57

Depending on what the router is you might find that replacing it will get you a decent speed boost. If it’s an LTE3 device (150Mbps claimed) then going to LTE6 (300Mbps claim on the box) would probably get you a 50% speed boost and an LTE12 router (600Mbps claimed) would double it.

I’ve been testing the Mikrotik Chateau LTE12 in central Manchester and it’s faster than 5G from either Vodafone or EE. I get 390Mbps on the 4G router (up and down) vs. 300Mpbs on 5G. That’s comparing apples with apples as both devices are using externally mounted antennae.

gpuerrilla · 10 Nov 2020 at 22:28

Very true. You know the routerboards that have Dual SIM, I think I read they have to power cycle to switch right? Its a shame you cant have two different networks on at the same time and it uses both vendors simultaneously to give you a overall faster experience.

I have the SXT LT6.

WJA96 · 11 Nov 2020 at 06:12

Th0nt said:
Very true. You know the routerboards that have Dual SIM, I think I read they have to power cycle to switch right? Its a shame you cant have two different networks on at the same time and it uses both vendors simultaneously to give you a overall faster experience.

I have the SXT LT6.

You don’t have to power-cycle to switch but you do need to restart the LTE modem. There is a failover script here

https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Dual_SIM_Application

On devices like the LtAP you have 3 SIM slots and for that you can extend the script above to add SIM C slot.

What you can possibly do is add another SXT LTE6 and make them both modems and then add another RouterOS router (hAP, hEX, RB4011 etc.) and load balance them. That would work. Probably...

clv101 · 29 Nov 2020 at 00:13

Seems Utility Warehouse are doing a £20 a month, one month rolling, unlimited data/text/minutes, on EE.

Is there anything to be wary of going with UW? I guess it's only a month if it's no good.

gpuerrilla · 29 Nov 2020 at 15:42

I would look in the small print for throttling, fair usage etc. as if that is the case you got not grounds to complain.

Firegod · 29 Nov 2020 at 17:37

I've been with EE 2 years now for my Router... I think. I recall enquiring about my usage as I was curious and I'm sometimes hitting 4-500GB in a month. They seemed fine with it. It is more to do with people using it in a business / for business scenario. But just renewed as I was out of contract and said I was thinking of going to Vodafone and they did me a 5G unlimited SIM for £25 /month.

WJA96 · 29 Nov 2020 at 22:06

Th0nt said:
Very true. You know the routerboards that have Dual SIM, I think I read they have to power cycle to switch right? Its a shame you cant have two different networks on at the same time and it uses both vendors simultaneously to give you a overall faster experience.

I have the SXT LT6.

Have you seen the new Teltonika RUTXR1 router? Not cheap (£300) but it can load balance two 1GbE WAN ports and two built-in SIM cards so you could put two SIM cards in and get the combined bandwidth of both.

Gadzy · 29 Nov 2020 at 23:40

I don't understand how all these people on EE don't struggle with online gaming and the whole STRICT NAT. @malccy do not have any trouble gaming on EE due to their network only being able to be a strict NAT? This is shown on the Xbox network settings.

WJA96 · 30 Nov 2020 at 06:20

Having had a quick search on Google for strict NAT it appears to be something specific to games that want you to put your device either outside the firewall or in a DMZ. If that’s all it is then you can do that on EE. EE only delivers your internet connection to your router. What happens at the router after that is up to you. So you just need a router that will allow you to place your console or PC on the wrong side of the firewall (or in the DMZ) and you will have what you call Open NAT (but is effectively no NAT at all).

When you say that EE only allows Strict NAT you mean the router you are using is passing all traffic through the router and hiding your internal IP address from the outside internet connection. So you need to reconfigure the router (if it will allow you to do that) or get a different router that will.

I’m still not entirely sure why games want you to do this but I suppose it might speed up an internet connection a bit. Although NAT isn’t a security measure as such, it is one of the very basic ways your home private network is protected from the world wild web.

malccy · 30 Nov 2020 at 09:26

safc10g said:
Yeah about 25/month for ‘unlimited’ but they aren’t truly unlimited, 1TB/month max.
Which you could easily hit if you get decent speeds!

Edit, they’ve reduced it! 600GB now...

This is the same deal as I now have. The shop offered me it for £30 but speaking to them on the phone got them to offer this better deal.

Showing my stupidity here as did not know anything about NAT Type apart from seeing it mentioned on Cod mp page. Do I need to change it from 'Strict' setting then?

WJA96 · 30 Nov 2020 at 09:59

If what you have now works properly then I wouldn't touch your router settings. Basically your router is taking any traffic you send out, sending it from it's own WAN IP address with a little tag on it that says (to the router) "Malccy's machine" and when it gets to the server and it wants to send you information back, it sends it back to the same WAN IP address with your tag still attached and then router says - "here's some information for Malccy, did they request that? Yes, send it Malccy". What the less 'strict' NAT settings do is remove that incoming check or completely remove the anonymization aspect of what NAT does. In the most extreme 'open' case, you connect your device directly to the WAN port with your ISP's fixed IP address and nothing in between. Which is probably fine if you have a block of fixed IP addresses and you don't mind the fact that the only thing you can contact is the games server. The chances of getting hacked are very low, but so is the flexibility.