****The Official 5G Home Broadband Thread**** (Three/EE/Vodafone/etc)

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I’m thinking about getting my dad to move to a 5G based home broadband setup. He’s currently on FTTC with about 50Mb down, but a very unstable connection. We’ve tried speaking to Vodafone to get it sorted but they’ve been rubbish.

He works from home, and runs his own business, so decent broadband is a must (as it is for many people these days).


Annoyingly, FTTP or gfast (I can’t remember which) was installed on a few adjacent estates a couple of years ago, but not on his as the residents association blocked any construction that needed doing :(


I spoke to a local openreach engineer on Monday and he said there aren’t currently any plans to bring FTTP to the estate.


EE, however, recently installed a 5G mast not so far away.


Outside the house, I can get 5G, but inside the signal is non existent, so I suspect an external antenna would be needed.



The only potential concern I have is that EE are pretty pricey, and he would still need a landline phone.


Has anyone got any advice on the above?


Thanks in advance :)


That openreach engineer will give you a more honest answer then BT ever will about the Roll out for ftth.
 
Soldato
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TBH if you can only get 50mbps on FTTC then you're probably not going to get much more on a different ISP, as they all use the same Openreach infrastructure.

Deffo worth looking into 5G. In my current house, FTTC at around 50mbps is also my only fixed line option, no virgin media or FTTP coming due to us being on a private road. I brought the 5G router with me when I moved, in the old house I was getting a reliable 100mbps on 5G to a mast 500m away and through houses/trees. The new house is 2.4km from the same mast but with an almost direct unrestricted LOS, and I've been on 160-200mbps for the past couple of months. A new mast has just gone live 300m away and I'm seeing 500-700mbps download speeds.

First things to check is finding out where your mast is. If it's recently been installed, check your local council planning applications as it'll be on there. Once you know the location, you'll also know how far away it is, what is blocking it etc which will basically determine what sort of speed you can get. Under 500m with nothing in the way - 500mbps+ Same distance with houses and trees - 300-400 highly depended on router location. If you've got land mass and a lot of trees/houses blocking LOS, and 1000m away then you're probably only going to see slow speeds or poor signal.

The key thing is finding that mast.
 
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TBH if you can only get 50mbps on FTTC then you're probably not going to get much more on a different ISP, as they all use the same Openreach infrastructure.

This is incorrect. While some use BT’s equipment (EE, Plusnet, BT), Vodafone have different (overloaded) equipment in the cabinets. So switching to a BT based service might well yield a significant improvement.

Deffo worth looking into 5G. In my current house, FTTC at around 50mbps is also my only fixed line option, no virgin media or FTTP coming due to us being on a private road. I brought the 5G router with me when I moved, in the old house I was getting a reliable 100mbps on 5G to a mast 500m away and through houses/trees. The new house is 2.4km from the same mast but with an almost direct unrestricted LOS, and I've been on 160-200mbps for the past couple of months. A new mast has just gone live 300m away and I'm seeing 500-700mbps download speeds.

First things to check is finding out where your mast is. If it's recently been installed, check your local council planning applications as it'll be on there. Once you know the location, you'll also know how far away it is, what is blocking it etc which will basically determine what sort of speed you can get. Under 500m with nothing in the way - 500mbps+ Same distance with houses and trees - 300-400 highly depended on router location. If you've got land mass and a lot of trees/houses blocking LOS, and 1000m away then you're probably only going to see slow speeds or poor signal.

The key thing is finding that mast.

While I don’t disagree about investigating 4G or 5G I would argue it’s not really suitable for running a business and it’s relatively expensive to get geared up to get it working.
 
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This is incorrect. While some use BT’s equipment (EE, Plusnet, BT), Vodafone have different (overloaded) equipment in the cabinets. So switching to a BT based service might well yield a significant improvement.



While I don’t disagree about investigating 4G or 5G I would argue it’s not really suitable for running a business and it’s relatively expensive to get geared up to get it working.

Speeds might be a bit better on another isp but it's not going to be more than 10 or 20% at very most.

5G really isn't expensive. Three's current deal is £0 up front and £30 a month. I'm paying £27 a month with the first 6 months of that half price. And if you're willing to pay for a router outright there's sim only deals which cost a few £ a month.

And as for reliability, I've had zero down time in the past 11 months on 5g compared to numerous drops in connection on my old fttc broadband, with the copper from the telegraph pole to the house being replaced along with the internal master socket.

Oh and to get 5g up and running, you plug in the router. That's it. No appointments for an engineer to visit. No waiting for your line to activated.

5g doesn't have to rely on aging copper lines, if you have a decent signal you'll have a connection with very little to zero downtime. And if it's a good signal then it's going to be a lot faster than FTTC.
 
Soldato
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I'm running a business using 5G as my main source of internet connection, we don't live in the dark ages of mobile technology and unless you are paying BT etc. for an SLA then you can have just as much downtime (or more) from them.

Setup up costs are a joke for 5G, I am paying under £5 per month for an unlimited SIM from Three on a 12 month contract, and the modem/router can be had for ~£300. If you need an antenna and can't use a drill, a cell mapping site, and a compass then you can pay for one to be installed I guess, but it's not rocket science or voodoo magic like some would have you think.
 
Soldato
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Hi guys

I have a house up north but I'm currently working in London for a year or 2. I have few Ring/Yi cameras they are connected to virgin media cable WiFi router. The deal was at half price for 18 months. Now this month the deal has back to 'normal' £58 per month on rolling contract. I don't fancy to signing up a new contract to get the half price deal again as I may decide to sell the house.

Will iD, giftgaft etc work with 4G/5G WiFi router as they are very cheap, like £10 a month for 12GB data. iD is cheaper and more data.b

I know Ring is motion detection devices so they uses very little data?

Will that work? Any 4G/5G wifi router recommendation?

Thanks
 
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Welcome to Club 5G. Now see if you can beat the 1Gbps barrier with something. :p
Almost there... ;)

Haven't tried upstairs yet either, this on the ground floor :p
0821431d-84c0-4d7a-bb52-4373e199e315.png
 
Soldato
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Speeds might be a bit better on another isp but it's not going to be more than 10 or 20% at very most.

5G really isn't expensive. Three's current deal is £0 up front and £30 a month. I'm paying £27 a month with the first 6 months of that half price. And if you're willing to pay for a router outright there's sim only deals which cost a few £ a month.

And as for reliability, I've had zero down time in the past 11 months on 5g compared to numerous drops in connection on my old fttc broadband, with the copper from the telegraph pole to the house being replaced along with the internal master socket.

Oh and to get 5g up and running, you plug in the router. That's it. No appointments for an engineer to visit. No waiting for your line to activated.

5g doesn't have to rely on aging copper lines, if you have a decent signal you'll have a connection with very little to zero downtime. And if it's a good signal then it's going to be a lot faster than FTTC.

I think this is a very interesting, decidedly evangelical, reply.

5G is expensive to get started. You need a 5G router. They’re £250 minimum and I would suggest the one you want is probably more than £300. And in the post where this scenario is discussed it specifically says no 5G signal in the house. So if you’re comfortable wielding an SDS drill up a 9m ladder (and you’ve got a 9m ladder) and you have an existing antenna pole then two decent antenna will set you back £60 - £120 and Then you have to cable it into the loft and if that’s not you then you probably should budget another £300 to get two external antennae fitted, aligned and cables run to wherever you want your receiver.

The SIMs are priced to get you interested, but once you are interested they’re roughly the same as FTTC. And you can find similar deals on BT, EE and TalkTalks websites.

Speed is fundamentally almost pointless once you get much over 50Mbps. Even 20Mbps is more than adequate for most things and while I love to see you post up increasingly high numbers you only see these e-Peen figures when the cell towers are lightly used.

5G is great, but it’s still an early-adopter thing at the moment. I’d still rather have 40/20Mbps FTTC at home because I know I’m always going to get 40/20Mbps from a wire. Just because you have a really great screwdriver doesn’t make every challenge a screw.
 
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I'm running a business using 5G as my main source of internet connection, we don't live in the dark ages of mobile technology and unless you are paying BT etc. for an SLA then you can have just as much downtime (or more) from them.

Setup up costs are a joke for 5G, I am paying under £5 per month for an unlimited SIM from Three on a 12 month contract, and the modem/router can be had for ~£300. If you need an antenna and can't use a drill, a cell mapping site, and a compass then you can pay for one to be installed I guess, but it's not rocket science or voodoo magic like some would have you think.

From reading the post external antennae will be needed and realistically I’d say £300 to have two good out-of phase LPDA antennae mounted above the ridge line of the house and cabled to an appropriate location. Most people I know would not say £550-650 setup costs are a joke.

And even with an external antenna there is no guarantee you’ll pull in a 5G signal. If you were pushing a 4G solution, with a £250 installed Mikrotik SXT LTE6 then I’d say sure. You’ll get 40-60Mbps out of that all day long. But 5G is still in early adopter territory and for every ‘wow’ post in this thread, there are at least one ‘meh’ posts where people have spent good money and got ropey connections.

The user needs a landline phone. For me, that makes the cost scenario very different because you basically get the phone for free on top of the FTTC charges with landlines these days. He bought £20+VAT per month Vodafone FTTC and he should have spent £40 per month with Zen. If so, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
 
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What speeds do you get at 9:30am with lots of users on the cell tower? I find my speeds vary between 200Mbps during the day and 450Mbps in the small hours where I’m pretty much the only user on the cell tower.

Dunno about 5G but on 4G it isn't always speeds that are impacted at busy times - sometimes there is a noticeable delay on first connecting to a page, individual elements of a page will load in at different speeds and times, etc. i.e. you'll see each image on a page load in over 5 seconds at different rates of progress - even though a single download or streaming a high bit-rate video, etc. might hold up at decent speeds. Something you don't tend to get on fixed line broadband.
 
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Dunno about 5G but on 4G it isn't always speeds that are impacted at busy times - sometimes there is a noticeable delay on first connecting to a page, individual elements of a page will load in at different speeds and times, etc. i.e. you'll see each image on a page load in over 5 seconds at different rates of progress - even though a single download or streaming a high bit-rate video, etc. might hold up at decent speeds. Something you don't tend to get on fixed line broadband.

There is no doubt that 5G is a MAJOR step on from 4G. It's like 4G vs. 2G. When it works, it's very, very, good. You wouldn't know you were on a WWAN connection. But when it doesn't work, it's 4G and as you say, as fast as the headline speeds look with 4G, it can have a few issues when the user density increases.
 
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I missed the bit about him needing a landline phone, but just because his phone doesn't get a 5g signal in the house, doesn't automatically mean he'll need a external antenna.

It's why I suggested finding the mast. Once the location of this is known we'll be able to say whether it's actually a viable option. If he doesn't need an external antenna, the upfront cost is nothing.

Another option would be to look at business broadband which will typically have guarantees of uptime.

What speeds do you get at 9:30am with lots of users on the cell tower? I find my speeds vary between 200Mbps during the day and 450Mbps in the small hours where I’m pretty much the only user on the cell tower.

Not sure yet as I'm only testing the locations right now, I've got a switch arriving today so I'll be moving the router to its new location in the next few days.

Currently I see 180mbps at peak time during the day and 210 at midnight. I actually find 5pm is the worst time for speed.
 
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What speeds do you get at 9:30am with lots of users on the cell tower? I find my speeds vary between 200Mbps during the day and 450Mbps in the small hours where I’m pretty much the only user on the cell tower.
Ok, router now in it's final position, last night at 11pm I was getting 750/38 consistently, peaking at over 800 on some tests. Done a couple of tests just now at 8:30am, and same speeds basically. In fact just seen one of the fastest speeds at 885 down/40 up.


So yeah it's pretty consistent!
 
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Speaking of consistency, what's the ping jitter like? I've connected my laptop to my phone via hotspot a few times to test EE 5G and the pings are horrible. Sometimes it's 40ms to bbc.co.cuk, and then it'll jump to 230ms and back down.
Had a ping trace running while doing these tests, to google.co.uk - 12 to 15ms and zero packet loss. To some speed test servers I've seen 10ms ping.
 
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Had a ping trace running while doing these tests, to google.co.uk - 12 to 15ms and zero packet loss. To some speed test servers I've seen 10ms ping.

That's really, really good! I don't have good line of sight to the tower despite it being on a large block of flats. It's also fairly far away (950m) with lots of houses and trees in the way.
 
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That's really, really good! I don't have good line of sight to the tower despite it being on a large block of flats. It's also fairly far away (950m) with lots of houses and trees in the way.
Obstructions and distance are the 2 main things that will limit your signal, the old mast I was connected to was 2.4km away but I had basically a 99.9% clean LOS (a small bush in the way) and was getting 20-25ms ping and 160-200mbps download. I've also found that window frames mess with the signal, or anything large and metal. You'll also find there's a sweet spot for router location. 3ft one way and your signal/speed can be completely different.
 
Soldato
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My 2yr contract has ended just at the right time with Three, just grabbed their Black Friday deal, £20 a month unlimited Data (including 5G) SIM for my phone, only £10pm for the first 6mths and a £50 Amazon voucher thrown in for good measure.

Over the 2yrs that only works out at about £17.50pm for unlimited data, minutes and texts! Which is damn good for a ~300-350Mbit connection speed (have seen it go over 400Mbit at times)



Okay, so i don't get a shiny new Samsung phone, but who cares, My current A90 5G is still like new and that would have bumped the monthly up to £53! for phone features I'd never use.
 
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Soldato
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My 2yr contract has ended just at the right time with Three, just grabbed their Black Friday deal, £20 a month unlimited Data (including 5G) SIM for my phone, only £10pm for the first 6mths and a £50 Amazon voucher thrown in for good measure.

Over the 2yrs that only works out at about £17.50pm for unlimited data, minutes and texts! Which is damn good for a ~300-350Mbit connection speed (have seen it go over 400Mbit at times)

Okay, so i don't get a shiny new Samsung phone, but who cares, My current A90 5G is still like new and that would have bumped the monthly up to £53! for phone features I'd never use.

There are much better deals that that to be had if you keep your eye open on the deals sites, I am paying less than £4 per month for the same Unlimited everything SIM, courtesy of Affordable Mobiles and Quidco, that's a 12 month contract, it was such a good deal I got two. Pretty sure I linked the deal some where back in this thread.
 
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