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

Soldato
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Apologies if previously answered, but has anyone on EE ever been hit by the "fair use policy" limits on the unlimited plan for 4G / 5G broadband?

Really not convinced by the legality of their terms and conditions.

You have to be downloading over 1Tb to get close to the ‘fair use’ policy. And even then you need to be really taking the urine. They’re just protecting themselves against users locking up cell towers by permanently streaming solid blocks of data.

If you think you’ll be transferring more than 1Tb per month then get something else.
 
Associate
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You have to be downloading over 1Tb to get close to the ‘fair use’ policy. And even then you need to be really taking the urine. They’re just protecting themselves against users locking up cell towers by permanently streaming solid blocks of data.

If you think you’ll be transferring more than 1Tb per month then get something else.

Feels like 1TB is relatively easy to hit still. The average English household broadband usage in 2019 was 325GB, hitting 429GB in 2020. Assuming even greater growth in 2020, that might be at 550GB on average. We've got four people in the house, each streaming TV, two of us playing games, and one of us working from home. That's a lot of Netflix, game & OS updates, and just general browsing :/

Might not hit the cap most months, but I wouldn't be surprised if the months where a couple AAA games are out we exceed it easily.
 
Soldato
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Yeah its quite true. When haggling with EE before I left they played hard ball and wouldnt drop price. The retention lady tried to tempt me with "massive 40GB of data to use per month" till I had to correct her that my two boys and daughter watch youtube and stuff often and my monthly Gb quota would easily hit 300Gb..

Wife also streams most nights and I work from home. Has to be unlimited when it comes to streaming, working, kids.

Downloading a game these days is 90Gb and that doesn't include the patches etc.
 
Caporegime
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Although I haven’t been on the domestic side for over two years the average usage I saw wasn’t that high, 250-400GB per month. There were some higher but very few people were close to 1TB. One in particular though was hitting about 2.5TB of combined upload and download. It was the highest I’d seen.
 
Soldato
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Feels like 1TB is relatively easy to hit still. The average English household broadband usage in 2019 was 325GB, hitting 429GB in 2020. Assuming even greater growth in 2020, that might be at 550GB on average. We've got four people in the house, each streaming TV, two of us playing games, and one of us working from home. That's a lot of Netflix, game & OS updates, and just general browsing :/

Might not hit the cap most months, but I wouldn't be surprised if the months where a couple AAA games are out we exceed it easily.

So why not measure what you are actually using (most routers allow you to do this). I suspect you’re not that far above average.
 
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A friend of mine came around yesterday with an iphone 13 pro, he turns to me and says wow you get ~1Gbit downloads on 5G and ~100mb upload, I was a bit surprised as my phone and 5G router only see ~660/80 tops ( that in itself is a recent doubling for me after a mast upgrade) not only that he seemed to have better latency, my hardware is is older (an S10 and VN007) is it just the case that my hardware is to slow to support those speeds or does the newer hardware have some additional bells and whistles?
 
Soldato
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A friend of mine came around yesterday with an iphone 13 pro, he turns to me and says wow you get ~1Gbit downloads on 5G and ~100mb upload, I was a bit surprised as my phone and 5G router only see ~660/80 tops ( that in itself is a recent doubling for me after a mast upgrade) not only that he seemed to have better latency, my hardware is is older (an S10 and VN007) is it just the case that my hardware is to slow to support those speeds or does the newer hardware have some additional bells and whistles?

Untethered phones always give the best performance as the carriers are not hop-counting or IMEI throttling them.
 
Associate
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I was testing the performance of my phone directly over the airwaves in same location on 5G and not connected to my 5G router, the 5G router has cpu load values in the region of 2.4 when doing a test on its dual core CPU so imagine it is capped by that, perhaps the the chip in my S10 is too.
 
Soldato
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Wonder if anyone can offer some advice about something I just read today. The NR5101 I use, with my external antenna, has two external antenna ports on the back of the router. My antenna connects into both these ports. i.e The antenna has two cables. Reading today, Zyxel recommend connecting two antennas when using the external connection. Does that mean, somehow, I can daisy chain my current cables into one connection. Buy the same antenna (as it works just fine) and then do the same and connect that into the other port. Is that possible? Connecting two SMA connections into one? Thanks.

"To get the highest LTE/5G speeds, we recommend using two additional antennas to improve the WAN (LTE/5G) signal. If only one antenna is used, the performance could go down as far as three times less than if two antennas are used."

EDIT: Like this? https://www.data-alliance.net/sma-t-splitter-y-adapter-join-2-antenna-cables-to-one-sma-connection/
 
Soldato
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The two antennae are for diversity. Attaching two to the same cable will not help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antenna_diversity

You need to attach the two antennae to two different ports. And depending on what your antennae are like, they need to be oriented at 90-degrees to each other.

This link shows the orientation

https://www.netxl.com/directional-a...MIx_3M_6iE9AIVV-DtCh1EBAcdEAQYECABEgJBn_D_BwE

And this one is a good, reasonably priced antenna

https://boxed2me.co.uk/product/nedi...MIx_3M_6iE9AIVV-DtCh1EBAcdEAQYCSABEgIkT_D_BwE

Edit!

But as you already have an antenna that connects to both ports it probably has two antennae in the housing. So you probably won’t see a massive benefit unless you’re in a particularly Noisy RF environment with lots of obstructions in the way between you and the cell tower.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
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Newcastle, UK
The two antennae are for diversity. Attaching two to the same cable will not help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antenna_diversity

You need to attach the two antennae to two different ports. And depending on what your antennae are like, they need to be oriented at 90-degrees to each other.

This link shows the orientation

https://www.netxl.com/directional-a...MIx_3M_6iE9AIVV-DtCh1EBAcdEAQYECABEgJBn_D_BwE

And this one is a good, reasonably priced antenna

https://boxed2me.co.uk/product/nedi...MIx_3M_6iE9AIVV-DtCh1EBAcdEAQYCSABEgIkT_D_BwE

Edit!

But as you already have an antenna that connects to both ports it probably has two antennae in the housing. So you probably won’t see a massive benefit unless you’re in a particularly Noisy RF environment with lots of obstructions in the way between you and the cell tower.

Thanks. :) It dawned on me today as well, just as you say, the housing contains two cross polorised antenna hence the two seperate cables. So yeah, I think we've both answered my question. It is already utilising two antenna just within one housing. :)
 
Soldato
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So there was work being done on my new mast last night and today, 4g had been enabled but not 5g as of yet. I was still connecting to my old mast 2.4km away, giving a respectable 160-200mbps download and 15mbps upload.

Finished work at 8pm tonight and moved the router 4ft away it's normal location, from the window looking towards the old mast to the floor so without direct LOS to the old mast - the new mast is the complete opposite side of the house, but is only 300m away.

Result:
12305975824.png


Oh hello there, new 5G signal!!

The upload is pants but I know I can get 25mbps upload from a better router position on the correct side of the house.

And after a quick and dirty 2 min test of the router in a random location the side of the house facing the new mast... And on Wifi:
Screenshot-20211109-210456-2.png


:D:D:D:D:D
 
Soldato
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Welcome to Club 5G. Now see if you can beat the 1Gbps barrier with something. :p
Well, the mast is literally 3 minutes walk away. Shouldn't be too hard! :D

I was already part of the club, I mean I started this thread!! :D:cry::p

But over my 5G life I've gone from 30mbps FTTC, to a reliable 100mbps 5G, to 180mbps 5G, to... well, we'll see - probably 500mbps+ reliably. That's in the course of less than a year, and over 2 masts. Ultimate speed is nothing without a stable connection, so I'll need to have a play with location.
 
Soldato
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I was already part of the club, I mean I started this thread!! :D:cry::p

I know :D

But over my 5G life I've gone from 30mbps FTTC, to a reliable 100mbps 5G, to 180mbps 5G, to... well, we'll see - probably 500mbps+ reliably. That's in the course of less than a year, and over 2 masts. Ultimate speed is nothing without a stable connection, so I'll need to have a play with location.

My connection has be so rock steady it has been very surprising, especially since it is Three :p
 
Soldato
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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 :)
 
Soldato
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If you can get 50Mb download FTTC then I would be tempted to go to another ISP that isn't as cheap. Vodafone have their own equipment in the exchanges and it could be that just going to someone like BT, Zen or A&A would see the stability return. I have massively fast (900mbps) FTTP at home, even more massively fast (was 2Gbps) leased line in the office and 76Mbps FTTC in the flat that is part of the office. And other than very occasionally when I'm downloading a movie or there is a big update to my development system or windows I don't really see any great improvement in my user experience.

I've posted up the 300Mbps I get on 3 5G in a hotel in West Bromwich and that's about the same as Zen would charge for 76Mbps FTTC. If you can get a fixed line then that will almost always be better than a 5G signal that can be cut down to crawling speed by sunspots, trees or even heavy rain. And it's going to be expensive to gear up for this. My own Mikrotik router was £370 or something like that and Huawei and Teltonika alternatives are about the same. Add in £100-£200 for antennae and installation and you could be looking at a pretty hefty bill for going 5G.

For a business environment, I would go with Zen or BT Business and pay the few pounds per month extra.
 
Soldato
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If you can get 50Mb download FTTC then I would be tempted to go to another ISP that isn't as cheap. Vodafone have their own equipment in the exchanges and it could be that just going to someone like BT, Zen or A&A would see the stability return.

I signed up with Vodafone for their FTTC service early last year and cancelled during the 14 day window because the service was so poor. I would agree that moving to another ISP is probably the best approach.
 
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