EE Home 4g - How good is it

[neil_g]

One of the first things I do when looking at a potential house move is look at the internet options.

A house that we're looking at is pretty out in the sticks. Vm, voda, sky all say nothing available. Bt backed services around 3mb average.

EE are stating 33mb on their 4g home package, but just how good is it? Currently we have 200mb vm and run Netflix 4k, Spotify premium etc. I guess those will have to go? Downloading from steam and Nintendo will be a nightmare.. Also need it for work remote access, so needs to be pretty stable.

Next thing is data package, is there any way to see the monthly data use on vm?

Tl;dr - anyone use/used it and what was your opinion.

 

[Rroff]

Find another house

No way to really know until you use it - I've had everything from rock solid ~20ms latency and speeds that rival my FTTC through to multiple drops an hour and latency spiking into the seconds, etc. depending on location.

 

[BigT]

I used EE 4G out in the sticks until they put a fibre enabled cabinet on our village green. If you get a signal and the speed then it’ll be fine for most things, however:

1. The data caps are massively prohibitive. With no streaming whatsoever my wife and I could burn through 1Gb a day easily. Updates to iPads, apps and PCs can cane hundreds of Mb of data. Throw streaming into the mix and you’ll see it disappear in no time.

2. The latency is not as good as wired so much worse if gaming is your thing.

3. For me it was always a bit susceptible to the weather.

As for viewing data use, I used a third party TP-Link router and that showed data usage you could reset monthly. It made for depressing viewing! No idea what EE’s own router does but I’d be amazed if it didn’t.

 

[Rroff]

2. The latency is not as good as wired so much worse if gaming is your thing.

Varies a lot - where I am right now on both EE and Voda latency is pretty solid, low levels of packet loss - gaming is about the same as gaming on ADSL with interleaving on and it rarely if ever drops - definitely not the story everywhere though.

 

[jsmoke]

Pretty easy solution. Put in an EE sim, buy £10 payg, drive out to the house in question and try it. A lot depends on the hills around the area, in the sticks you get a bad signal one place and move 100m and get an OK signal sort of thing.

There may be various aerial available also.

 

[neil_g]

Thanks for the input, it may well be a deal breaker to be honest. Got an EE sim in my phone so may just have to go and try it (I can get 20% off too through corporate schemes).

I know EE can supply an additional external aerial too, but only for signal issues. Otherwise you have to purchase yourself.

 

[BigT]

Varies a lot - where I am right now on both EE and Voda latency is pretty solid, low levels of packet loss - gaming is about the same as gaming on ADSL with interleaving on and it rarely if ever drops - definitely not the story everywhere though.

You’re right it will be dependent on all sorts factors so experiences will vary. I’ve still got a Vodafone SIM going and it’s always solid but 5x the latency of my fibre (VODA_GW in the screenshot I just took). Same was true when EE was in the mix too.

 

[BigT]

Thanks for the input, it may well be a deal breaker to be honest. Got an EE sim in my phone so may just have to go and try it (I can get 20% off too through corporate schemes).

I know EE can supply an additional external aerial too, but only for signal issues. Otherwise you have to purchase yourself.

External aerials are pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. Think I paid £25 for mine. Data caps are going to be your biggest problem. Believe me in the modern home 4G data plans doesn’t provide enough data.

 

[Matthew.M]

The speed will likely be fine or easily fixed with an external aerial but you’ll burn through the data limit so quickly.

I used a 3G SIM for the couple of weeks it took me to get home broadband installed and used my entire 30Gb data allowance in a couple of days and I was trying to be careful.

 

[Rroff]

I’ve still got a Vodafone SIM going and it’s always solid but 5x the latency of my fibre (VODA_GW in the screenshot I just took).

Yeah - where I am now it is 28-32ms - most days it seems to pick one and pretty much sit there give or take while at work it is 75ms give or take about 10-15ms.

I'm actually quite surprised by the connection here as I didn't think 4G could be this relatively low latency and stable but it rarely if ever drops out and only occasionally in the evenings when a lot of people are home I guess is when I see any impacted performance of any kind - usually if there is something big on like the world cup.

 

[ScoTTyBEEE]

You won’t notice any difference on decent 4g compared to vdsl. EE do a 300gb package so data shouldn’t be an issue if you adjust ever so slightly.

 

[BigT]

You won’t notice any difference on decent 4g compared to vdsl. EE do a 300gb package so data shouldn’t be an issue if you adjust ever so slightly.

Well you might notice a difference in your wallet. Isn’t that package £90 a month?

 

[ScoTTyBEEE]

Well you might notice a difference in your wallet. Isn’t that package £90 a month?

Yes, depends how much you want to adjust I suppose. I pay £45 for 80gb, so I don't think £90 is unreasonable.

 

[deFiniLoGy]

I’ve used EE 4G as a home broadband solution for a couple of occasions, if signal is not an issue with your area then it’s just the cost.

I conquer with good signal u can get speed that puts vdsl to shame tbh.

Latency wise it is again, like all the above suggested, generally higher than vdsl, but I had games on it (not competitively ofc) and I don’t think it is un-gamable per se, unless ofc if you’re a competitive player than it’s almost certainly not going to work.