Mobile broadband recommendations?

InfiniteNoise · 5 Mar 2019 at 19:31

So since my area sucks and I'm really limited in my upgrade options, my current speed of 12mb/s down and 0.7 mb/s up is the best I can get and it's really awful for streaming, so I'm looking for options that'll give me much better speed.

Looks like mobile broadband is my best option, for a while I was using my phone as 4G hotspot, it gave me much better download/upload speed, I got between 20-40 mb/s download and 14-27 mb/s upload, which is wonderful and allowed me to stream but it's not something I can use all the time due to limited data I have.

So what I'm looking for is something that gives me similar speeds but with a lot more data, I was looking at Three's mobile broadband options, unlimited data and £22 a month, sounds great but seems too good for the price, there got to be a catch, right? I checked their fair use policy, it's not actually unlimited but 1000GB a month, which is still more than enough, options from other networks costs more and doesn't give me as much data.

Avalon · 5 Mar 2019 at 19:37

Three’s press office specifically confirmed it was unlimited afaik, either way it’s the best deal you will find that’s anything close to Unlimited unless you are a VM customer, given the speed you have that seems unlikely.

Slightly puzzled about your ‘streaming’, most streaming providers would be OK on 12Mbit, as long as you weren’t trying to stream 4K or something else inappropriate. An 8Mbit stream will still be 8Mbit even on a gigabit connection.

InfiniteNoise · 5 Mar 2019 at 19:59

With my home connection, with upload speed of 0.7mb/s, I can't stream unless I massively reduce the quality so much it ends up looking so pixelated and so choppy it's not even worth it.

With my phone as hotspot, I can stream fine and I don't have to reduce bitrate or resolution output.

Yeah, looks like Three's unlimited mobile broadband option is the best I can get, I'll look into it a bit more.

Duke · 5 Mar 2019 at 21:19

An outdoor antenna will boost the reception further too.

InfiniteNoise · 6 Mar 2019 at 03:20

Not sure if that's going to help, I mean, the device's gonna be with me most of the time.

Duke · 6 Mar 2019 at 08:40

As in your phone? I thought you'd get a 4G dongle and plug it into a suitable router

BigT · 6 Mar 2019 at 10:12

Yeah if this is a permanent solution then don't tether. What a PITA to swap SIMs between your data plan friendly one and your "regular" phone. Get a dongle or LTE router and some external aerials.

Avalon · 6 Mar 2019 at 10:21

BigT said:
Yeah if this is a permanent solution then don't tether. What a PITA to swap SIMs between your data plan friendly one and your "regular" phone. Get a dongle or LTE router and some external aerials.

For £22/m they supply you with a combined modem/router, absolutely no need to tether anything.

InfiniteNoise · 6 Mar 2019 at 16:37

Avalon said:
For £22/m they supply you with a combined modem/router, absolutely no need to tether anything.

Yeah.

There won't be any SIM swapping or anything like that at all, I'll have separate plan, and a device (HomeFi, MiFi, etc).

£22 a month, 'unlimited' (actually 1000GB but I won't be burning through all that in a month anyway, so it's still plenty), decent coverage, seems decent, not sure about Three's download and upload speed with 4G/LTE, with EE I get between 20-40 mb/s download and 14-27mb/s upload, so I guess it'll be around that.

Anyone here have any experience with Three? How are they?

Avalon · 6 Mar 2019 at 17:09

InfiniteNoise said:
Yeah.

There won't be any SIM swapping or anything like that at all, I'll have separate plan, and a device (HomeFi, MiFi, etc).

£22 a month, 'unlimited' (actually 1000GB but I won't be burning through all that in a month anyway, so it's still plenty), decent coverage, seems decent, not sure about Three's download and upload speed with 4G/LTE, with EE I get between 20-40 mb/s download and 14-27mb/s upload, so I guess it'll be around that.

Anyone here have any experience with Three? How are they?

Again it’s not 100GB, the PR team specifically confirmed it’s actually unlimited (technically 100GB plan with an unlimited bolt on), if it wasn’t they would get fined to oblivion as that’s illegal. Three supply an a Huawei B311, as to coverage asking others for experiences isn’t relevant to your coverage in your location. Find a friend/family member/acquaintance with a Three sim and test it, the coverage checker will only give you a very basic indication of the coverage type, but not actual speed.

"andy" · 28 Mar 2019 at 23:53

I live in a village that is a bit out there and apparently too far away from the cabinet for fibre at the moment. My max speed was 4.5mb down and nearly nothing up

streaming was fine on something like Netflix where they use decent compression but anything else was hit and miss.

I got the three home fi unlimited on the £22 offer two weeks ago after having some line issues and losing my rag. I've been blown away by it

Put the Huawei router upstairs and I'm getting 30-40mb down and the same again up. Before trying it I was thinking id need an external aerial but it's obviously doing just fine without.

Caged · 29 Mar 2019 at 00:44

I’d swap the SIM into a Mikrotik LTE router before buying an antenna for the cheap Huawei router they bundle with the service.

TerrierHTFC · 29 Mar 2019 at 10:57

I've had a Three unlimited sim in a 4g TP-LInk MR200 router since they announced it was unlimited in October last year.

It's not 100% perfect but it is infinitely better that the 2mb down 0.2mb up "broadband" we had prior. Our cabinet hasn't/isn't getting upgraded but we're supposed to be getting FTTH in 2021 at some point. I'll believe it when I see it, but we're not even rural!

Peak speeds are about 30mbps but it obviously does vary fairly wildly. I'd say the average is about 18 whilst the lowest during peak hours is about 8. For general internet usage and streaming its pretty much spot on, slightly less so for online gaming as the pings can be fairly high and it does drop out more than proper broadband, but I still do manage to play online on ps4 regularly with mates. My Mrs finds it fine for working from home.

If I could get fibre broadband i'd switch in an instant but if you're in a situation like we were where you can only get hopeless ADSL of a completely unusable speed in 2019 id definitely recommend it, presuming your three signal is decent enough.

Caged · 29 Mar 2019 at 23:31

If your Three signal isn't very good then EE do their 4GEE service - but it's not unlimited. It's not terrible though - 100GB is £40, 500GB is £100. Obviously you won't be downloading Blu-ray rips anytime soon, and game patches will likely be something you need to ration, but for Netflix it should work out OK.