Scanscom EE card with Huawei 5G CPE PRO 2 - Issues

[Sakigami]

Hi everyone,

Due to the lack of access of any good fixed broadband in my area, I decided to resort to mobile broadband and had a go with the company National Broadband, which provided me with a Huawei 5G CPE PRO 2 - this combination worked pretty well, giving me constant 150mbs+ speeds, with no downtime.

As the price was a bit too steep however, I decided to cancel during the cooling off period, and got a Huawei 5G CPE PRO 2, with a Scanscom EE unlimited card, which honestly came to a much more acceptable price... However, the experience is definitely not the same:

- During the afternoon, the speeds are very often not as good, coming down to 50/60mbs
- Even when speeds are good, the wifi just loses internet sometimes. After restarting the router, it goes back to normal, but it's quite incovinient.

Has anyone experienced similar issues? I have gotten in touch with Scanscom support, and they don't seem to be able to solve the problem. They have sent me a new sim card, which apparently has the same issue. Despite the majority being positive reviews on amazon, the negative ones do mention the same problem I have, along with other posts on forums online. Also, I've called the company that I've purchased the router from (Eternal Comms), and they mentioned that most of the troubleshooting they have had to do with EE has been related to Scanscom cards...

Would really appreciate any ideas, or if anyone has been able to sort this! The price is excellent, and I would really like to make it work.

Thanks

 

[WJA96]

Exactly which EE SIM-only plan are you on?

National Broadband would have supplied you with a multi-SIM that gives you the strongest signal irrespective of network. Those SIMs are more expensive and they probably also have channel aggregation enabled.

Most EE SIMs do not allow full channel aggregation. Especially the unlimited data ones. For some reason this comes as a great surprise to most people but EE commonly restrict your bandwidth on an “unlimited” contract. So you can suck down all the data you want but you won’t necessarily get the fastest speed your modem/router allows. You need to check with Scanscom what the maximum number of aggregated channels is. My guess is 2. A lot of what is called 5G in the UK is actually not, it’s the fastest form of LTE and because of carrier settings your phone still shows 5G. You might have a CAT18 modem but if your SIM-only plan only allows 2 channel aggregation then you may as well have a CAT6 device.

We use Everything Voice for these sorts of SIMs and they do look pricey on paper but this is probably one of those instances where get what you pay for. How much did you save by going to Scanscom over National Broadband? £15 a month maybe? Ask them if there a maximum download bandwidth limit on your SIM-only plan. It may be something like 70Mbps.

 

[Sakigami]

National Broadband actually gave me a Vodafone card first, which they then replaced for an EE one which had better coverage and speeds. Are you saying that the EE card they provided is different from a direct EE card? I thought this was a scanscom card issue, but do you think I’ll get the same issues if I move to direct EE?

The scanscom card I got is one of the unlimited pre paid ones you can get through Amazon. If I split the cost of the router + this card, I’m actually saving somewhere between £20-£25 per month. This is obviously irrelevant if the service is not stable.

For the most part of the day, I’m actually getting similar speeds to the ones I was getting with national broadband, the main issue is really the fact that the connection randomly stops working, with restarting the router being the only viable solution.

Lastly, how much do you pay monthly for the Everything Voice cards? Would that provide a similar service to national broadband? Perhaps I could still save some money by keeping my own router and getting one of those SIM only, as part of the National Brand price is the rental price of the router.

Thanks

 

[WJA96]

National Broadband actually gave me a Vodafone card first, which they then replaced for an EE one which had better coverage and speeds. Are you saying that the EE card they provided is different from a direct EE card? I thought this was a scanscom card issue, but do you think I’ll get the same issues if I move to direct EE?

The scanscom card I got is one of the unlimited pre paid ones you can get through Amazon. If I split the cost of the router + this card, I’m actually saving somewhere between £20-£25 per month. This is obviously irrelevant if the service is not stable.

For the most part of the day, I’m actually getting similar speeds to the ones I was getting with national broadband, the main issue is really the fact that the connection randomly stops working, with restarting the router being the only viable solution.

Lastly, how much do you pay monthly for the Everything Voice cards? Would that provide a similar service to national broadband? Perhaps I could still save some money by keeping my own router and getting one of those SIM only, as part of the National Brand price is the rental price of the router.

Thanks

All data packages can be tailored to the customer. A big customer like Scanscom will get a quote from EE and part of that quote will be how much bandwidth you get from aggregating channels.

If you go to EEs SIM-only store page https://ee.co.uk/mobile/sim-only-deals it offers you unlimited data with no maximum speed or the 200Gb and 25Gb services are both capped at 100Mbps, so you’ll never get faster than that.

So if you are Scanscom they will want to offer an unlimited SIM at the lowest price and that means they’ll likely compromise the speed to get that. And they’ve already sold the service with up-front payment so you’re pretty much stuffed even if it’s no good.

Unfortunately for commercial reasons I can’t tell you what we pay Everything Voice for a Multi-SIM but it’s not going to be as cheap as National Broadband, let alone as cheap as direct from EE or Scanscom.

 

[Sakigami]

I see, thanks a lot! That's extremely useful.

For now, I've gotten confirmation from Scanscom that they are willing to refund the card, as it does not seem to work properly with my router: It's not that the speeds are compromised, but rather than there are constant disconnections, which does not seem acceptable.

I have also gotten an unlimited max card directly from EE, with a 15 day cooling off period, for a relatively good price. I'll test it out and hopefully it is stable. If it isn't, I'll have to think about going back to National Broadband.