Using phone hotspot to replace home broadband

[Scarfacé]

hi guys,

I’ve never really given much thought to living costs. I’ve got an ok paid job and my way of living has always been as long as there’s more coming in then going out then I’m ok. However, since having a family and a child my priorities have changed somewhat. Also looking at my fixed outgoings has shocked me somewhat and I’ve decided I need to cut them down somewhat.

I live in a new development and my house only has FFTP. We unfortunately can only go with BT or Zen. They are both very expensive . Me and the wife don’t actually use the Internet much on the laptop or iPad.

I have an iPhone X with three and 4gb of data. Wife has my old iPhone 6s with Vodafone with 4gb of data. 4gb is plenty for us but obviously we are on WiFi when at home.

I’m thinking of changing my plan with three to their unlimited data plan. My idea would be to cancel BT home broadband and I could the use my iPhone as a personal hot spot so the wife could use my data over WiFi as usual when she is at home.

We don’t really do much data intensive things online. Mainly just browsing. Occasional Netflix stream.

What are everyone’s thoughts in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of trying to do this? Another option would be to get a dedicated 4g router but that might be pointless as they are quite a lot per month and would still in addition to the cost of my phone contract.

Thanks for any help

 

[Scarfacé]

Exactly, i am looking at all my reoccurring outgoings in at attempt to reduce them. For example I am probably going to ditch sky sports and bt sports because I just don’t watch them that much. I’m Not doing this because I’m skint but when I’ve totalled up all my fixed outgoings, it’s pretty scary to say the least. I’m not struggling for money, that’s not the driver here. I just want to get my monthly costs down to a more sensible number (well as it can be with the mortgage and other bills). I own two expensive performance cars so that will be another area I will be looking at. I thought this place would be a good to get a good answer regarding broadband.

To answer some questions in this thread :

- yes I own the iPhone X outright
- yes three allow tethering and they changed it recently so it’s unlimited
- no I don’t have a copper line. Fttp only. Phone goes through fibre through some converter in my house

I am already on the absolute best haggled fibre deal with bt. Regarding the suggestion to get one of these Huawei home routers and SIM cards... I’ve considered that, However, it then defeats the point as that doesn’t save much compared to just paying an extra fiver on my phone bill for unlimited data.

I use my sisters Netflix.

So it sounds like the main concerns with using 4g tethered as home broadband are:

4g May not be fast enough to stream Netflix
And
iPhone battery life (as someone said above I’d leave it plugged in all the time)

 

[Scarfacé]

Thanks guys.

I think the general feeling is that its best to stick with a fixed FTTP Line, at least for now. Maybe 5g will change things in the future. Me and the Wife don’t use our phones a lot bu then a lot of apps (eg one drive) are configured to only upload on WiFi. I have no idea how much data we use on the WiFi.

Anyway thanks for the help. Glad that some people understand my motive behind trying to cut costs. I’ve naturally over time built up a list of things that I pay for monthly and don’t question, because it’s affordable. Adding it all up was quite scary so now I’m simply thinking “do I need it or can I do it cheaper?”