Three 4G HomeFi

[Richard]

Dave Rice wrote:

Good for me. I see the other networks are charging a premium even though the service will be pretty much non existent. You wonder how many 4G phone owners have fallen for it?

Yes, but watch out for what you are paying. They are apparently refusing to tell customers when they have paid off their handsets costs so customers may end up over paying until they wise up. Perhaps it is best to buy your handset and go SIM only?

[Dave Rice]

Did that a few years ago Richard. As an extended family we all have sim free phones, mostly from Amazon and mostly Motorola, but the recent ones are Huawei. All sub £200.

Most of us are now on Three for the data and have unlimited everything else, a couple of light users still on Tesco mobile.

[PlaneMan]

Got my Vodafone 12 month contract SIM today, £30 a month but I’ll get £120 auto cashback in about 40 days, no faffing about with forms and sending them off on the right dates, just a cheque in the post. Should get £10 from Topcashback as well.

Got my OnePlus 5T acting as a hotspot and all is well. Getting a steady 95-100 down and 25 ish up. Chuffed to be shot of Virgin at last from tomorrow.

[Dave Rice]

That really is fast.

[PlaneMan]

Yes Dave, very happy with it.

My Mate 20 Pro has dropped the hotspot connection a couple of times so I went into the OnePlus 5T hotspot settings and turned the AP band to 5 GHz. The speed boost was a nice bonus. ???

That’s while streaming Netflix.

 

[Drezha]

Yeah, worth getting rid of the cable for! I’ll be investigating that way when we move I think. As long as we have Freeview, the other half will be happy.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[PlaneMan]

Indeed Drez.

Best bit for me is I’m on the edge of the current 5G Vodafone coverage zone so by the time the coverage expands the 5G routers/ phones should be cheap enough to deploy to take the place of my OnePlus 5T.

The bloke that came to check the gas meter today reckons he gets 5G on his Vodafone Samsung massive something or other in most of central-ish Cardiff. He also said if it wasn’t a company phone he’d have sent it back as it’s to big for all of the storage places in his van.

[Dave Rice]

I’ve registered for the heads up from Three. For some reason my part of the greater Bristol area seems to get tech first so cross fingers.

TT FTTC is pissing me off big time now, currently 17 / 3 since I got home on Friday, Three 4G is 33 / 11. There is no point in phoning Three, they will have me taking the front off the master socket again for no reason whatsoever.

[PlaneMan]

Almost a month into my Vodafone adventure and I’m really happy.

Apart from one thing, the OnePlus 5T was getting really annoying, dropping the connection to any device many times a day, sometimes all devices.

It did my head in today so I now have a tp-link AC750. 

Super happy with it, dead easy to set up and in the place where the old Virgin router sat I’m getting a steady 80 down and 25-30 up. I might play around with the location a bit tomorrow to see if I can squeeze a bit more out of it but the location works well as my Chromebox is now connected via Ethernet.

Only hassle I had was resetting the YeLight and getting that working properly. Then I remembered it only works on 2.4 GHz so I forgot the 5 GHz network on my phone and a minute or so later it was sorted.

[RSB]

I have just ditched BT. The bill’s coming through was stupendous. And as I do not know how long I am going to be in this house and also the fact I do not know where I’ll end up after this house and I need a constant but cheapish internet conection I went with smarty running on the 3 network. £25 a month, Unlimited Calls, Text’s and Internet and no throtling or caps.

This week alone I am over 70 – 80 gig. No drop outs so far. I am using my cheap chi phone a bought a year or two back as an hot spot with a 2007 approx Edimax wireless bridge with 4 network ports to cater for the hard wired pc’s. The only downside I have come accross so far is the number of allowed devices to be conected in android which I think is 8. So there are some unused devices now such as the amazon dot’s.

P.S Any one uses the link above gives me and them selfs a free month. Thats my disclaimer 🙂

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Dave Rice]

Once you’re settled the D-Link router may suit you well.

[RSB]

I sold one of these on ebay not so long ago thinking I would not need it 🙁 . I have one of these in the cup board which I can put a 3g/4g dongle in the back which essentialy would turn it into the first router I linked to. But guess what, I got shut of what dongles I had to.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Dave Rice]

2nd link’s not working.

I have a Huawei dongle in the back of a Draytek router at one customer which runs a permanent site to site VPN back to their HQ. Works a treat and very reliable.

The only gotcha is the dongle has it’s own external IP address which louses up dynamic DNS (DYNDNS detects the dongles internal address – which is in a different subnet to the router – not the site’s external address).  That’s all down to some router protocol for USB LTE dongles, doesn’t happen with a PC and dongle. Doesn’t much matter as most things are Peer to Peer these days and I can just VPN into HQ to get at the branch network.

This is why I wonder if the D-Link or TPL solutions may be better i.e. no dongle involved, but in my experience site to site VPNs are crap unless the router has the word “business” in the description. Might have to find out the hard way.

I’m cursing renewing my TT contract, but at least after a drop this morning it’s back up to 40/10.

[blacklion1725]

My eldest is moving digs and asked me about broadband – he’s been sharing a house so just paying a share of the broadband that was already there. He’s moving in to a studio on his own and this looks like a good deal for him. I have found out that as a three (mobile) customer I think he can do it through me and a get their cheaper router for £16/month for unlimited data. Tempted to steer him this way – any reason I shouldn’t? He’s on a year lease but I assume he just takes this with him if he moves within 2 years? Ta.

[Dave Rice]

No reason I can think of not to. I know of 4 now including customers and family. All OK

[blacklion1725]

Cheers Dave – will definitely be looking down this road myself when my current Vodafone BB deal runs out in about 10 months. I think the 30 day cooling off still applies which is long enough to know if it cuts the mustard.

[Drezha]

Only reason perhaps might be the signal in the apartment for 3? But that’s probably getting less of an issue these days.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Dave Rice]

It’s easy to check with a mobile phone. The beauty is you’re not tied to a BT socket.

My eldest has just moved into a 3 story town house, the one with the BT socket and no mains nearby! It’s also at the bottom of the stairs so anything would have to be wall mounted or you’ll be stepping on it. Dunno how they get away with it. Anyway they needed to put the unit on a particular side of the house but elevation didn’t make a huge difference. This meant they could find the most advantageous place for WiFi coverage, which did.

I have one of my UAP’s back that they needed in the old town house to get the signal from bottom to top.

[PlaneMan]

Just over a month into my Vodafone 12 month contract and it’s brilliant. 225 GB used last month, which amazed me, though it would be a lot more. Just shows that YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime have really got their streaming delivering high quality video for low bandwidth.

Also got my £120 automatic cashback cheque today, no hassle at all, literally no effort on my part.😀

[Dave Rice]

I see from a blackboard outside Argos that EE have joined the fun, but at at the right price.

TT really is driving us nuts, 5 outages in 30 mins this morning and back to half speed. There is absolutely no point in complaining they put so many things in the way. It took ridiculous effort last time and they appear “reasonable” in the eyes of the authorities – I’d like to see them taking the front off the BT socket every time.

I am seriously thinking of jumping the gun and running two ISPs for a while.

[Author]

Posts