Hive mind, ditching broadband for 4g

New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
 DenzelLN 29 Dec 2021

Hello, im after some practical advice regarding internet speeds and whatnot...

I want to ditch broadband (Sky) and the associated line rental and simply use the Internet from my laptop via pairing it with my phone, the phone sim will be of the unlimited data type.

Will this work for everyday internet browsing? ie; Netflix, google searches etc?

It seems that the 4g speeds vary, the other night I got a higher mbps paired to my phone than I did the broadband connection, but just now it is significantly less - it doesn't really seem to affect the use of the internet though mind?

All thoughts welcome

 tjdodd 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

I can't get wired broadband so have been using 4g mobile broadband for about 18 months.  I use a dedicated mobile broadband router rather than a mobile phone.  I am with 3.

Overall the experience has been fine but the speed does vary and sometimes streaming tv is not possible.  From what I have read 3 suffers from capacity issues sometimes resulting in poor connection.  It has meant I have had to work in the office through most of Covid as I could not rely on the connection.

I have been looking around recently for a different supplier and the prices vary a lot (especially if you want unlimited data).

 Luke90 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

It will basically work, yeah. Definitely worth checking whether your "unlimited" data is truly unlimited or whether it has "fair use" limits buried in the small print.

Best way to see whether it's actually good enough for your needs and check for unanticipated pitfalls would just be to do it for a while and see how it goes before pulling the trigger on cancelling the broadband.

Personally, I wouldn't do it. But I'm a heavy internet user due to working from home and have lots of different devices connected to my home network so it just wouldn't work for me. If you're only using that one laptop, have the unlimited data contract anyway and get good reliable signal, it's a plausible plan.

 minimike 29 Dec 2021
In reply to Luke90:

I’m doing it with smarty (on 3), who offer truly unlimited. It’s fine for a single user but struggles with more than that. VPN is fine. Video is fine. I use a dedicated router and sim as the hotspot is a PITA after a while. However this means you need 2 sims.. can’t use your existing mobile data. 

 dread-i 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

How close are you to, or with, your neighbours? Can you share their wifi and offer to pay for some of it? A router acting as a repeater would boost the signal.

Alternatively, say to Sky you're leaving and you want to end the contract. They will bend over backwards to keep you as a customer. Make sure you know your facts, though. Provider X reaches my house, offers Y mbs more and us £Z less. They will often match or better other services.

 eaf4 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

We are on a farm where we could barely stream songs on the landline. There is however a good 4g signal from EE. We use one of the sim card routers and I can work from home as an electronic engineer while girlfriend is watching Netflix etc.

Quite pricey from EE and needs a separate sim, but if you get a good signal with another supplier can't see why it wouldn't work. The other bonus with EE is I can have the cheapest data plan for my phone and gift up to 100GB to my phone plan from the unlimited plan.

 Ridge 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

I'm on 4G with EE, but via a home router. Ditched BT landline as service got worse and worse, (but they just managed to deliver 1Mbps as they 'guaranteed'.

4G is much more stable, but there are a few issues to look out for.

Network saturation is the main one. I have line of sight to one mast, which is surrounded by holiday caravan parks. Obviously during hiday season when they're all streaming X Factor on a Saturday night I'm getting about 4Mbps ( streams ok though). When I log on to work at 7AM I'm getting 40+ Mbps download. Upload seems pretty stable at 30Mbps.

The other is signal strength. I ended up adding an external antenna as we've got thick walls, and that made a huge difference both to speed and stability. Took a bit of aligning correctly though.

As others have said, read the small print very, very carefully around fair use.

Post edited at 13:52
 Ciro 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

If you're going to use a mobile phone for this rather than a router, make sure you can replace the battery easily - hotspotting full time will kill it much faster than normal use with daily charging.

 Brown 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

I moved into a rural'ish location and was getting estimates of 16 Mbps from the phone broadband.

I checked various 4g/5g coverage maps and decided it was possible that I might catch a 5g signal. I got a EE 5g router and get up to 400 Mbps download speeds (when attached to it via a LAN cable).

This far exceeded my expectations!

Anecdotally I heard that if you tried to use a 5g phone contract as a 5g server you would get throttled down. I have no evidence to support this!

 Moacs 29 Dec 2021
In reply to Luke90:

Just get vaccinated

(This is what passes for humour round here by the way)

1
OP DenzelLN 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

Brilliant thanks all.

Sky have been fine, but its 60 quid a month and I never use the data allowance on my phone..thought I may as well combine the two.

Next question...The contract ended with Sky over 18 months ago and I never renewed (at least knowingly) and I assume the situation is now on a rolling month-by-month basis? Am I going to be able to cancel the broadband?

I stream maybe four hours a day as I don't watch TV, or even own one - is that a lot of data?

So, separate sim idea..is that a duplicate of the one I have or?

Also, when you say home network, what do you mean? Is, say, my printer and its connection to my laptop dependant on the wifi? or is that different?

Post edited at 17:43
 jdh90 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

This came up a few months ago, not long after we had started using 4g as our main Internet source. If you search the forum you might dig the thread out.

Bought a Huawei router second hand from CEX, used a giffgaff sim for a couple of weeks on a tester. Moved to an O2 "mobile broadband" contract ("unlimited = 100s of GB/mo) because the giffgaff T&Cs didn't line up with how we were using it and didn't fancy nasty surprises. Contract came with a small battery powered hotspot router for cheaper than sim only.

We are quite rural but with good phone and 4g signal. Both work off it and use Netflix Spotify etc. Been absolutely fine for getting on a year now except the day where a crash brought the M6 (short distance from the house) to a standstill and suddenly there were hundreds of extra users trying to use their 4g to pass the time, while we tried to VPN and join MS teams calls.

The bit where you might fall down is 1) using your phone sim if your network detects unusual usage and sees you in breach of t&c... throttling or worse and 2) if your phone can handle the extra load of more continuous network sharing without warming up and desoldering itself.

 Luke90 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

> Sky have been fine, but its 60 quid a month and I never use the data allowance on my phone..thought I may as well combine the two.

You're getting ripped off. You should be able to find a decent broadband deal for half that monthly cost or less.

> Next question...The contract ended with Sky over 18 months ago and I never renewed (at least knowingly) and I assume the situation is now on a rolling month-by-month basis? Am I going to be able to cancel the broadband?

Depends whether you unknowingly defaulted onto a new contract.

> I stream maybe four hours a day as I don't watch TV, or even own one - is that a lot of data?

Depends a lot on what quality you're streaming, these estimates from Google sound reasonable:

"Streaming TV shows or films on Netflix uses about 1GB of data per hour, for each stream of standard definition video, up to 3GB per hour high definition video, and up to 7GB per hour of 4K Ultra HD video."

> So, separate sim idea..is that a duplicate of the one I have or?

Different SIM, different contract. Typically either more expensive or more limited than home broadband, unless your broadband deal or service are unusually terrible.

> Also, when you say home network, what do you mean? Is, say, my printer and its connection to my laptop dependant on the wifi? or is that different?

Depends on the printer and how you've set it up.

In reply to DenzelLN:

> and I assume the situation is now on a rolling month-by-month basis? Am I going to be able to cancel the broadband?

Log into your online account and (unless they have changed the display) it should tell you details of your package with any contract end date if applicable. Alternatively you could always phone them to check (I found them helpful on the phone the times I did phone; just don’t say your leaving unless you definitely are though!). If you have a landline phone that you want to keep you will need to decide where you are going to take it to if you’re going to leave with Sky (which will be a new contract undoubtedly.

OP DenzelLN 29 Dec 2021
In reply to Climbing Pieman:

Hello, I have found their website most unhelpful tbh, no mention of contract details anywhere? I will be ringing tomorrow, see what sort of deal they can muster.

 jonny taylor 29 Dec 2021
In reply to Ridge:

I second Ridge's comments about network saturation. That was a huge problem for me during the first lockdown, and very noticeable over christmas too, with everyone presumably watching netflix.

Weirdly, as soon as I phoned up EE to set up the contract, they offered me a significantly cheaper price than was listed on their website. Seems a bit counter-productive of them, but worth knowing. I don't know if the same is true for other providers, but if not then it makes the EE pricing more competitive.

Over the 4G network I notice that there can sometimes be significant lags (5-10 seconds) on zoom calls. I still have slow broadband as a fallback, and I don't think I ever notice the same level of lag happening when I'm using that.

 Toerag 29 Dec 2021
In reply to DenzelLN:

4G should be no different to BB (assuming the cell can give you the speed) in terms of raw speed, but it will almost certainly be more 'laggy' - the conversion to and from 4G data from the ethernet uplink from the base station adds latency. doesn't really matter for browsing and streaming, but gaming is noticeably worse. 5G eliminates the protocol conversion and thus has much lower ping times.


New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
Loading Notifications...