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In the process of moving house and trying to sort out the broadband for the new place.
We currently have FTTP with BT, 300 mb download, 50 mb upload.
The new house has FTTC but the cabinet is over subscribed. Which means we'll only achieve around 3mb download, god knows what the upload speed would be.
BT can't give me a date when the cabinet will be updated to allow us to get FTTC, they can only say that it's on the list to be done.
For what we need 3mb download isn't going to cut it. Any recommendations?
I've come across Wave Internet. This company offers a wireless fibre connection. Has anyone used them?
I've just checked and there is no 4g coverage in my area. Thanks anyway.
However, I've just checked Vodafone and they cover my area. They offer the GigaCube 4G. Anyone used this?
i'd be looking for a different house. 😉
Bit of a hijack, but we’re just about to go to HomeFi if anyone else has this question. On my (three sim) phone I get about 11 meg download in our house. To get the same on landlines means 2xBT circuits and an aggregation provider.
Going to unlimited HomeFi will save us 100s of pounds a year. No idea how good it’s going to be so will use the 14 day cooling off period to test the hell out of it. Apparently getting an external antenna can make a big difference.
But 11meg for £22 a month. I’d take that. It’s a 2 year contract and we’ve been promised fibre since 2016, but I don’t ever see it arriving.
Update: just fetched one. Downstairs 11/3 download/upload (old house, thick walls, in a valley). Upstairs pointing vaguely at mast between 17-22/4-11 🙂 Just connected it as our internet pipe so we’ll see how it goes.
if netflix doesn’t work, I’ll soon know about it from the kids!
They’re decent figures for 4G. It would be good to see how reliable it is.
How many Netflix users at the same time?
We use EE 4gee home WiFi. I think the quickest download speed I've seen in 40mb. Far superior to the 2mb we were getting from our "fibre" service.
I don't think we get 3 4g here but I will investigate when our EE contact is up.
@chuck - mostly one via our TV. Last night kids were watching something on NF and I was watching EWS previews on my Mac, full screen 1080P. Seemed okay. Three did say it’d take a couple of days to bed in. This morning we were getting more like 14/6 or - amusingly - 11/10. It’s more like a synchronous connection which I’ms struggling to get my head around.
If it wasn’t for the unlimited, it wouldn’t be for us. We’ve been capped before and even 300GB wasn’t enough. I upload loads of photos for work stuff. It’s noticeably quicker on 4G. Browsing feels about the same.
Reliability is going to be the issue. Apparently poor weather really affects the speed (which makes sense). It’s going to have to be pretty bad tho before I go back to land lines. I just calculated what we spend per month, and 4G saves us more than £1000 per year….
O2 doesn’t work here at all. EE is a bit variable. Not sure on VF. So this is pretty much our only option!
This real-world 4G info is very useful, thanks for that. I am also in the process of reviewing my slow ADSL connection (and line rental) and a move to 4G is an option, so this makes interesting reading.
I work from home so a decent, reliable connection is a must.
Short update. 4 days in and all seems to be good. We did suffer on the Saturday with quite reduced bandwidth which led to some buffering on TV. We’ve moved the router so it’s close to line of site to the transmitter on the ridge in front of the house, and that’s improved the speed dramatically.
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Since moving it, averaged around 20meg download. Will continue to monitor. Amusingly when I walk the dogs on a path where the transmitter is visible, I was getting 96 meg on the phone speed-test!
But 11meg for £22 a month. I’d take that. It’s a 2 year contract and we’ve been promised fibre since 2016, but I don’t ever see it arriving.
cant see the figures on your graph, but looks like youre getting 20 Mb with the three homefi jobbie then yes?
ive been on the phone to them this morning looking into one, and theyve told me its a max of 150 Mb. when i laughed and said yes, but we all know the max is nothing like what youll actually get, he said it should be near enough 150.
looks like he telling porkie pies then. i dont want a 2 yr contract if im going to be getting frustrated with it constantly.....
Get an directional external antenna
We’re getting about 20 average. Up to 37 but it tails off with congestion later in the day (or it has so far, only done 4 days)
The ‘theoretical speeds’ are based on the type of 4G. I think LTE-4 can go to 300mbit/sec. It really depends where you are. So on three’s coverage map we have ‘good outdoor’ / ‘okay indoor’ and that’s pretty much how I see it on the phone. I’ve read that some rural locations are easily getting 50 but they are in sight of a mast or between multiple masts.
We’re not, we have one mast and that’s it!
I guess the other question is how much do you need? 20 for us means I can stream three individual streams at HD. That’s the most we need right now. Anything above that which costs anything isn’t worth it to us.
I will probably go external aerial tho as I can get a directional one to point right at the mast from the top of the house. That’ll give us a better connection I expect for £40 and a drill bit 🙂
I guess the other question is how much do you need? 20 for us means I can stream three individual streams at HD.
thanks. itd be netflix for me and the wife as essential, and ideally 2 x-box lives for the lads. does xbox live use more or less grunt than streaming netflix? tough sh1t for the lads if its not good enough, time they started sorting themselves out 😀
Apparently for gaming the issue is latency. I’ve tested ours with Skype etc and that’s fine but on line gaming, apparently high latency is really bad. Speedtest logs ours at 40-50ms. Our old ADSL lines were more than that due to how far we are from the exchange.
Might be worth checking out tho. If you get one, stick it in, use it for 10 days, if it doesn’t work for you just take it back under 14 day rule. We checked with Three (in store) and they said that was fine.
yep, may well do that. matey also said just to try it using my phones hotspot, as that would be the same 4G sim? i only get 4Gb data tho, i wouldnt want to swallow that all up in a 30 seconds trial 😀
FYI, this is the link he sent me to the unit. same as yours?
http://three.lucidcx.com/mymobile/ov/3850.html
EDIT: dont know what latency is so googled it and it implies delay. so.... do you mean that netflix say doesnt matter about delay as it can be as delayed as it likes, as long as it streams seamlessly? whereas an xbox playing against someone else has to be absolutely immediate?
and if so, why would virgin wifi at 100Mb have better latency than three 4G at 100Mb? (in an deal world)
thanks
Right in no particular order 🙂
1/ Nope that’s a dongle. What we have is a router like this so it’s going to be better than a phone as it doesn’t need to power manage internal antenna etc. Not sure if the dongle performance is the same.
2/ Test with the phone. Sort of, see above re: power management. So I get 35 meg off the router and 12 off my phone standing in the same spot. No idea why there is that much of a difference. So phone should give you a value you can beat with a non phone device
3/ Latency- yeah for netflix etc as long as next ‘packet’ arrives in time everything is delayed at the same rate. Not a problem. Variable latency would be. For gaming, very little bandwidth used really but it’s the extra time a keystroke would take. It’s far more asynchronous so delay will affect it more (so I understand). I’m probably confusing jitter and latency as well as it’s been 20 + years since I worked on proper comms stuff.
4/ Any cell technology will have more latency than fibre (okay may not 100% but..) as there’s got to be some delay in getting to a cell tower over the air, doing lots of protocol conversation and then transiting to a land circuit. Again tho, I’m just guessing based on old knowledge. I’m sure there’s a few on here who know way more.
Just checking past results from my EE 4gee home broadband.
46mb~ download
27mb~ upload
45ms Ping
4ms Jitter
Netflix/streaming works fine. How would gaming work with this?
Not sure. Similar ping and jitter to what we get. Speed won’t be an issue. Guess you’d need to try it. I don’t think EE do uncapped tho. That’s Three exclusive at the moment.
1/ Nope that’s a dongle. What we have is a router like this so it’s going to be better than a phone as it doesn’t need to power manage internal antenna etc. Not sure if the dongle performance is the same.
hmmmm iz confused then, as what youve linked to is what i was actually asking about, and what i assumed his link was describing..... hows that got mixed up then? ill have to do a bit more digging into comparing the two then.
EDIT: these are the two to compare, both seem to be the same price plans, so which one is betterer do you think? what are the pluses and minuses of each?
http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devices/Huawei/E5573bs-322_4G_Mobile_Wi-Fi?memory=0&colour=White
Unless you want something very portable and battery powered, I’d go for the second option.
77 down
31 up
9ms
0 jitter
(But this is the Australian NBN and the crapper version - some were lucky to get fttp.... some did ok with fibre to the curb.... i got fibre to the node and but new "fat" copper from the node.... some got "best we can do is write letters")
When I was in the UK, Virgin were decent.... Not so now?? (I'm talking 10 years ago though)