Mobile Internet Device - Dongle

amyanne

Hi. I'm looking for some advice please. I'm living in a house (mine) where the internet, wifi, tv etc is provided by Sky which was set up by my tenant (a family member). I'm paying half towards the bill - £100 per month. However, I need to save some money. I don't need all the Sky features, the only tv I watch is BBC news plus radio which I access via my laptop. I don't download films or music - just Google, fb, bbc iplayer/radio, and emails. I used to use a dongle in France quite successfully and can get one on a 30 day PAYG basis for about £22 - 15 GB data. I know contracts are cheaper but I'm planning to sell the house shortly so don't want to tie myself up with a 24 month contract. My queries are would the dongle interfere with the Sky set up if I used it at the same as my tenant was accessing Sky (this is my main concern) and how much data would I need to cope with my usage? I have a Samsung Android mobile phone which has a Mobile hotspot feature. Can I use this to connect to the internet instead of buying a dongle. Can I connect it to my laptop and access internet etc. that way. I know I can go into the local EE shop and ask them but I'd like some idea of pros and cons beforehand (you may have guessed I'm not that technical!) TIA. Gill

kwikbreaks

A 4G dongle won't interfere with anything the Sky setup is doing so long as you ensure it is using a different wifi channel. The one thing you mentioned that can require a fair bit of bandwidth so possibly eating into that 15GB is iPlayer - http://mobilenetworkcomparison.org.uk/how-much-bandwidth-does-iplayer-use/ Similarly extensive use of youtube or any other video streaming. Some apps such as Snapchat can chew up bandwidth too.

You can use the Android phone hotspot to connect a laptop. Check the contract to make sure it doesn't prohibit "tethering" but I think these days they pretty much all allow it.

[Deleted User]

amyanne wrote: »

I'm paying half towards the bill - £100 per month.

Presuming you're paying £50 of that (at least I hope £100 is the total, that's a lot for Sky BTW) then I'd stick with that until the house is sold. It's a lot of faffing about to save £28 a month.