Is 4g viable home broadband service for gaming and unlimited

Syno2001

Virgin won't install to my house, even though it's only ten meters from the cable.
So I'm stuck with internet through (i guess) the old copper wire, and get average speeds of 23mb.
I watch a lot of Youtube, and streaming TV, i also play online gaming.
Add in uploading regular data backups (generally about 2mb speed) 
I'm thinking of going with a 4g service. I live rural, so 5g is a very long way off.
I get reasonable service on my 4g phone connected to Three.
Is 4g a viable faster alternative for me? And is there one with unlimited (totally) bandwidth?

Neil_Jones

For home broadband easily.  Gaming maybe.  Its one of those things you'd have to try as the end result will depend on what sort of speed you get where you are.  Need to do a speed test.

Browntoa

Unlimited 4g and 5g data is actually subject to "acceptable use" so you could fall foul of that when gaming 

matelodave

4g speeds and latency can be very variable depending on where you live and the times of day so as others have said you need to try it out and find out which provider can give your the best and most consistent speeds. 

I've got a MiFi unit which I use for back-up and when caravanning. However when I've used it at home (a quite rural location) we get speed variations between around 6mbit/s to 25mbit/s to it wouldn't be a viable alternative for me.

However, that said, when we were on an ADSL connection we were only getting 2mbit/s so it would have been significant benefit to us but we are now on 76mbit/s with FTTP otherwise we would have gone for the 4G solution.

tehone

Syno2001 said:

Virgin won't install to my house, even though it's only ten meters from the cable.
So I'm stuck with internet through (i guess) the old copper wire, and get average speeds of 23mb.
I watch a lot of Youtube, and streaming TV, i also play online gaming.
Add in uploading regular data backups (generally about 2mb speed) 
I'm thinking of going with a 4g service. I live rural, so 5g is a very long way off.
I get reasonable service on my 4g phone connected to Three.
Is 4g a viable faster alternative for me? And is there one with unlimited (totally) bandwidth?

Smarty at either £18pm or £20pm (they often have it at £18pm) is totally unlimited data as long as its for personal use, so gaming is counted. Smarty is Three's sub brand so runs over their network. There is a fair use policy in their T&C's that does indicate where unlimited might be considered non-personal, I think it was around 3000GB

brewerdave

Syno2001 said:

So I'm stuck with internet through (i guess) the old copper wire, and get average speeds of 23mb.
I watch a lot of Youtube, and streaming TV, i also play online gaming.
Add in uploading regular data backups (generally about 2mb speed) 

I get about 16Mb and can stream HD TV and Youtube - on occasions both at once, without buffering. Do you have multiple users doing everything at once ? If not ,23Mb should be adequate. 

mohammed1111

Syno2001 said:

Virgin won't install to my house, even though it's only ten meters from the cable.
So I'm stuck with internet through (i guess) the old copper wire, and get average speeds of 23mb.
I watch a lot of Youtube, and streaming TV, i also play online gaming.
Add in uploading regular data backups (generally about 2mb speed) 
I'm thinking of going with a 4g service. I live rural, so 5g is a very long way off.
I get reasonable service on my 4g phone connected to Three.
Is 4g a viable faster alternative for me? And is there one with unlimited (totally) bandwidth?

It's a good option for rural, but more than likely you will get more speed fluctuations than wired broadband depending on congestion on the mast. It might be worth testing the speed at different times of the day and given the rural location an external aerial would probably help things. 

Takmon

Browntoa said:

Unlimited 4g and 5g data is actually subject to "acceptable use" so you could fall foul of that when gaming 

The only "acceptable use" policies that i have see limit the amount of data that can be used. Considering that online gaming uses little data compared to streaming video then i don't see how that would be an issue.