No fibre available - what do I do?!

GrumpyDil

Can you link to that as I can't find mention of unlimited data being limited to 100gb?

dsingh26

Have a look here - https://www.avforums.com/threads/sim-only-unlimited-data-options-is-lycamobile-really-as-bad-as-reviews-suggest.2283550/page-2

dsingh26

Just spoken to an agent at Lycamobile on their live chat who confirmed the data is unlimited and not capped, however the sim will only work in mobile devices and not in a router.

Back at square one again..

QrizB

dsingh26 said:

Just spoken to an agent at Lycamobile on their live chat who confirmed the data is unlimited and not capped, however the sim will only work in mobile devices and not in a router.

Back at square one again..

Have you bought a router yet?

With Lyca it's only a 30-day contract; is it worth buying one and trying it in your router?

dsingh26

QrizB said:

dsingh26 said:

Just spoken to an agent at Lycamobile on their live chat who confirmed the data is unlimited and not capped, however the sim will only work in mobile devices and not in a router.

Back at square one again..

Have you bought a router yet?

With Lyca it's only a 30-day contract; is it worth buying one and trying it in your router?

Yes, i've got the Archer MR600. 

Seems worth a pop, i'll order it now.

Movie_Star

See if Vodafone is available. A colleague who lives in a small village with nothing but landline access has worked from home no problem, with no outages using Vodafone broadband for the past 18 months.

matelodave

In the whole great scheme of things you really have to pay the going rate for the service that you require.

 As I suggested above, I guess that ISP have specific sims for use with data only services rather than letting people try to get around their network rules and presumably overloading parts of it by using voice and data sims for home broadband where multiple users are gaming and streaming.

It's possibly also less likely that lower cost "piggy-back" ISPs are paying the carriers for vast amounts of data and may have their own contractual restrictions to limit possible abuse. There is a lot less bandwidth and capacity available on the 3G/4g networks than there is is on physical fibre or eventually will be on 5G so it really is a case of sharing what is available.

As has been said try it out to see what you can get away with, but in the end, if you want an unlimited data service using a home router then you'll probaly have to get the appropriate sim to avoid being throttled or limited because you are abusing the T&C's of the service that you are paying for

GrumpyDil

Also, when you have decided are you checking the likes of topcashback/quidco etc as there may well be cashback available via those sites. 

dsingh26

I tried both Vodafone and O2 sims in the router and they worked! I ran a speedtest with the O2 sim (my current phone contract sim) and was getting around 25mbps whereas the Vodafone was weaker as imagined. 

I've ordered the unlimited data sim for £12.50/month from Lycamobile, hopefully this solves my problems in the short term.. 

HaroldWren5

dsingh26 said:

I tried both Vodafone and O2 sims in the router and they worked! I ran a speedtest with the O2 sim (my current phone contract sim) and was getting around 25mbps whereas the Vodafone was weaker as imagined. 

I've ordered the unlimited data sim for £12.50/month from Lycamobile, hopefully this solves my problems in the short term.. 

I would say reading your situation, you would be best going with a Mobile Data Unlimited 4G SIM. That should provide a higher speed than ADSL for now. You can either go for a 30 day rolling, or 12/18/24 month contract.

A lot of people are in the same situation where they can only get 1 Mbps broadband and have been effectively abandoned by Openreach/BT/etc. All they can do is go for a 4G SIM and like they say in the movies, "Pray". The flip side is that sometimes these addresses can actually be amongst the first to get Full Fibre (FTTP) in their respective areas. So keep your chin up. 

The Mobile Data SIM will always be useful since you can use it anywhere in the country where there is a good signal - e.g. on the train when commuting, or on holiday etc. And if it's an Unlimited Minutes SIM, then you could always convert it into a new Mobile number etc later on if you wanted to. 

If anything, it's far better to be in a contract, or shorter contract for Mobile data, than for FTTC broadband. That way you can have way more flexibility when it comes to ordering Full Fibre. The alternative is to go for a broadband provider with the shortest possible contract.