Mobile broadband router -good option for me?

ouraggie

We have a landline in our main residence, with Vodafone broadband. We pay £18.31 a mth for this. 

Also, we have another house we spend a lot of time in at the moment. No landline or broadband there. We are thinking about cancelling the Vodafone and having mobile broadband with Three. This costs £20 a month with unlimited data and would effectively give us broadband in both houses for up to 10 devices,using a mobile router. It would also be handy when visiting an elderly relative who doesn’t have the internet.
What are people’s experiences with mobile broadband? Does it work or is it slow, etc? 

cymruchris

My experience with Three 5g broadband is entirely negative. Several months after beginning two contracts - and both being cancelled for poor performance - they still haven't worked out the difference between their posterior and their elbow. Absolute disaster of a company. Lots of flashy adverts. Decent enough prices. Terrible performance. Wouldn't touch them with a pole made for a barge. 

Vincero

It depends what you use it for. If you don't use anything sensitive to bandwidth throughput or latency then you may not notice, simple browsing should usually be fine. Things like multiplayer gaming or video streaming or video chats may be a bit more jittery, as well as have minor drop outs compared to fixed line, especially if the network is congested.

Don't forget that mobile broadband will always be a service with a high network contention - i.e. there are a lot of people trying to use the same data pipe at the same time Vs what may be happening in your local exchange / cabinet fiber link. Due to that, even when you have a good signal, the busier the cell area is, the worse the service will be - think network congestion when it's new years and you can't make a phone call.

If you have a mobile with data allowance, you could get a feel for performance (on that network) in the area using the device or tethering a laptop/desktop/tablet/etc. to it.

flashg67

I live in a rural area so mobile broadband is the best option for me. I tested different provider's sim cards in my mobile first and vodafone was best (I use a Lebara £22.50 unlimited sim), but 3 & O2 were very poor in my location - so I'd recommend doing this first. I bought a used Huawei 4g router - gives you up to 64 devices and I get 30-60 mbs which is fine for WFH, Netflix, smart home devices etc (I'm not a gamer though).

Supatramp

At my recommendation, my brother who has split from his wife, and is living in temporary rental accommodation, went with a Huawei B835 router and 3 SIM.  We of course checked that 3 was ok for where he is living, and he is prefectly happy with it.  As far as I know, he doesn't game with it, but transfers it to his caravan when he travels about the country at his leisure.

I also have the same setup when in my caravan and it works well.  I had previously used portable routers, but found this superior.

Marvqn1

Mobile broadband is usually reliable with good speeds which is fast enough for video streaming. But it mainly depends on the signal coverage in your area and how many people are using it. 5G coverage isn't widespread yet so you'd probably best choosing 4G now.

At first, it would be best to get a Three PAYG sim so you can test the performance in your area. I think you can get a free sim on Three's website.

matelodave

It depends where you are and which network you use. We use a Huawei B535 router with our caravan and get variable results depending where we are. Generally I use Three but I've got an EE sim as well

Where I can get 25mbit/s with Three and just recently EE have upgraded their network and I can get around 40Mbit/s, Vodafone doesn't work.

Just been up to the Wirral and got 70Mbit/s with Three using the Huawei 4g router but no signal at all on either Three or EE at Carsington water near Ashbourne in Derbyshire. My mate gets around 30mbit/s at his static caravan in Norfolk using his Vodafone sim as Three or EE dont' work where he's located.

In the end you need to try out all the networks to see what works for you.

ouraggie

thanks, everyone who has kindly responded so far. Most helpful.