Best SIM Card for Backup Internet Connection

regency_man

Hi all,

Interested in your collective knowledge on picking the right SIM card for a backup internet connection.  As we are working from home now we are very sensitive to the availability of our broadband and while our provider is pretty good, its a small rural fibre provider and when they occasionally do have issues they tend to take a long time to fix it.  Unfortunately we also have very poor mobile reception in our area (no data at all) so hot-spotting the phone is not an option, but I've been testing some 4G modems with outdoor antennas and have found we can get a stable 4G connection if I put the antenna up on our TV aerial pole. 

Long story short, this will require a dedicated data SIM card for the 4G modem and given that this is a backup connection that will very rarely be used, I want the lowest cost possible for it.  

It's a bit of a strange usage profile because for three months we may use nothing, but the next month even a short outage on our primary internet could see us using 10s of GBs of 4G data (for work video conferencing).  This would tend to rule out a pay-monthly contract and favour a PAYG deal where I can keep some data in reserve then quickly add a larger data top-up if we have an outage. We also have to keep in mind that for many months this connection might do nothing at all (no calls, no texts, no data) so the rules around top-up regularity and how long you can leave the SIM dormant before they disconnect you are important too.

All that said, is there a specialist provider out there that does services specifically for this need?  If not, any suggestions for the best regular PAYG options that gives:

• Roll-over data if unused
• Longest time between top-ups without being disconnected
• Lowest cost regular top-ups but ability to add a large data 'bolt-on' when needed
  

Very interested to hear your suggestions!  Thanks in advance.