Thinking of using 5G router. How to go about it?

CaptainRock

The problem I have, is that my mobile phone is only 4G, so I won't be able to test 5G.

Keep_pedalling

I’m thinking of doing this as well. Just had Openreach come to connect us up for full fibre, but they will have to bounce the cable off a neighbour’s house to get to us (our home is what was part of their garden) and the neighbours are currently considering whether to allow it or not, so the guy has had to leave the job.

This leaves me with a choice of Virgin (who installed service when the place was being built) or 5g. We do get a good 5g service from EE in the house. We are temporally running BB off 4G back-up. 

alanwsg

CaptainRock said:

The problem I have, is that my mobile phone is only 4G, so I won't be able to test 5G.

Do you really need 5G?
As I said, I get 40-180Mbs on 4G and never once had a problem with connection speed.
And you don't necessarily get higher speeds on 5G.

Have a read through this forum - quite a few people think 5G is a bit of a gimmick...
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/forums/mobile-broadband-and-fixed-wireless.106/

housebuyer143

You buy a 4G/5G router (I have a tp link deco 5g ax3000), then put in the SIM and you are connected, easy as that. Correct, you can't use the minutes so you need a separate SIM for your phone. You want to get a good router as I think that helps with speed and connection.

We tried to use the cheaper companies at first like you are suggesting (smarty being one) and the network would just cut out all time, either going down or more commonly it would say it was connected but it would drop connection constantly. 

We pay for EE now unlimited (£36 monthly deal) and honestly it's been faultless, so although you think it might be cheap, it seems like these cheap companies don't seem to have priority or it's just a poorer connection. 

The router isn't cheap for 5G either, we paid £280 for ours but it's fantastic and we went from getting 12mbsps on wired to 160mbps on 5G. Then something went wrong and I think EE have done something to the 5G signal and the router couldn't pick it up so I switched it up 4G and the speeds are the same. Fibre to the door is coming soon so we do plan to switch over to that service, but if you want to go 5g then do it.

Be sure to read the companies terms though because many excluded it being used in a router and have a fair usage policy. Smarty didn't, but giff gaff etc do. EE limits it to 650gigs a month and max 12 tethered devices. 

oscarward

Be wary as the first company I used talkmobile said the sim wouldn’t work with my ZTE 5g router, nothing was said on the web site about it.  Lebara works fine as does 3.

i bought the router off EBay as a s/h unlocked Vodafone home BB unit. Still says Vodafone on start Up but accepts a variety of cards. Quite like it after using a number Of Huawaei devices. Never got better than 50mbs out of them but the zte gives 80mbs just on 4g and totally romps if it can get a 5g signal.

At home  I was getting 340mbs with 3 which was dependant on where I positioned the routier but Lebara only gave me 40mbs as it reverted down to 4g.

where our caravan is reputedly has a good Vodafone signal, which Lebara uses, to allow 340mbs but I’m getting 40-80mbs as it struggles to get a 5g signal.