Do I need home broadband?

zagfles

330d said:

Have you asked Talk talk how much it would be of you locked yourself in a 12 month contract? I just got a letter from them saying my price is also increasing to £35 a month but will be £23 if I go into a 12 month contract.

Thanks - is that without in-term increases? If so I'd go with that if they offer it me. Not yet spoken to them but online it was offering a renewal of £34 increasing every April for a 24 month contract. 

littleboo

Phones aren't built to be used as hotspots long term, particularly a constant workload like streaming. You might find that the phone and/or battery longevity is compromised over time

QrizB

My parents gave up on their landline about three years ago. Initially they just used their mobiles but once they saw my son's 4G router (his flat share didn't have a landline either) they were convinced to go back to whole-house WiFi.

They're with Smarty (3s budget brand) who offer unlimited for £20 a month.

By having smaller data plans on their phones, it's almost cost-neutral for them.

zagfles said:

Seem to be business only, though not sure how they'd check, or even why?

I think Scan (who are a big retailer of IT equipment, been around for 20+ years) must only have a B2B contract with the telcos, so they can only sell to businesses. They don't check (I have one of their 50GB SIMs).

booneruk

I used a Talkmobile unlimited (Vodafone network) sim that cost £15per month without a contract (so I could cancel any time and find another provider if prices shot up) in a £80 or so 4G+ router I got from Amazon. It worked wonderfully, and allowed me to strongarm my fibre provider into a better deal.

I would recommend this approach over a mobile phone hotspot. Wifi signal would be better for starters, and would allow for many devices to connect at once.

housebuyer143

zagfles said:

flaneurs_lobster said:

zagfles said:

matelodave said:

If you get that sort of speed on your phone then you might get even faster with a dedicated 4G/5G router. You can also connect a lot more items to a router and you wont be compromising the capabilities of your phone or knackering the battery

There are quite a few around and you dont need to spend a lot - have a look here - https://gadgets-reviews.com/uk/review/3495-best-4g-router.html or have a shufti at Amazon or E-bay

We've got a Huawei B535 that we got several years ago  for around £60 that we use in the caravan when we go away - its not wonderful at home as we don't have such good mobile coverage - the best we can get is around 20mbit/s but we've had 80mbit/s or more where there's better mobile signals. I might get better at home with an external antenna but as we've had 100mbits FTTP for the past 5 years  I wont bother

Thanks - only problem with that is we'd need a third SIM, which would increase the cost to £50/month which is far more than we pay now for broadband and mobiles. Or have to keep swapping SIMs between the router and phone when going out/in, which I don't think is practical, and wouldn't get calls/texts on mobile when SIM is in router. 

True, though your costs might be less if you didn't have unlimited data plans on your phones.

Very true, we don't use our mobiles that much except when away on holiday, so usually don't need a lot of mobile data. So what we could do is just have minimal data on the mobile SIMs, and when going away, take the router SIM out and put it in my (dual SIM) phone! 

That might be the way to do it. We have £6 sims in our phone and then had unlimited monthly rolling (capped at 500gb) in the router. A router will be better long term than hot spot because that's what it's designed to do, provide to multiple devices simultaneously - you will find you likely get better speeds across all devices doing it through a 4g/5g router. 
It actually worked great for us for 2 years before the fibre cables went in and we were getting 120mbps on an EE SIM. Home broadband was offering 30...

330d

zagfles said:

330d said:

Have you asked Talk talk how much it would be of you locked yourself in a 12 month contract? I just got a letter from them saying my price is also increasing to £35 a month but will be £23 if I go into a 12 month contract.

Thanks - is that without in-term increases? If so I'd go with that if they offer it me. Not yet spoken to them but online it was offering a renewal of £34 increasing every April for a 24 month contract. 

Yes it does include an increase of £3 in April. 

millie

zagfles said:

My TalkTalk contract is coming up for renewal, was paying £24 a month they want to put it up to £34 increasing with inflation plus 3.7% in April. FTTC 35Mbps.

Looking around at other deals it all looks a minefield with contracts which change price mid term being the norm and some with vague "price may change during contact" without specifying how much. Reviews for the cheaper providers are very offputting. 

Using a wifi hotspot on my phone on 1pmobile, I get 65Mbps speed, so twice the speed of current broadband, and I tested streaming a film with other internet usage going on and it worked fine. 1p offer "unlimited" data for £25 a month plus £12.50 a month for an additional unlimited SIM (there's just me and wife in house).

So £37.50 would give us both unlimited data SIMs which as well as providing us faster home internet would also cover both our mobiles when out and about. Even inc EU roaming. 

Looks a no-brainer. Any disadvantages? They have a fair usage cap of 500GB but I doubt we'd exceed that. They allow tethering. We don't need internet at home when we're not there. Don't mind losing the landline, I switched to a VOIP service years ago and the only calls we get on the landline are spam. 

If I changed my mind in a few months and decided to go back to using landline broadband would there be a charge to reconnect the landline (not sure if they disconnect unused lines at the exchange etc)?

I am on the same contract due to end next month. They wanted £30 a month renewal. I called the a few days ago and was offered full fibre 150 for £27 a 2 year contract, there are the yearly increases to go on but I think I gave in too quickly last time I argued and got those removed. Reasonably happy with that.

330d

millie said:

zagfles said:

My TalkTalk contract is coming up for renewal, was paying £24 a month they want to put it up to £34 increasing with inflation plus 3.7% in April. FTTC 35Mbps.

Looking around at other deals it all looks a minefield with contracts which change price mid term being the norm and some with vague "price may change during contact" without specifying how much. Reviews for the cheaper providers are very offputting. 

Using a wifi hotspot on my phone on 1pmobile, I get 65Mbps speed, so twice the speed of current broadband, and I tested streaming a film with other internet usage going on and it worked fine. 1p offer "unlimited" data for £25 a month plus £12.50 a month for an additional unlimited SIM (there's just me and wife in house).

So £37.50 would give us both unlimited data SIMs which as well as providing us faster home internet would also cover both our mobiles when out and about. Even inc EU roaming. 

Looks a no-brainer. Any disadvantages? They have a fair usage cap of 500GB but I doubt we'd exceed that. They allow tethering. We don't need internet at home when we're not there. Don't mind losing the landline, I switched to a VOIP service years ago and the only calls we get on the landline are spam. 

If I changed my mind in a few months and decided to go back to using landline broadband would there be a charge to reconnect the landline (not sure if they disconnect unused lines at the exchange etc)?

I am on the same contract due to end next month. They wanted £30 a month renewal. I called the a few days ago and was offered full fibre 150 for £27 a 2 year contract, there are the yearly increases to go on but I think I gave in too quickly last time I argued and got those removed. Reasonably happy with that.

That's pretty much there standard price as normally there 150 package is £28 a month.

I ended up going with Vodafone 500 for £27 a month and includes a £85 gift card.

zagfles

QrizB said:

My parents gave up on their landline about three years ago. Initially they just used their mobiles but once they saw my son's 4G router (his flat share didn't have a landline either) they were convinced to go back to whole-house WiFi.

They're with Smarty (3s budget brand) who offer unlimited for £20 a month.

By having smaller data plans on their phones, it's almost cost-neutral for them.

zagfles said:

Seem to be business only, though not sure how they'd check, or even why?

I think Scan (who are a big retailer of IT equipment, been around for 20+ years) must only have a B2B contract with the telcos, so they can only sell to businesses. They don't check (I have one of their 50GB SIMs).

Can get a 9 month 500GB one for £45, so £5 a month!

In any case mobile broadband looks the way to go, good 4G coverage here on 3 and EE (probably others as well but not checked), so may be worth investing in a router and I can experiment with SIMs. TT will have to offer me a very good deal to stay with them, as can get fast mobile broadband for £20 or less with the added advantage of the router & SIM being portable so can be used elsewhere.  

Thriftmaster1973

I've been on the 4g DIY home broadband for over a year now, much cheaper than wired and performance has been brilliant.

I now use the "scancom on 3" 1000GB per month SIM card and had no issues whatsoever. Use it for mainly streaming TV and use around 300GB per month.

Router was off eBay for £40.

The pre paid SIM cost just over £200 but it works out around £8.10 a month over 26 months.

I monitor my usage monthly as next time I might downgrade to a 500GB per month which works out around £4 a month.

Home internet costing £8.10 a month is a bargain and about £20 per month saving on wired internet with no contract.