Three Mobile Broadband

Hi :beer:

I currently have VM 200M service and pay an extortionate amount its £43 PM now my contract has ended I am finding it hard to find a good deal without the need of a £17 phone line (((is this like some sort of TV license tax where you dont have a choice?)))) Having to pay for a phone line I dont need I have stumbled across Three's AI cube 4G broadband for £25PM with quoted LTE speeds of 300Mbit/s I have orded it just to check before I fully remove VM Broadband.

However I have done a speedtest at home with EE 4G and 02 4G none LTE connection and get a rather poor 20Mbps down and 3Mbps upload so it may not look good.

Anybody have one of these? Ill return it if I get the above speeds.
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Comments

  • Neil_Jones
    Neil_Jones Posts: 8,868
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    300Mbit/s is not the same as your Virgin 200Mbs service. 300Mbit/s is "only" 37 Mbps.

    Realistically if you need a 200Mbps connection like the Virgin one you have now, that is your only (most convenient based on your current setup) option. If you can live with a slower speed then it could be worth doing what you're doing.
  • JJ_Egan
    JJ_Egan Posts: 20,281
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    Line rental is to pay for the data line BB and TV travel over .Its no longer just a phone line .
  • But its still £17 to BT which is just a rebranded name for line rental?. I'm hoping 5G is the future but ill happily try 4G for now. I have just done another speed test this time I have 89Mbps on EE with VM achieving 179Mbps! I would happily live with traditional Fiber speeds.
  • Neil_Jones wrote: »
    300Mbit/s is not the same as your Virgin 200Mbs service. 300Mbit/s is "only" 37 Mbps.

    Realistically if you need a 200Mbps connection like the Virgin one you have now, that is your only (most convenient based on your current setup) option. If you can live with a slower speed then it could be worth doing what you're doing.


    I think you're getting a bit confused. Mega bits is Mbps (Mega bits per second) as opposed to MBps (Mega Bytes per second).


    The 300 that three have quoted is 100 faster than the Virgin offering. However, would be interesting if you got anywhere near that in the real world.
  • worried_jim
    worried_jim Posts: 11,631
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    Pokerking wrote: »
    Hi :beer:

    I currently have VM 200M service and pay an extortionate amount its £43 PM now my contract has ended I am finding it hard to find a good deal without the need of a £17 phone line (((is this like some sort of TV license tax where you dont have a choice?)))) Having to pay for a phone line I dont need I have stumbled across Three's AI cube 4G broadband for £25PM with quoted LTE speeds of 300Mbit/s I have orded it just to check before I fully remove VM Broadband.

    However I have done a speedtest at home with EE 4G and 02 4G none LTE connection and get a rather poor 20Mbps down and 3Mbps upload so it may not look good.

    Anybody have one of these? Ill return it if I get the above speeds.

    Got VM 200 service for £28 when I threatened to leave although it was a slog. I will soon be going to Three esp with 5G coming very soon.
  • mnbvcxz
    mnbvcxz Posts: 378
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    I would love to be proved wrong but I'm pretty sure all the above internet speeds are in the same megabits per second and so can be compared (though threes is a much vaguer estimate).

    Fibre 36mb/s is roughly 4MB per second

    virgin 200mb/s is roughly 25MB per second

    three 300mb/s is roughly 37MB per second

    Gigabit ethernet is roughly 120MB per second

    It would be wonderful if three were offering 300MB/s but I don't think that's likely any time soon...
  • iniltous
    iniltous Posts: 3,021
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    edited 8 September 2019 at 1:44PM
    Pokerking wrote: »
    But its still £17 to BT which is just a rebranded name for line rental?. I'm hoping 5G is the future but ill happily try 4G for now. I have just done another speed test this time I have 89Mbps on EE with VM achieving 179Mbps! I would happily live with traditional Fiber speeds.

    If you are currently on a VM service, how is it ‘still £17 to BT ‘ ?, if you are a VM customer , BT ( or Openreach ) are in no way involved and certainly don’t get any percentage of whatever you pay VM
    You can have a broadband only service ( without any phone line ) from VM ( if you so wish ) but VM standalone broadband is no cheaper than VM broadband and phone line , and if you resent not getting a large discount on broadband service only ( compared to line & broadband) for not wanting a phone line at all, then mobile is probably your only choice, if you ‘need’ 200Mb , you probably should do a trial run with mobile before you quit VM, as it’s performance is not likely to compare
  • Chino
    Chino Posts: 2,029
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    iniltous wrote: »
    If you are currently on a VM service, how is it ‘still £17 to BT ‘ ?, if you are a VM customer , BT ( or Openreach ) are in no way involved and certainly don’t get any percentage of whatever you pay VM
    The OP was clearly referring to the need to pay for line rental if he/she migrated from VM.
  • iniltous
    iniltous Posts: 3,021
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    edited 8 September 2019 at 5:06PM
    Yep , read post 4 in isolation, rather than an addition to the OP
    Having said that wholesale line rental, ( so what Openreach get, not ‘BT’) is £7.70/month not £17, ..the retailer charges whatever they want , but usually to disguise the real cost of broadband and that ‘BT’ are somehow making the service more expensive than it needs to be.
    If paying line rental is so unacceptable, go mobile.
    I find it funny that the original mobile phone contracts ( before data was particularly important) cellular telephony company’s charged line rental when no line exists , now data is as , if not more important , do we get anyone complaining that in their data bundle they get calls and texts but don’t use them, so why should they have to pay for that part of the bundle ?
  • Bit of an update I ordered the £25 AI cube deal it comes on Tuesday. A big bonus is the Alexa integration the hub alone is £219 to buy on Amazon so will look to sell my Echo if its any good!

    I'm just a bit miffed having to pay another company a line rental charge when I only need internet access maybe thats me been awkward but it does not sit right. My VM service was broadband only and if you took a phone package its cheaper? Not sure how that works.

    Another bonus is not been restricted in where the hub can be placed as it uses mobile data, I have a wifi access point with 5 1GB Ethernet ports so connectivity shouldn't be an issue.

    Regarding the speed I am confused as the next person, Mbps M/Bits MB blahhhh....

    All I know is speedtest shows 197Mbps for my VM and 89Mbps on EE 4G LTE so ill see Tuesday :beer:
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