Using a SIM instead of standard broadband

[Lacking]

I feel like I've learnt more from this thread than I have in a week of researching by myself. Thank you so much!

[Lacking]

Regarding cellmapper, what am I looking for to see which providers might have the best coverage? Is it just the areas covered by the cells?

For example, it looks like our property falls under the cells of 2 different Three towers but none of the other providers on the map.

[jfman]

Are you selecting 3 UK as a provider? If so, you need to change that to Vodafone, EE and O2 to see what those operators have in your area. Under network pick “4G LTE”.

At this point it’s probably worth knowing what providers are the closest masts in your area and what bands they are using.

You could also try putting the router next to a window in the direction of the masts you do know about with Three.

[Lacking]

Yes I've gone through each provider on cellmapper. They all have towers nearby but the cells on the map don't fall over us, except for Three. Looking at these towers, I think our router is in the best window already for Three.

[Jaymoss]

Smarty on Three has unlimited for £16 a month for a year

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Lacking

Yes I've gone through each provider on cellmapper. They all have towers nearby but the cells on the map don't fall over us, except for Three. Looking at these towers, I think our router is in the best window already for Three.

Might be worth checking that against the O2, Vodafone and EE coverage checkers to see if they claim to offer 4G indoor coverage at your postcode.

Originally Posted by Lacking

Yes I've gone through each provider on cellmapper. They all have towers nearby but the cells on the map don't fall over us, except for Three. Looking at these towers, I think our router is in the best window already for Three.

If Three really is the best local network, there are things you can do to improve reception. You can add an external antenna to your router if it supports one (is there a pair of small copper terminals on the back?). This can make a dramatic difference to your speeds if you buy the right antenna and place it carefully.

Before that however, if you can. I’d try your voda SIM in it just to see what happens. And after that you should spend a couple of days doing regular speed tests to see if your speed is constrained by time of day due to local congestion. This will help give you a baseline of performance to improve against.

[Matthew]

I've been looking into this and the equipment selection was quite key for me, 5G is massively overpriced and realistically 4G can deliver the speeds at a fraction of the cost. I already have a pfsense setup at home so I bought a second hand Microtik dish off a mate and used it as failover when I was having lots of VM issues, mounted inside but could go outside it works more than good enough for me.

I already had an EE sim, O2 was poor so bought a Smarty unlimted sim for peanuts and have been using that.

Equipment and operator and even the building can make the difference, someone at work bought a 5G Zyxel thing which was used as a modem with an O2 sim in, mast less than 100m away in a pre fab building, luckily if we got 80mb, yet outside got far more. Been running that temporarly for 6 weeks only issue we had with 40 users on was the upload was so poor the network was shocking and dropped the VPN (double NAT probably didn't help in some instances).

For Joe Public at home its more than enough if you have the right provider, I did look at Pepwave routers which are not cheap but you can put miltiple sims in, often used in vehicles for travelling but have other features, in my setup at home I use VM and a SIM.

I will be doing some more testing on this in a few weeks as I am just about to redeploy the 5G at work to another site whilist the main connection is been installed then it will be back for site failures so will have time to play and tweak a bit more.

Have a look at YouTube on those who live in campers and their setups, some even use Peplink with SIM's in, connect to site WiFi through the router when on sites and some even add Starlink into the equation.

4G speeds are definitely more than adequate especially if your modem can bond multiple channels. In theory my Huawei can achieve better than gigabit downloads. However, the real constraint with 4G isn’t speed, its capacity. For starters the service provider gets to decide whether each cell will permit channel bonding; most in urban areas do but by no means all. Then you will find in busy areas speed will drop at certain times of day. 4G can become totally unusable when the local cell is exceptionally busy, even if you can get 150/50 off it at midnight on a Tuesday.

Various things could be impacting your speeds from that cell even though you can see it. There could be cables in the walls causing interference or as its a prefab there could be a lot of metal in the frame creating a faraday cage effect. It’s also possible that the cell is highly directional, intended for fill-in service to a specific blackspot, and you’re on the fringe of the area it’s aimed at. An external aerial makes all the difference in marginal situations.

[SnoopZ]

And my 4G speeds at home are a super fast 2.22Mbps Down and 0.44Mbps Up.

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

And my 4G speeds at home are a super fast 2.22Mbps Down and 0.44Mbps Up.

Are you talking about your phone or a 4G modem?

[SnoopZ]

Originally Posted by Chris

Are you talking about your phone or a 4G modem?

Phone, is there a difference in signal strength?

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

Phone, is there a difference in signal strength?

Quite markedly, yes. A modem even on just its own internal aerial will get better reception than a phone and if you put an external antenna on it it can be much, much quicker.

The maximum speed of a single 4G data channel is 150mbps download, 50mbps upload. 2.2 down, 0.4 up really isn’t very quick at all.

[RichardCoulter]

Originally Posted by Jaymoss

Smarty on Three has unlimited for £16 a month for a year

I considered this before I went into care as it was the cheapest option (before I clarified that the care home had WiFi).

I don't know if any of the others had this clause, but it did say that it must not be used in place of a fixed broadband connection and that action would be taken if this was found to be the case.

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

I considered this before I went into care as it was the cheapest option (before I clarified that the care home had WiFi).

I don't know if any of the others had this clause, but it did say that it must not be used in place of a fixed broadband connection and that action would be taken if this was found to be the case.

It’s illegal for them to stipulate that. EU net neutrality laws which have been retained in UK law state that mobile providers are not allowed to tell you what you can and cannot put your SIM in once you have it. You can take out a phone contract and legally put it in a 4G modem. If Smarty does take ‘action’ then you have a valid compliant to put to Ofcom.