Recommend me a 4G router

dicktheleg

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I’m getting seriously pissed off with BT's broadband speed at home, about 1.8Mbps.

Tethering to my phone gets me 10Mbps, so I’m looking to jump ship and install a permanent 4G router as a solution.

Three do a £24 a month 4G plan that will give me 40Gb of data which should suffice, it comes with a bundled Huawei router or I can supply the router and pay £17 a month SIM only.

Does anyone use such a solution and if I were to buy my own router what's worth buying?

Thanks
Rich
 
I bought a second hand Huawei 4G router, well mifi unit, and it works. I did bother choosing one that you can connect external aerials to (not outside but on a little stand), well worth it if it's going to be your main internet connection
 

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Not cheap but it will do everything you want.

https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/30265-draytek-v2862ln-k/

Mine's mated up with Devolo homeplugs for maximum coverage in those awkward little places - including the bikeshed a 100yards away!

Just outside Wichenford EE is now giving me about 70Mbs/s.:thumb2

I'd recommend you buy some monthly data cards to check service first though. Three broadcasts off the same mast as my EE and their 4G is crap compared to EE.

Use THE APP here to find your strongest signal and direction. And THIS maybe useful too.
 
Not cheap but it will do everything you want.

https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/30265-draytek-v2862ln-k/

Mine's mated up with Devolo homeplugs for maximum coverage in those awkward little places - including the bikeshed a 100yards away!

Just outside Wichenford EE is now giving me about 70Mbs/s.:thumb2

I'd recommend you buy some monthly data cards to check service first though. Three broadcasts off the same mast as my EE and their 4G is crap compared to EE.

Use THE APP here to find your strongest signal and direction. And THIS maybe useful too.

Cough sputter........Thanks Andy.

I think I trial it with a cheapy first just to see if it’s a workable solution then try and improve speeds if required from then.

One stumbling block is the loss of the BT email addresses but that’s not insurmountable in the longer run, I’ll run 4G in parallel first to t ensure it’s stable before ditching BT for broadband and just keeping a phone service.
 
I've had my own domain email address for years because I was fed up with having to change it every time I changed supplier. It costs about £75.00 a year but it goes through teh business!:green gri

I ran in parallel as well for while - til my confidence in the 4G developed. Next step is to ditch the landline and telephone number. We are all on unlimited mobile contracts so it seems a tad pointless. Need to do some reseach to see if I could port the BT number over to a VOIP system and have the best of both worlds!:thumb2
 
I'm paying £24.00 for 30GB.

Still on a monthly plan whilst I work out how much data I need per month. Once I've done that I will sign up for a 12 month deal and get the cost down slightly.
 
Isn’t there fibre over in Wichenford now? We’ve got friends just outside the village who were talking about switching over to it.
 
I’m getting seriously pissed off with BT's broadband speed at home, about 1.8Mbps.

Tethering to my phone gets me 10Mbps, so I’m looking to jump ship and install a permanent 4G router as a solution.

Three do a £24 a month 4G plan that will give me 40Gb of data which should suffice, it comes with a bundled Huawei router or I can supply the router and pay £17 a month SIM only.

Does anyone use such a solution and if I were to buy my own router what's worth buying?

Thanks
Rich

If you can track monthly usage on your router it may be worth doing before committing. We have slightly better speeds (6-7Mbps) but with 2 adults and 2 children it’s often excruciatingly slow. I thought about 4g a few months ago but we’re consuming 140 to 150gb per month! Fibre now at the cabinet in Ombersley but no space.
 
Fortunately, we are almost child-free :JB so not quite the concern it might have been.

My understanding is BT has spent a fortune putting in fibre to Wichenford but haven’t connected it up:blast

We are on a Martley cabinet and have the unenviable fact of being the furthest property from that cabinet!

Part of my decision is about breaking free from BT and cables. They tell us that our cable (which runs half a mile from the nearest lane - we live on a farm) could only at best take about 6Mb.
 
If you can track monthly usage on your router it may be worth doing before committing. We have slightly better speeds (6-7Mbps) but with 2 adults and 2 children it’s often excruciatingly slow. I thought about 4g a few months ago but we’re consuming 140 to 150gb per month! Fibre now at the cabinet in Ombersley but no space.

That was on my list of things to do, as well as adding some extra as we’re bound to stream more if we’re able to.

One good thing with Three is that they have a thing called “Go Binge” where the likes of Netflix don’t count towards your data usage.
 
27Mbps Download.....6Mbps upload using my little mifi unit with a Three data sim in it....'kin remarkable considering I get under 2Mbs on the landline.

Only drawback is poor WiFi distribution around the house but I’m assuming I could use my BT plug in repeaters if I get a decent 4G router with Ethernet ports?

Just reset the BT Homehub stats so I can check on our usage over the coming month then hopefully goodbye BT for broadband, cheeky fekkers still want to charge me £6 a month if I want to keep my BT Email accounts open which I’ll probably have to do as they’re business linked.

Cost will no doubt work out about the same at ~£50 a month (including anytime calls) but for more than a tenfold increase in speeds I’d be happy with that.
 
No problem with using home plugs once you have a router with the right connection. On the advice of my IT guru I have changed from Solwise to Devolo homeplugs. The old ones couldn’t be programmed to all work over one network and one password. The new ones do which is great.

Once I had worked out which direction gave me the best signal I spent a while moving around the house looking for the strongest signal. I expected it to be in the top of the house but it wasn’t. The strongest signal I get is on the ground floor. 70Mbs on the ground floor and half that on the second floor! Can’t account for it but the Speedtest doesn’t lie.
 
The good news for me is that so far the strongest signal is in our little study where our PC's are anyway it’s on the top floor, rear of the house. Means I can place the router there, Ethernet to the two PC's and WIFI extenders, then if I do need a better signal I could roof / loft mount an external ariel.
I’m sure a router such as the Draytek you recommended will pull in a better signal than the little battery powered tp-link mifi unit anyway.
Thanks for your help with this Andy.
 
One of the reasons I went for the router I choose was because it had the sockets for an external aerial.
 
Rich, there’s fibre on Boreley Lane to the second house on the corner from the Holt road. Friends at a farm near you have had a quote from openreach to extend the fibre to them overhead for their business. If they go ahead it will open up the fibre network to everyone else down the lane and you’re not much further. It’s the old gardeners world place... It may be worth hanging on or pay monthly.
 
I’m guessing that’s Clacks Farm, I’d be interested in talking to them if you have any contact details as I’m getting nowhere with BT.

We have a fibre enabled cabinet at Lineholt crossroads but it’s off Ombersley exchange and I’m off Hartlebury so maybe that would be a showstopper?
 
Some of the Huawei mifi units can be configured as a WiFi repeater to improve or extend coverage

FYI
 
I’m guessing that’s Clacks Farm, I’d be interested in talking to them if you have any contact details as I’m getting nowhere with BT.

We have a fibre enabled cabinet at Lineholt crossroads but it’s off Ombersley exchange and I’m off Hartlebury so maybe that would be a showstopper?

It hasn’t happened as yet. Openreach want to charge them a huge amount to install, but at present won’t offer any discount/kickback for everyone else that Openreach will then be able to connect off it.

It will be from this end of the lane (01905) so don’t know how that works with other area codes. I’ll let you know if they go ahead.
 


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