Broadband vs 5G

[GeoffF100]

I have just over a year to run on my Plusnet broadband. My Nokia 5.3 4G phone has run out of security updates, and ought to be replaced next year. (Samsung and Google seem to have the longest guaranteed security updates.) I am starting to wonder about the merits of using 5G rather than a fibre connection.

Fixed broadband is a no brainer if you have several people streaming UHD videos, but I live by myself, browse the web and watch the occasional YouTube video. 720p would be sufficient. 5G looks cheaper for me than fixed broadband. I could set up a WiFi hotspot next to whatever machine I am using.

The maps suggest that I have a good 5G signal with EE and Vodafone too, but Vodafone appears to have a big square not-spot starting about 20 yards from my house. It is hard to see how that comes about. O2 seems to be rubbish for 5G where I live.

Broadband plus 1p Mobile PAYG would cost me over £25 per month. I could probably get away with £10-£15 per month with just 5G. 1p Mobile has cheap monthly EE bundles and uses the EE network. Asda uses Vodafone, but is more expensive.

Any experience?

[SalvorHardin]

I recently found that my 4G phone with unlimited data from ee (£25 a month) was a good enough substitute for broadband.

My router had become highly unreliable, often cutting out. In the four days it took the replacement to arrive the 4G phone hotspot did a good job.

Speed was just over 40mbps which was good enough, though we only ever run one HD streaming video at a time. A household running streaming in every room might have problems.

[UncleEbenezer]

Where I lived 2013-2019 I got Virgin Cable, which was the only option in 2013.

It regularly failed, sometimes for long periods, and support couldn't be contacted. In 2014 I got a little Alcatel 4G device and a contract with EE. The device itself was dodgy: wifi connections would disappear randomly, it had to be rebooted by taking the battery out about once a day, and when the wifi died on my $work macbook I couldn't use it at all from there. But it was altogether more reliable than Virgin, and I ended up with only the 4G connection for a couple of years.

It's not so useful from here, due I suspect to my thick stone walls and position near the foot of a hill. So I have terrestrial broadband. But I still never travel for more than a day away without the 4G device.

[BullDog]

When I was working a project overseas for a few years I used 4G mobile and didn't have a landline. It was fine for Netflix, Spotify, Skype, MS Teams meetings etc..... And I regularly worked from my apartment over 4G using the company VPN. I used typically about 100gb a month data but it was a very good deal compared to paying for a landline I didn't need. The company paid my mobile phone bill anyway.

Typically the 4G was about 40mb per sec. I should think based on my experience with 4G, that a good 5G connection will be no problem.

[GeoffF100]

I am only getting 12.5 mb/s over copper wire (its probably fibre to cabinet nowadays), which is fine. 4G speed is more than enough. Latency is said to be better on 5G though. The cheapest phone with a reasonable secure life currently seems to be the Samsung A14 at £180, but the 5G version costs £220. The price differential may be less when the A15 comes out next year, but perhaps a 4G phone is good enough.

[swill453]

Bear in mind that if your only network connection is your phone, you would be restricting the use of "smart" devices in the home. Video doorbells, security cameras, central heating controllers, that sort of thing.

It may not be an issue for you, but it would be for me.

Scott.

[raybarrow]

Hi Folks,
This is interesting. We are downsizing and moving to an independant living apartment. House hold when form four laptop uses, games consoles etc to two laptops and Freeview. Currently we have Virgin broadband. We are not planning to take it with us and use the Huawei 4G+ mobile router we got for our daughter when at Uni. Tried it in a few places with no problem. As long as the signal is ok we'll be fine.
Ray.

[Newroad]

Hi Geoff.

What you propose seems entirely reasonable to me. I also concur with those who say 4G is likely enough - it's what I use when I'm in Australia for a sustained period (Optus 4G via a portable modem, PAYG - I carry it with me when on the move when needed, so my UK phone can hook into it).

It depends exactly where you live, as you say, but my approach would probably be

Pay Monthly: ID Mobile (an MVNO based on Three with good options, including a monthly one), backed up by
Pay As You Go: 1p Mobile (as you mention, an MVNO based on EE)

ID Mobile will likely benefit from Vodafone connectivity if and when that merger is approved. Depending on your usage, the backup phone could be the one you use for calls - allowing you to keep the Pay Monthly one permanently at home - which would allow you to anchor other services off it if desired.

For me, the extra £40 for a 5G phone would be a no-brainer as a future proofing exercise, even if 4G proved adequate as suspected.

Regards, Newroad

[GeoffF100]

I have done a quick bit of research. Firstly, here is an article about tethering:

https://www.independent.co.uk/compare/m ... -tethering

How to tether a Samsung A14:

https://youtu.be/akBoGlMotb0?si=XoJaJ1iMAcsPVaRJ

What if you want a network? Amazon's choice for a 5G router:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ZTE-MC801A-Unl ... 0BD9BH7TB/

£249, so about the same cost as a budget 5G phone. More cheaply, you can tether your mobile phone to a router:

https://www.androidpolice.com/how-to-te ... to-router/

You need a router without a modem. Here is CCL's best seller for £49.99:

https://www.cclonline.com/90ig06p0-mo35 ... -6-router/

Argos has a Belkin USB-C to Ethernet adapter for £39.99:

https://www.argos.co.uk/sd/usb-ethernet-adapter/

There are much cheaper ones on Amazon (if you are feeling lucky!). ID Mobile is indeed cheap:

https://www.idmobile.co.uk/sim-only-deals

4G coverage is good where I live, but 5G is outdoors only. An advantage of mobile Internet is that you pay for one month at a time. No long term contract with escalating prices and penalties for ending the contract. You can try it and see.

[Bminusrob]

Here in the outlying spiral arm of North Devon, broadband over fixed lines (copper, fibre, fibre-to-the cabinet) is not available. It is actually possible to pay for broadband over copper using the Openreach network, but in my small hamlet, the best anyone has achieved using this is 1.5Mb/s.

As a result, most of us use Three mobile broadband which uses data over 4G. This usually provides a reasonable service of around 20Mb/s, but it is quite variable. I have seen it go up to over 50Mb/s, but on bad days, it goes down to 5Mb/s. It also varies in speed through the day, and is quite often 50% slower in the evening, when the syatem is being used heavily. Despite the caveats, we have lived here for four years, and it is good enough for us.

The Three package we use costs less than £20 per month for unlimited data, and we have a VOIP phone connected to the system, so we have a landline number people can call, and pay-as-you-go if we ever use it to make calls (which we don't because we both have mobile packages with unlimited calls).

My mobile phone provide has recently increased my data allowance to 30Gb per month (£7.95 per month SIM only contract), which is probably as much as I used for Internet, but my wife watches quite a few videos, and generally, we use between 75Gb and 100Gb per month, so we will be sticking with the Three system until something better comes along.

The message then is that 4G is probably good enough, but you need to look at the numbers to see what works for you. On this note, before we signed up to the Three system, I got a Three SIM with a fixed data allowance, so I could test out the speed and variability of the network. This is well worth doing before signing a contract.

[GeoffF100]

I have connected my Nokia 5.3 4G phone to my PC running Linux Mint 21.2 via the phone's USB-C to USB charging cable, and successfully enabled USB tethering. Performance was good.

I have had a closer look at the £49.99 router linked above. It has a USB socket. I expect that I could set up a WiFi network by connecting that to the phone and enabling USB tethering on the phone. A USB-C to Ethernet cable should not be necessary. Perhaps there is an expert here who can confirm that. I do not need a WiFi network, but it does not look expensive to set one up.

[GeoffF100]

The answer is yes, you can connect your phone to the USB socket on the router. Here are instructions for setting it up:

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1045247/

[CliffEdge]

I have connected my Nokia 5.3 4G phone to my PC running Linux Mint 21.2 via the phone's USB-C to USB charging cable, and successfully enabled USB tethering. Performance was good.

I have had a closer look at the £49.99 router linked above. It has a USB socket. I expect that I could set up a WiFi network by connecting that to the phone and enabling USB tethering on the phone. A USB-C to Ethernet cable should not be necessary. Perhaps there is an expert here who can confirm that. I do not need a WiFi network, but it does not look expensive to set one up.

I have a 4G phone. It can apparently get data via the mobile network which is 02 which seems to enable it to connect to the internet. I clicked on a thing called enable Hotspot.

After that, all my other devices, a couple of computers, a tablet, and another mobile phone, all seem to see the 4G phone as some kind of router and connect to it via something called wifi.

That's about the limit of my understanding. We don 't have a landline connected.

[GeoffF100]

I have connected my Nokia 5.3 4G phone to my PC running Linux Mint 21.2 via the phone's USB-C to USB charging cable, and successfully enabled USB tethering. Performance was good.

I have had a closer look at the £49.99 router linked above. It has a USB socket. I expect that I could set up a WiFi network by connecting that to the phone and enabling USB tethering on the phone. A USB-C to Ethernet cable should not be necessary. Perhaps there is an expert here who can confirm that. I do not need a WiFi network, but it does not look expensive to set one up.

I have a 4G phone. It can apparently get data via the mobile network which is 02 which seems to enable it to connect to the internet. I clicked on a thing called enable Hotspot.

After that, all my other devices, a couple of computers, a tablet, and another mobile phone, all seem to see the 4G phone as some kind of router and connect to it via something called wifi.

That's about the limit of my understanding. We don 't have a landline connected.

I expect that the £49.99 router has better WiFi performance than the phone as a hotspot. It also has Ethernet sockets.

Another possibility is to use a dongle rather than the phone, if you want the network to connect to the Internet while you are away with your phone. The dongle will be cheaper than a phone, but it is an additional expenditure if you do not need it.