5g Home Broadband

sphexx

sphexx

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I wonder if anyone has experience of 5g home broadband? I currently have VirginMedia cable on a contract finishing next month, it’s 125 Mbps and I use a TPLink Deco Mesh system which is resricted to 100Mbps and all works OK, for £24 pcm jumping to £50 odd at end of contract. Of course I could upgrade to VM M250 for £33 or bargain for a new deal and so on.

However I’ve just received a Three 5g Home Broadband Hub/Router on “approval” and a £24 pcm monthly “contract” (or could opt for £20 pcm on 24 month contract).

Three say I’m in a “Good” outdoor area and “Very Good” everywhere.

I think the nearest mast is about a mile away but I’m on a hill with almost line of sight to it as the ground falls away towards it.

Three advertises an average speed of 150Mbps for it and I’m getting 50-400 down according to Ookla Speedtest — seems to vary wildly but most of the time I would say it’s 150 or above though their app rate it Poor or Fair. The Hub will drop to 4g if 5g unavailalable but I’ve only seen that once and the speed was very good. The speed up is mostly less than the 20Mbps I get from VM.

If anyone is interested the setup was a doddle but changing anything from the defaults is a nightmare. The iOS app works mostly but so far I’ve been unable to log into the web interface despite entering the correct details and resetting the Hub. During setup I was invited to change the WiFi name and password , which I did and was accepted but later found it was still on the defaults.

I haven’t seen any problems from a user point of view over 3 days use so I’m minded to stick with it and chuck VirginMedia. My only doubt is that I need to run the Deco Mesh from it for which I should switch the Ethernet output to modem mode (if I’ve understood correctly this can be done via the web interface and maintains the Hub’s WiFi signal unlike on my VM Hub. However at present the Mesh is just connected to the 5g Hub’s Ethernet and everything seems to ”just work” ™.

The only other drawback I’m aware of is that outages are said to be more frequent than with fibre but I have a mobile phone on a different network though I did away with my landline.
 
A mile for 5g is a fair way, and could be affected by weather. You may one day need an external antenna or a passive repeater.
3 in the past have had some good deals price wise, but we get a lousy signal from them, so never tried them though we have considered it (Also on Virgin)

Service wise, we have not had good service from them, including a month ago when they left my son on a very expensive rolling contract when his contract expired (no explanation of his options), to save money he changed (at university, so very limited funds), he spoke to them on the phone and they told him he would have to make one more payment, but it would be fully refunded. He go refunded less than 20% of it!

Virgin it seems will go down to about £34 a month if challenged, if it was me, I would see what I could get from them, and if it was not good, stay on the month to month fee with no contract for a couple of months whilst trying the 5g.
What is the performance limit at which 3 will allow you to cancel the contract without penalty? And if you leave Virgin, can you go straight back? (I'm sure you have to wait 12 months before you can claim any new customer discount)


If you change, will be very interested to hear how it works out in the long term.

We now have three choices for fibre, Virgin (we are still on coax with no need to change), City Fibre and BT, though I don't think BT has it in our street yet, as we have no overhead cables, all underground, but they keep offering it :)
 
I’ve been on broadband ever since NTL put it in, the cabinet is just on the other side of the road and the cable ends at my house,. I’ve never renewed a contact but always changed so I’ve been with NTL/Virgin at least 3 times but also with BT at least twice, Vodafone, PlusNet and maybe another so I’ve always been a “new” customer. No mobile phone with any of them but with O2 and then giffgaff (which is O2) but I hardly use the phone and my hearing is bad anyway which is part of the reason I don’t renew because none of them will negotiate online or by email only by phone.

Yes, I thought the weather might be a factor and I have big trees in the front garden. I think I’m betting on Three putting a mast nearby but I think that’ll take a year if they have to get planning permission but I can’t see why they didn’t opt to put it door to their proposed site with would be on farm land and in North Yorkshire not Leeds.

BT has fibre to the cabinet two houses away but the last bit is my phone line which passes through tree branches and I think is a bit likely to get damaged — I don’t have landline now either.

I’m not too surprised about the Three service judging by the weird problems I have changing anything from the defaults and a few other things with the setup instructions which seem to be common. Always had reliable and good service from Virgin when anything went wrong.
 
I had 4g as my only connection for about a year. I understand 5G would be a very different thing but 4g was awful.

When it worked it was ok. It was mostly good int he trial period but over a year we had frequent slowdowns and dropouts. Most streaming services weren't able to cope for more than 10 mins at any quality and I think it was to do with 4g being good at small bursts of high bandwidth but sustained connections just don't work well. If you stream your TV then forget watching it at Christmas.

Add to that weather problems and the signal area getting swamped and I was glad when we could move to Virgin. (Literally - we moved house).

Interestingly some secure websites especially banks just wouldn't work on PC. My theory was that it detected the connection and tried to do phone sort of security but failed because PCs aren't the same as phones. I suspect they have some security layers that most people never find out about.

It depends on how important connectivity and, say £500 a year is to you. Personally I'd cut back on other stuff to keep a reliable fibre connection - it's important for more and more. Get a better price from Virgin :)
 
JonathanRyan said:
Interestingly some secure websites especially banks just wouldn't work on PC. My theory was that it detected the connection and tried to do phone sort of security but failed because PCs aren't the same as phones. I suspect they have some security layers that most people never find out about.
Click to expand...

my bold

I think they actually claim that they do so you are probably correct.
 
JonathanRyan said:
It depends on how important connectivity and, say £500 a year is to you. Personally I'd cut back on other stuff to keep a reliable fibre connection - it's important for more and more.
Click to expand...

I agree. I would say say it’s important/convenient but not essential. I don’t “need” a very good or fast connection for anything being long retired.

I shall probably cancel Virgin now which gives me another month to trial 5g before Virgin cuts me off.
 
we left BT and changed to Box broadband and telepone service as they could supply fibre optic to our house which BT have no plans to do at present. Tne "BOX" company can provide a better choice of service than BT as well.

Link

www.boxbroadband.co.uk

Your Local Ultrafast Full Fibre Broadband Providers - Box Broadband

Get Ultrafast, reliable fibre broadband for your home or business, in your area around Surrey or Sussex with Box Broadband.
www.boxbroadband.co.uk www.boxbroadband.co.uk
 
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realspeed said:
we left BT and changed to Box broadband and telepone service as they could supply fibre optic to our house which BT have no plans to do at present. Tne "BOX" company can provide a better choice of service than BT as well.

Link

www.boxbroadband.co.uk

Your Local Ultrafast Full Fibre Broadband Providers - Box Broadband

Get Ultrafast, reliable fibre broadband for your home or business, in your area around Surrey or Sussex with Box Broadband.
www.boxbroadband.co.uk www.boxbroadband.co.uk
Click to expand...

Very good price but they are not in my area :(
 
Box are only dahn Sarf apparently so not very like to appear in GOC any time soon :(
 
More crappy stuff from Thhree. They send me an email with a link to help find your best signal which eventually goes to age recommending a Huawei app for Huawei phones which they must have been selling back in 2020 when the page was posted and nothing to do with Home Broadband which is a Zytel router not even Huawei.

Edit to add;
… and I still can’t log in to the router using the default user and password, getting for “admin” “This is currently an invalid username please try again in 5 minutes” at the first attempt! I’ll have to try resetting again which is the only solution I’ve seen mentioned :(
 
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I've been forced off to 5g tethering with my phone and yes it is workable. You certainly get better speeds via usb Vs WiFi version. 5g Connection here is fairly borderline (and town centre gets none) but proves plenty to watch 4k YouTube or download some large update. There is little difference to regular broadband and in fact it can go much faster with good unobstructed connection. You want to be near window, etc.
My phone sometimes gets stupid and decides to switch to 4g and that's nasty. That's the only problem I had in a month+. I presume a better phone or dedicated device will only get better from there. There is no way I'm subscribing for another 2yr relatively slow copper connection. Only alternative is optic fibre if you need that much

There is literally nothing stopping you from disconnecting the cable and plugging in the phone to try out.

P.s. I'm on 3 network (smarty). It's not like there is any 5g broadband alternative with rip off EE prices
 
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The only time I’ve seen it switch to 4g I had a very good speed. I’m on a hill about ½ mile from town centre so I suspect there are lots of 4g masts about.
 
On Three 5g HB weirdness. After multiple resets to no effect and decoding the QR (which worked fine for setup) to see if details were the same — they were— I managed to log in on the web interface bu I sing Chrome instead of Safari (though on the iPad Chrome is Safari under the skin) but which worryingly forced a password change before I could log in which was uneventful. There seems to a lot of details compared with previous hubs I’ve had and just looking at some pages seem to cause a temporary disconnection of WiFi and changing WiFi password causes immediate change rather than applying when you logout.
 
I will be following this thread, my bb is awful, 13-15mb max. We are so far from the fibre box it's all crappy overhead copper line.

However a 4g/5g mast is 180m away and you can see it.

Would be interesting to see what a sim only modem can pull out of the mast.

My 4g phone manages a very respectable steady 70mb.

5g is available from the mast too.
 
Jungli said:
I will be following this thread, my bb is awful, 13-15mb max. We are so far from the fibre box it's all crappy overhead copper line.

However a 4g/5g mast is 180m away and you can see it.

Would be interesting to see what a sim only modem can pull out of the mast.

My 4g phone manages a very respectable steady 70mb.

5g is available from the mast too.
Click to expand...

You can in effect try it out for a month for £24 from Three since that’s there monthly contract and you can return it if it’s not good for you — apart from anything they offer, that distance selling rules anyway. Their 5g hub gets 4g to if 5g drops out., not sure if you can set it to 4g only.
 
Another weird thing. No problem connecting iPhone, several iPads and other devices plus Deco Mesh system but my ‘spare’ Google Pixel 4a won’t connect to the WiFi despite many attempts and after a factory reset. It will connect via the Mesh system without difficulty. There must be some conflict somewhere but it’s got me.

The only thing I know that I may be doing wrong is that I have connected the Deco Mesh to the hub via one of the regular Ethernet sockets. Usually you have to put a hub into Modem mode to do this. 3 Hub doesn’t have a Modem mode but has something called “IP Passthrough which I think converts one of the two Ethernet sockets (though which one isn’t obvious) to the equivalent of Modem modem. I’ve avoided this so far as Ive had little luck changing the setting in the hub and since all the important stuff is working I’m reluctant to rock the boat. I can’t even get a password change to “stick”.

I’ll probably have to re-install the whole thing from scratch again and see if that sorts it.

I’ve no technical knowledge of all this stuff, just a fiddler :LOL:

Edit to add: Spoke too soon, had a 10 mins of no or nearly no connection this am before it kicked in again :(
 
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Update.

I eventually accepted a phone call from VirginMedia Retention and basically told them to p*** off whereupon they offered me 18month on M125 (which was my current speed) for £22 pcm, £2 less that what I had been paying! But I told them “no thanks, it‘s a point of principle with me never to renew since you won’t do it online”) thus cutting off nose to spite face! :LOL: .

Realistically I just fancy trying 5g and I can get a new fibre supply for around £24pcm if it doesn’t work out though mostly they seem to be 67Mbs for that price. Since my Mesh system is limited to 100Mbps that’s not much of a problem.

Three 5g has been mostly OK but with some drop outs from time to time. It should go to 4g when that happens but apart from in the first days 4g had never appeared.

Yesterday it was very unreliable possibly due to the rain which is said to affect 5g so I checked on the “Three Community” pages and found this “not switching to 4g and back“ to be a common problem which has not been solved and may be fault with the hub (it’s a Zyxel NR5103E hub, but modified by Three I think).

So I’ve gone into the web interface and changed the Cellular Band Setting to 4g only (there are two different 5g/4g switching modes and a 5g only mode) and had a rock solid connection for last 24 hours. Speed has varied from 35-105 down — and up has been around 20 which is double the up speed on 5g. Currently it seem to have settled on 105 and 20 which is excellent for me.

I may try the 4g/5g switching again after seeing how 4g works out or otherwise wait for this new 5g mast to be installed near me once they overcome the planning hurdles. The alternative is an outside antenna (since I’m single storey) but they are pricey and beyond my physical ability to install anyway except the kind that suction cups to a window which wouldn’t get me any extra height or better position.
 
sphexx said:
The alternative is an outside antenna (since I’m single storey) but they are pricey and beyond my physical ability to install anyway except the kind that suction cups to a window which wouldn’t get me any extra height or better position.
Click to expand...

Can you not get a small directional antenna (like a small TV aerial) that could be mounted somewhere easily, even if it is inside? I use a small directional antenna for digital amateur radio which gives me access to transmitter that the handheld radio & antenna cannot access. It's a bit of a faff having cable running around the room, but you could (generally) relocate your router to wherever you need to to keep the cable run short and tidy.
 
Jelster said:
Can you not get a small directional antenna (like a small TV aerial) that could be mounted somewhere easily, even if it is inside? I use a small directional antenna for digital amateur radio which gives me access to transmitter that the handheld radio & antenna cannot access. It's a bit of a faff having cable running around the room, but you could (generally) relocate your router to wherever you need to to keep the cable run short and tidy.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I have looked for that as a solotion but not found it. Apparently it needs to be a bit more complicated than when sticking a wire in the back of a tv would work. there are various diy solutions but a bit beyond my competence.

It’s possible an outdoor antenna used indoors might work but they are too pricey to try on a whim. There are both directional (which you can point at a mast) and non directional (which work with multiple masts) types but I think only the directional boost the signal significantly and (I think)only the non directional might work indoors.

I am also limited to only one window position in the house but that seems to get the best signal anyway (and will “see” the new mast if installed).

Heigh ho! But it’s all working very well on 4g at the moment so I’m inclined to leave it for a while. My internet needs don’t require much speed/bandwidth just reliability. I’m not uploading/downloading massive files and soon.
 
I got a Three sim card (Smarty) for my son's phone a few months ago as it was 100GB for a tenner per month, so figured no risk of him going over his data limit. Turns out there was little risk of him going over 100MB never mind 100GB, the signal sucks everywhere, especially on the way to and from school and also at school. Even when the signal is good there's no way it was 5G speeds.

Some of his mates were using Tesco 5G and refer to is as God Internet. I think it's O2, anyway, moved it across and it's miles better, although more expensive. I guess there's a reason why Smarty was cheap.

I've recently had full fibre installed after waiting forever for BT to actually offer it (despite the Openreach infrastructure being in place and Cityfibre offering it). Got fed up with BT's slow 50MB/s (if I'm lucky) at twice the price and probably the worst customer service in history, so now on a beautiful 900MB/s up and down and pretty much get these speeds no matter the time of day at £35 per month and great customer service.

Just ran this test now:

1697972647506.png

Is there no way you can push for them to bring full fibre to your house?
 
gman said:
I got a Three sim card (Smarty) for my son's phone a few months ago as it was 100GB for a tenner per month, so figured no risk of him going over his data limit. Turns out there was little risk of him going over 100MB never mind 100GB, the signal sucks everywhere, especially on the way to and from school and also at school. Even when the signal is good there's no way it was 5G speeds.

Some of his mates were using Tesco 5G and refer to is as God Internet. I think it's O2, anyway, moved it across and it's miles better, although more expensive. I guess there's a reason why Smarty was cheap.

I've recently had full fibre installed after waiting forever for BT to actually offer it (despite the Openreach infrastructure being in place and Cityfibre offering it). Got fed up with BT's slow 50MB/s (if I'm lucky) at twice the price and probably the worst customer service in history, so now on a beautiful 900MB/s up and down and pretty much get these speeds no matter the time of day at £35 per month and great customer service.

Just ran this test now:

View attachment 404592

Is there no way you can push for them to bring full fibre to your house?
Click to expand...
Depends on masts and usage. Over here O2 Vs three is easily reversed but still not fantastic due to occasional switch to 4g which are bloody annoying
 
According to what I read 4g should be around 35 down and 10 up but since I fixed the hub to 4g I’m actually getting (latest at top):

1697978029601.jpeg

figures from iPhone, pixel and 3 iPads. This is actually a better upload speed (nearly double) than I get on 5g. (Download is limited to 100 by my Deco Mesh system though it will go to 125 in practice)

Of course it’s a sunny day — maybe sunshine improves 4g as rain slows 5g :LOL: , all a bit of a mystery to me but so long as it works … :) .
 
gman said:
Is there no way you can push for them to bring full fibre to your house?
Click to expand...

If that’s addressed to me: I have BT FTTC two houses down and VirginMedia Cabinet opposite and wired to my house (it was NTL originally) and VM offer “full fibre” to my house so I’m spoilt for choice really just too mean to shell out.

I don’t think I need more than 50Mbs or so. I have a lot of devices which I think confuses a regular hub but the Deco Mesh takes care of that.

The Three 5g Home Hub will handle about 30 devices I think so in my compact house situation I probably don’t need a Mesh system with it but to run everything from the hub is a pain as changing passwords in Apple TV, printers and Ring Door Bell is especially tedious. I can get round that by changing the WiFi name and passwords on the hub but I failed to get that to “stick” when I tried it originally.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
Depends on masts and usage. Over here O2 Vs three is easily reversed but still not fantastic due to occasional switch to 4g which are bloody annoying
Click to expand...

We are supposed to be getting excellent coverage according to Three, but alas not. My own is EE which was excellent, but sometimes it can drop these days. I'm wondering if it's becoming a little crowded.
 
sphexx said:
If that’s addressed to me: I have BT FTTC two houses down and VirginMedia Cabinet opposite and wired to my house (it was NTL originally) and VM offer “full fibre” to my house so I’m spoilt for choice really just too mean to shell out.

I don’t think I need more than 50Mbs or so. I have a lot of devices which I think confuses a regular hub but the Deco Mesh takes care of that.

The Three 5g Home Hub will handle about 30 devices I think so in my compact house situation I probably don’t need a Mesh system with it but to run everything from the hub is a pain as changing passwords in Apple TV, printers and Ring Door Bell is especially tedious. I can get round that by changing the WiFi name and passwords on the hub but I failed to get that to “stick” when I tried it originally.
Click to expand...

Aye it was, was wondering if you could push FTTP with Openreach but if happy with alternatives fair enough.

I found Virgin great at first, then they heavily oversubscribed before upgrading the network. We were getting about one hour internet per day and it was predicted to last for 18 months. :oops: :$ They offered £5 off per month. Needless to say I left them. They were getting expensive anyway.
 
gman said:
Aye it was, was wondering if you could push FTTP with Openreach but if happy with alternatives fair enough.

I found Virgin great at first, then they heavily oversubscribed before upgrading the network. We were getting about one hour internet per day and it was predicted to last for 18 months. :oops: :$ They offered £5 off per month. Needless to say I left them. They were getting expensive anyway.
Click to expand...

I’ve been with Virgin/ntl at least 3 times and always had good speeds and good service, they just spoil it for me with their insistence on renewal being done by phone — as do BT and Vodafone and maybe all of them — so it’s just my one man campaign against this which is having about the same effect as my boycott of Israeli lemons since about 1960 (Italian lemons are better anyway :LOL: ).

Since I left dial-up with Demon Internet I’ve been with NTL, VM, BT, Vodafone, JohnLewis, PlusNet, some of them multiple times. Of course my “standing on principle” has also meant I’ve had “new subscriber” deals and/or vouchers each time :LOL: so I’m not complaining.
 
In the UK we seem to be moving very rapidly to a "digital voice" infrastructure for telephonic communications.

This is little discussed, so IMO there is a potential for sleep walking into a situation where in a national/regional emergency (disaster?) and all power goes down affecting all services we will back in the dark ages in regard to "communications".

At this time we still via landline phones have analogue voice that is unaffected by loss of mains power..... AFAIK broadband & FTTC connections would still mean analogue voice would still function but all mobile phone masts would fail (even if they have battery support the chain can fail) but those on FTTP unless they have a special supported phone will not have a 'landline phone '.

I cannot recall when the Gov last updated their announcement of "turning off of analogue voice" but the last I recall in regard to planning contingencies there was no joined up thinking but shortsightedness in abundance!
 
Box Brownie said:
In the UK we seem to be moving very rapidly to a "digital voice" infrastructure for telephonic communications.

This is little discussed, so IMO there is a potential for sleep walking into a situation where in a national/regional emergency (disaster?) and all power goes down affecting all services we will back in the dark ages in regard to "communications".

At this time we still via landline phones have analogue voice that is unaffected by loss of mains power..... AFAIK broadband & FTTC connections would still mean analogue voice would still function but all mobile phone masts would fail (even if they have battery support the chain can fail) but those on FTTP unless they have a special supported phone will not have a 'landline phone '.

I cannot recall when the Gov last updated their announcement of "turning off of analogue voice" but the last I recall in regard to planning contingencies there was no joined up thinking but shortsightedness in abundance!
Click to expand...

Just before I left BT FTTC a few weeks ago I had to plug the landline phone into the back of the router as part of their digital switch thing. I suppose technically the infrastructure would still be in place had I stayed on FTTC, but without BT having it connected properly on their end then the phone would not work. Presumably it's only a matter of time before FTTC is removed, similar to ISDN30.

I can't remember when I last used the landline at home. It's all mobiles now and I guess if the cellular goes down then the mobile can call over the internet instead and visa versa, so I suppose at least that's a little redundancy.
 
Box Brownie said:
In the UK we seem to be moving very rapidly to a "digital voice" infrastructure for telephonic communications.

This is little discussed, so IMO there is a potential for sleep walking into a situation where in a national/regional emergency (disaster?) and all power goes down affecting all services we will back in the dark ages in regard to "communications".

At this time we still via landline phones have analogue voice that is unaffected by loss of mains power..... AFAIK broadband & FTTC connections would still mean analogue voice would still function but all mobile phone masts would fail (even if they have battery support the chain can fail) but those on FTTP unless they have a special supported phone will not have a 'landline phone '.

I cannot recall when the Gov last updated their announcement of "turning off of analogue voice" but the last I recall in regard to planning contingencies there was no joined up thinking but shortsightedness in abundance!
Click to expand...

Indeed. I think ”landline” is on its way out isn‘t it? BT are converting it to VOIP I thought. How many people have portable radios? Is BBC long wave still working? And so on. The rise of supermarkets has resulted in essential supplies being “just in time” so little stock held locally plus dependence on imported produce and so on.
 
gman said:
Just before I left BT FTTC a few weeks ago I had to plug the landline phone into the back of the router as part of their digital switch thing. I suppose technically the infrastructure would still be in place had I stayed on FTTC, but without BT having it connected properly on their end then the phone would not work. Presumably it's only a matter of time before FTTC is removed, similar to ISDN30.

I can't remember when I last used the landline at home. It's all mobiles now and I guess if the cellular goes down then the mobile can call over the internet instead and visa versa, so I suppose at least that's a little redundancy.
Click to expand...
Except if the “internet” is all 5g there won’t be any cabling. I guess wireless is cheaper to install and maintain in the long run than cabling.
 
sphexx said:
Except if the “internet” is all 5g there won’t be any cabling. I guess wireless is cheaper to install and maintain in the long run than cabling.
Click to expand...

You could always get yourself a satellite phone.......:D
 
gman said:
:oops: :$

How long do one of these bad boys last? When we had no internet for about 12 hours my son thought the world had ended!
Click to expand...
I’ve no idea, plenty has been written about it:

www.smithsonianmag.com

What Damage Could Be Caused by a Massive Solar Storm?

An enormous solar storm could short out telecom satellites, radio communications, and power grids, leading to trillions of dollars in damages, experts say
www.smithsonianmag.com www.smithsonianmag.com
 
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