Broadband vs 4g

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We currently use Virgin Media and have noticed that we barely use the TV box nor landline so looking for broadband only suppliers. I notice that Three are offering 5g and 4g in our area for £20 for 4g or £30 for 5g per month.
Wondered if anybody has moved to a 5g broadband at home and what your experiences were?
 
We can't really get landline BB ( 0.2mb download and 0.002 upload!) so we are on a 4G plan with Three.
Officially we are also 3G/4G in a black spot, and initially they refused to let us buy it, but I convinced them and it works ok, but they offer us no support if it goes down.
We have an external antenna and get about 15-25mb download and 7mb upload depending on the weather.
In heavy wind and rain it often drops significantly.

Still, it was our only option, so something is better than nothing.
 
If you can get fibre even FTTC it is going to be more reliable most likely.
Here there's no mobile cover at all but since July over 60mb down and 18 up is available for about £25 including line rental I don't use it for calls other than incoming as mobile wifi calling is infinitely cheaper included on 1pmobile.com
 
I’m with Virgin too. Only reason I’m with them is because they’re the only fast broadband provider that supplies our house. BT don’t seem to be interested in run their broadband cables into our street so Virgin was the only option.

I heard about the 4G/5G broadband option recently. I’ve hoping by June 22 when our contract is up with Virgin and their price then doubles 5G home broadband will have had enough time to become a viable option to at least give an option to potentially rival Virgin in our area. I can’t go back to 3.5mpbs download and 0.5mbps upload speeds like we until December 20. Now I’ve seen the benefit of faster than 3.5mbps broadband I don’t want to go back to it, but I also don’t want to be paying £50 a month for broadband only either!
 
I used 4g for nearly a year. If there had been 5g maybe it would have been tolerable but 4g wasn't. You could barely stream iPlayer on a good day and zoom was very hit and miss. Also some banking apps just won't work on a desktop over 4g. I had to use my phone to log in.

Add in a throttled VPN and doing anything became a chore.

When I moved, I bought the fastest fibre I could get. For me, it's worth the money.

ETA: I was with three. They were lying about the speed. A lot. I upgraded their kit and it was better but still complete lies.
 
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Will you get by with the restricted bandwidth ???? I assume that it is not unlimited, or is it.
 
As it turns out ive found some broadband only deals on virgin. They didn't mention these when I was onto disconnections yesterday...
500mb for £32 per month, much better than the 62.50 100mb deal I was on!
 
JonathanRyan said:
I used 4g for nearly a year. If there had been 5g maybe it would have been tolerable but 4g wasn't. You could barely stream iPlayer on a good day and zoom was very hit and miss. Also some banking apps just won't work on a desktop over 4g. I had to use my phone to log in.

Add in a throttled VPN and doing anything became a chore.

When I moved, I bought the fastest fibre I could get. For me, it's worth the money.

ETA: I was with three. They were lying about the speed. A lot. I upgraded their kit and it was better but still complete lies.
Click to expand...
I had a feeling they may be lying about the potential speed!
I'm in Cardiff so should get good 5g speeds, but my phone is 4g so can't do a test. But I have found a virgin media deal which is broadband only and a good price, so may not go down the 5g route.
 
Nikon f1.8 said:
Will you get by with the restricted bandwidth ???? I assume that it is not unlimited, or is it.
Click to expand...
It did say unlimited, but I have mobile phone contracts that stated the same that throttled the speed once a threshold was passed...
 
Rapscallion said:
As it turns out ive found some broadband only deals on virgin. They didn't mention these when I was onto disconnections yesterday...
500mb for £32 per month, much better than the 62.50 100mb deal I was on!
Click to expand...
This is my problem with Virgin. Their initial offer price is very good but once the contract offer period ends it shoots up to around double. My offer was £25 for 100MB broadband only for 18 months. We started it in December 2020 so have until June 2022 before it goes crazy price and they have us over a barrel. We never had tv packages and don’t miss the home phone as we always used the free minutes on our mobiles so broadband only has been ok for us.

I’ve found 100mb to be fine for streaming iPlayer/Netflix’s, using zoom, playing on Xbox live etc. Both of us can happily work from work at the same time now which was our main goal. I’m not sure I’d see any really benefit from 500mb as I don’t download much large stuff.
 
Nikon f1.8 said:
Will you get by with the restricted bandwidth ???? I assume that it is not unlimited, or is it.
Click to expand...
Mines unlimited, although it is throttled and I have to use a vpn to actually use it, but like I said, it’s our only option right now, we can’t get anything else
 
I’m on 1 Gb synchronous broadband at home and will be remaining with that as long as the supplier keeps giving me discounts upon annual renewals.
 
Where I am the landline BB was terrible, and after years of trying to get it sorted, I went with a mobile broadband dongle from Vodafone.

It was immediately better than the BB ever was, and has mostly been trouble free for the last 6 years or so.

I also have one at the gym, as BT were useless in getting a landline fitted there.

At home we can watch Netflix/Prime etc and only very rarely have any issues with playback.
 
I have survived over half a month tethering my three phone. We only get 4g but phone is 5g capable. It was ok. Didn't try to watch movies, etc. It makes me think if I need to pay separate broadband bill and rather upgrade phone to unlimited deal. Only question is how to route it via Netgear switch
 
Rapscallion said:
We currently use Virgin Media and have noticed that we barely use the TV box nor landline so looking for broadband only suppliers. I notice that Three are offering 5g and 4g in our area for £20 for 4g or £30 for 5g per month.
Wondered if anybody has moved to a 5g broadband at home and what your experiences were?
Click to expand...

Virgin Media O2 do a broadband-only package.


Edit: I just noticed that you found it.
 
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you can get BB with virgin with no other service, thats what we have just 100mb no phone and no TV.
sounds like a good deal for £25 you have, i haglle like f*** every year and best i can get is £35 /month but it is excellent

compared to our house in Greece UK BB in the UK is fantastic, i pay 20Euros a month for 10mb Adsl over there
 
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Nytol said:
Where I am the landline BB was terrible, and after years of trying to get it sorted, I went with a mobile broadband dongle from Vodafone.

It was immediately better than the BB ever was, and has mostly been trouble free for the last 6 years or so.

I also have one at the gym, as BT were useless in getting a landline fitted there.

At home we can watch Netflix/Prime etc and only very rarely have any issues with playback.
Click to expand...

That's good news. One thing I found was that on low bandwidth, Netflix would work way better than iPlayer. It seems to cache the data and downgrade image quality to keep itself playing. BBC just goes "nah - have a spinny arrow for a while...."
 
3G/4G/5G are all shared media - if someone in the same cell as you is caning it, you'll get less. Add in inevitable higher latency and the throughput for a given "line" speed plummets.

A mediocre wire will usually outperform the best wireless in terms of reliability though.
 
JonathanRyan said:
That's good news. One thing I found was that on low bandwidth, Netflix would work way better than iPlayer. It seems to cache the data and downgrade image quality to keep itself playing. BBC just goes "nah - have a spinny arrow for a while...."
Click to expand...

I don't use iplayer, but Netflix does seem to be the best when it comes to streaming with a slower connection.
 
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