Data hub for internet anywhere.

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Anyone used or know of any good hubs for data transfer when free wifi isn’t available and data quantities wanting to be transferred means mobiles can’t be used as hotspots?

ideally as a pay as you go rather than monthly as data usage will be sporadic.
 
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The old bt openzone, now called bt WiFi May be worth considering. It has a mixture of public WiFi access and accessibility via people’s domestic home hubs.

On home hubs It has a separate Dedicated channel so in theory you can pull up outside in your car, sign in and use it. My own town shows 2000 enabled home hubs....

I did use a couple of time’s around 7or 8 years ago, but no recent experience.

(The payg option is charged by time, not data volume).
 
Mozthecat said:
The old bt openzone, now called bt WiFi May be worth considering. It has a mixture of public WiFi access and accessibility via people’s domestic home hubs.

On home hubs It has a separate Dedicated channel so in theory you can pull up outside in your car, sign in and use it. My own town shows 2000 enabled home hubs....

I did use a couple of time’s around 7or 8 years ago, but no recent experience.

(The payg option is charged by time, not data volume).
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Would speeds and availability be dictated by people’s connection though? If you’re not in range of an open reach domestic hub then you might be scuppered. I thought some MiFi hubs can be used with prepaid data if you have a network sim in it but I might be wrong on that
 
Choose the network carefully based on where you plan to use it... or it'll be useless when you come to use it. Pointless having the cheapest deal if the network you chose is cack where you want/need it.

Choose the PAYG plan carefully... Or you won't dare use it because of the eye-watering charges.

It's entirely possible that in doing the first two, it spits out a packaged option (I used to use a 3 MiFi when WFH in case my Openreach-delivered broadband died - but that's because 3 were the only game in town when I bought it)

You may also find that adding a decent wad of (tetherable) data to your existing phone contract is significantly less expensive. It might also be possible to buy an extra chunk when you need it.
 
Is it not better to just top-up your phone plan when you need the extra data, or switch to a plan that allows data top-ups?
 
due to the EU roaming changes a few years ago all mobile operators allow you to EU roam and also some allow other non EU countries to roam, to be honest I would look at your mobile contract and see if you can find a better one that also has massive data allowances, my plusnet sim only deal is like £10 a month uses EE as their backbone and I get 10gb a month to use as I please, hotspot or whatever. personally I wouldn't buy a separate device and contract in this day and age.

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My PAYG data costs 1p per mb, only use it when no wifi available out and about
Used it when travelling in Europe and cost stays the same, handy for directions or finding places to eat or drink
 
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In most countries outside the EU, it is generally much cheaper to buy a local SIM at the airport when you arrive. Most countries offer something like 10Gb of data to be used within a month. In some places the roaming charge can be be several GBP per Mb is you use your UK SIM.
 
JohnStewart said:
In most countries outside the EU, it is generally much cheaper to buy a local SIM at the airport when you arrive. Most countries offer something like 10Gb of data to be used within a month. In some places the roaming charge can be be several GBP per Mb is you use your UK SIM.
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Thanks, will look into native sim costs. I’m looking for data only sims.
 
I used the Three/Huawei dongle for five or six years and found it to be very good coverage all over the UK.

Even whilst travelling in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Slovenia, Italy and Spain it gave me no problems.
 
Sky said:
I used the Three/Huawei dongle for five or six years and found it to be very good coverage all over the UK.

Even whilst travelling in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Slovenia, Italy and Spain it gave me no problems.
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I googled "best mobile / pocket hotspots" and Huawei products seemed to be about 90% of what was returned. I am not up to speed with the whole Huawei controversy and most likely a bit of prejudice on my part based on whats been reported in the media but I think i have formed a conscious bias against Huawei.
 
I would trust the Chinese Government to keep my data safe far more than some commercial, max-profits, American business. There are two threads to the Huawei debate, mainly it's about Trump's trade war with China, not security but there is a small concern over security at the state-secrets level. Then again it would be pretty dumb to put hightly classified data across ANY commercial mobile infrastructure.
 
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