I was talking to a guy who gave up on getting a decent broadband speed in his house and just bought a cheap mobile phone and uses it as a hot spot. So yesterday I started playing around with concept as I am paying lots of ££s to BT for line rental and broadband which delivers 15Mb/s. I bought a sim card chosen from one of the price comparison sites which uses the 4G vodafone network on a 30 day contract and set it up as a hotspot using a spare phone and found that I was getting download speed of over 50mb/s plus unlimited phone calls. For about £15/month there are some really good data deals available. I was just wondering if anyone else has been looking at this option?

PS I will start researching to see if I can get the phone to drive my BT router 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
Now Discovery Sport P250 MHEV SE

Down under broadband is a complete debacle. Now we are on mobiles only & use hotspot like many others. If you are not steaming then mobile is the way to go. My current pre pay is $100, 60GB data, free local calls & sms, free international calls & sms to the countries which we need, 6 months. & it's a lot quicker. Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

Wired broadband where we now are is rubbish (1-3Mb/s) so I use an LTE router with a mobile broadband data contract. The router does everything the BT router does, but using the mobile network. Be aware that normal phone contracts tend to prohibit use in routers and the like, instead requiring mobile broadband contracts. (Although you may get away with it, for a time at least.)

Got a contract with 3 for mobile broadband £23.50 a month unlimited data and we can take the router away with us in the the motorhome here or in Europe, with BT was getting 10 to 12 meg now with 3 getting 45meg so taking it with for a month tour of Europe starting Wednesday

Three seems to be the cheapest for mobile broadband, but it’s the one network for which there’s no signal here, so I went with O2 at £30 for 50Gb, which is enough for my needs. Combined with a HUAWEI B525 router it gives a service to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from good wired broadband. Note, btw, that although three is unlimited data they do slow you down if you use more than a certain amount.

Tried vodaphone a couple of years ago said I would get a good service in side and out but had Togo to the bottom of the garden to get a signal

The issue there is that if you start adding more devices to your home network, a mobile hotspot stops being a particularly good technical setup.

If you only ever connect one device to the internet then yes a mobile hotspot might work fine, just be very careful about data allowances.

If you find you are getting poor speeds at home over broadband, there are a number of things you need to check.

What are your router sync speeds?

If you connect via WiFi, connect a PC or laptop to the broadband router and run a speed test, from somewhere like www.speed test.net

If the speed test results are good, but WiFi isn't, it's not a BT issue but a signal issue within your house. There are various things you can there.

Is your house capable of fibre broadband? My phone line, with standard ADSL broadband can only get about 11mbps but on fibre I get a steady 32mbps.

Check here https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker to see what your line offers. If you aren't on a fibre package and your line is fibre capable, then you have lots of options which don't have to be expensive.

Check that out and get back to us 👍 Learned to drive in 2011.
Bought a Micra - great little car
"Upgraded" to Kia Sportage - hated it
Proper upgrade to FL2 TD4 GS 60 reg Facelift - tailgate paint issues, fuel gauge rewire, transfer box failure at 36k miles, clutch at 60k
Reconditioned diff at 70k ish
Sold at 84k and now on a DS. Terribly unreliable.
Sold DS for a 2021 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Fingers crossed....
Sold Outlander for a 2014 SD4 SE Tech because I’m mental

And my original point I meant to make was that with a proper router (the box your ISP will give you), is designed to handle lots of devices on your network, like smart TVs, phones, Amazon/Google smart devices, music streamers etc. Learned to drive in 2011.
Bought a Micra - great little car
"Upgraded" to Kia Sportage - hated it
Proper upgrade to FL2 TD4 GS 60 reg Facelift - tailgate paint issues, fuel gauge rewire, transfer box failure at 36k miles, clutch at 60k
Reconditioned diff at 70k ish
Sold at 84k and now on a DS. Terribly unreliable.
Sold DS for a 2021 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Fingers crossed....
Sold Outlander for a 2014 SD4 SE Tech because I’m mental

We tried Virgin fibre - good speed but would drop connection 2-3 times per week for hours.
Sky Fibre- again good speed, but the phone (land line) would drop out for days, only when people rang on mobile to tell us would we notice.
So BT it is then, phone and broadband work all the time, been with them for years now bill went up to £53 a month for a basic package, fed up with being overcharged so went to cancel and suddenly the bill halved and the speed went up.

We have the issue that no mobiles work at home, but Three placed a box in the house that picks up the phones and uses the broadband to route calls - works most of the time, but Wi-Fi calling works the rest.

Strange thing is that Virgin, Sky, and BT actually use the same box at the top of the street, so why the reliability issues? Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner

It's possible the issues are on the length of line between your house and the box in the street. Or, at the exchange.

Have you asked your provider to investigate? Quite often they will find a fault and fix it.

Alternatively, try someone like aa.net.uk they are an excellent ISP. Slightly more costly but if there are any issues they WILL sort them. Learned to drive in 2011.
Bought a Micra - great little car
"Upgraded" to Kia Sportage - hated it
Proper upgrade to FL2 TD4 GS 60 reg Facelift - tailgate paint issues, fuel gauge rewire, transfer box failure at 36k miles, clutch at 60k
Reconditioned diff at 70k ish
Sold at 84k and now on a DS. Terribly unreliable.
Sold DS for a 2021 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Fingers crossed....
Sold Outlander for a 2014 SD4 SE Tech because I’m mental

Neither Sky nor Virgin were interested in fault finding despite numerous phone calls to complain.
The fibre connection box is less than 100 yards away, so the only difference is 100yards of copper or 100 yards of fibre. We are fibre then all the way to the exchange.

Virgin did finally offer to come and look for a fault after two years of complaining, but only after I had signed with BT and was cancelling the contract. Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner

The whole "fibre" thing is a bit misleading. You most likely have FTTC which means fibre to the cabinet. So, whether you use standard broadband or fibre, it's still the copper line from your house to the panel on the street. Then fibre from the cabinet to the exchange. FTTP (fibre to the premises) is exactly that, but costly.

Virgin use their own fibre line if you're in a Virgin area, otherwise Virgin just use the standard Openreach managed copper.

I would try a different ISP first, before going down the mobile route. As I say, AA are awesome, support is second to none. Learned to drive in 2011.
Bought a Micra - great little car
"Upgraded" to Kia Sportage - hated it
Proper upgrade to FL2 TD4 GS 60 reg Facelift - tailgate paint issues, fuel gauge rewire, transfer box failure at 36k miles, clutch at 60k
Reconditioned diff at 70k ish
Sold at 84k and now on a DS. Terribly unreliable.
Sold DS for a 2021 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Fingers crossed....
Sold Outlander for a 2014 SD4 SE Tech because I’m mental

As above they all use bt open reach so it’s down to them to sort out line problems most with any supplier is over subscribing especially if the box they are coming from is unbundled as a few years ago our local box was unbundled and we were with talktalk ok to start but got slower and slower until they let me out of contract as I couldn’t even load a speed checker the lowest I got one to work at was.025m

Don’t know if unbundled boxes are allowed now

Chuckalicious wrote:

And my original point I meant to make was that with a proper router (the box your ISP will give you), is designed to handle lots of devices on your network, like smart TVs, phones, Amazon/Google smart devices, music streamers etc.

The one I have only has I port