If you live in an area with poor DSL speeds, and no access to Virgin cable,
and you have a decent 4G signal from Three it might now be viable to use
them for your domestic broadband. It seems Ofcom have stopped them from
preventing you from putting phone tariff sims in mifi type devices
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...ile-plans.html

Three have an unlimited phone tariff for £27/month

http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/Plans_for_phones

I wonder if there are any catches?

"Tweed" wrote in message
news

It seems Ofcom have stopped them from
preventing you from putting phone tariff sims in mifi type devices

Good. The restriction should be entirely on the amount of data that is
downloaded; whether that is via one device or several (mifi router or
tethering) makes no difference and any attempt to impose such a limit cannot
be defended in terms of the provider's costs and therefore can only be
construed as being for profiteering / bloody-mindedness reasons. For once, a
watchdog that is on the side of the customers rather than the service
providers - and has sufficient teeth to impose its will, rather than the
normal "what they are doing is illegal but we haven't the resources to
enforce the decision".

On Sun 09/12/2018 18:45, Tweed wrote:

If you live in an area with poor DSL speeds, and no access to Virgin cable,
and you have a decent 4G signal from Three it might now be viable to use
them for your domestic broadband. It seems Ofcom have stopped them from
preventing you from putting phone tariff sims in mifi type devices
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...ile-plans.html

Three have an unlimited phone tariff for £27/month

http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/Plans_for_phones

I wonder if there are any catches?


The one that immediately occurs to me is that in rural areas 3 does not
have anything like as much 4G coverage as the other three, especially EE.

We go to a caravan site near Frome in NE Somerset. 1Km away LoS is a 3
tower housing 3 on 3G and EE on 4G - the former will hit 10Mb on a good
day, the latter about 42Mb. In the opposite direction about 600m LoS is
a (electrikery) pylon shared by VF and O2 both on 4G. I haven't tried VF
but O2 will hit almost 50Mb easily.

Now why do EE, VF, and O2 consider there is a market for 4G in that area
but 3 seemingly do not*. Also at the moment the only one of the four
having a 4G wi-fi router available (with cable ethernet connection) is
EE - the others just rely upon a mi-fi unit or a USB dongle.

*The only reason I can think of is that EE will be hosting the new
Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (replacement for
Airwave) on 4G which means 4G will also be available to Joe Public. VF
and O2 cannot let EE have 4G to themselves in the area (which is quite
wealthy and very popular with celebrities) so have added it to their
site - they both do 2G and 3G as well from the same site.

Landline broadband is very poor and the site is slightly less than 3Km
from the exchange. There is a 4-pair overhead cable to the site for
various reasons; BT's dslchecker site shows 1.8Mb max for two of the
lines, up to 2.5Mb on a third line, and 6Mb on the fourth line which is
just about what they manage on a good day. Given they are all in the
same cable from the same exchange how come there is so much difference
both in theory and in practice? There are no street cabs, just pole DPs,
and no FTTC.

I am on O2 using GiffGaff and if I pay £10 per month (or less) I can
legally tether when using my 3Gb per month; 3 permit tethering only on
contract connections, not on PAYG or monthly bundles.

--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

On 09/12/2018 18:45, Tweed wrote:

If you live in an area with poor DSL speeds, and no access to Virgin cable,
and you have a decent 4G signal from Three it might now be viable to use
them for your domestic broadband. It seems Ofcom have stopped them from
preventing you from putting phone tariff sims in mifi type devices
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...ile-plans.html

Three have an unlimited phone tariff for £27/month

http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/Plans_for_phones

I wonder if there are any catches?


Have three removed the requirement from their contract for unlimited
SIMs that any usage beyond, if I remember correctly, 30GB must be on the
phone and not on something that's tethered to it?

--

Brian Gregory (in England).

Now why do EE, VF, and O2 consider there is a market for 4G in that area
but 3 seemingly do not*. Also at the moment the only one of the four
having a 4G wi-fi router available (with cable ethernet connection) is
EE - the others just rely upon a mi-fi unit or a USB dongle.

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devi...0&colour=Black

Three seem to offer a router with Ethernet

Brian Gregory wrote:
On 09/12/2018 18:45, Tweed wrote:

If you live in an area with poor DSL speeds, and no access to Virgin cable,
and you have a decent 4G signal from Three it might now be viable to use
them for your domestic broadband. It seems Ofcom have stopped them from
preventing you from putting phone tariff sims in mifi type devices
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...ile-plans.html

Three have an unlimited phone tariff for £27/month

http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/Plans_for_phones

I wonder if there are any catches?


Have three removed the requirement from their contract for unlimited
SIMs that any usage beyond, if I remember correctly, 30GB must be on the
phone and not on something that's tethered to it?


From the ispreview article:
* remove any specific tethering or hotspot allowance for new or upgrading
customers, to allow for unrestricted tethering (within the UK or EU);

On Sun 09/12/2018 19:36, Tweed wrote:

Now why do EE, VF, and O2 consider there is a market for 4G in that area
but 3 seemingly do not*. Also at the moment the only one of the four
having a 4G wi-fi router available (with cable ethernet connection) is
EE - the others just rely upon a mi-fi unit or a USB dongle.

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devi...0&colour=Black

Three seem to offer a router with Ethernet





That looks to be a fairly new addition to me - don't think it was there
when I last looked about 5 weeks ago.

--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

Now why do EE, VF, and O2 consider there is a market for 4G in that area
but 3 seemingly do not*. Also at the moment the only one of the four
having a 4G wi-fi router available (with cable ethernet connection) is
EE - the others just rely upon a mi-fi unit or a USB dongle.

When did you last try Three? I know I sound a bit like their marketing
department (no connection with them - honest) but they seem to have been
investing heavily 4G of late. My own area now has coverage, and if you look
at their coverage checker, where they do have coverage it is largely 4G.
Given the improvement in spectrum efficiency of 4G over 3G, they would be
mad to stay with 3G since they have the least spectrum allocation of any of
the 4 operators.

Woody wrote:
On Sun 09/12/2018 19:36, Tweed wrote:

Now why do EE, VF, and O2 consider there is a market for 4G in that area
but 3 seemingly do not*. Also at the moment the only one of the four
having a 4G wi-fi router available (with cable ethernet connection) is
EE - the others just rely upon a mi-fi unit or a USB dongle.

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devi...0&colour=Black

Three seem to offer a router with Ethernet





That looks to be a fairly new addition to me - don't think it was there
when I last looked about 5 weeks ago.


Seems you can buy a similar model unlocked for £150 on Amazon. The customer
reviews seem positive. And you can rig an external antenna.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Network-R...red/B013P15G4K

On 09/12/2018 19:26, Woody wrote:

I am on O2 using GiffGaff and if I pay £10 per month (or less) I can
legally tether when using my 3Gb per month; 3 permit tethering only on
contract connections, not on PAYG or monthly bundles.

They may say they don't permit it, but I've tethered on my 3 PAYG phone
several times (not for long, admittedly) and the world didn't end.



--
Ria in Aberdeen

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