A few points:
That router can be a problem:Meritez made a good point. Some of the missing bands are important in the UK:
- B1 is used by all 4 UK networks and provides fairly fast speeds (when compared to other slow bands).
- B28 is being used by O2 and Three for 4G. This is not a fast band, but it travels further and networks want to use it in rural areas.
- B32 is used by Vodafone and Three to help with download speeds, but I believe they use it more in urban areas.
- B40 is used by O2 and can be fast. I've seen it in cities, no idea about rural areas.
Not having B1 would be a big deal for me.
This page gives you an idea of what UK networks use:
https://mobilespectrum.org/united_kingdomTesting:Your phone should have good 4G/LTE support. Assuming it's unlocked, you could use it to test speeds around the house with SIMs from all networks you can. Use the phone itself to run the tests so you don't have to worry about the problem being between your phone and your laptop or something like that. I find apps to be more reliable for speed tests than websites on mobile (I use
Speedtest by Ookla, they also have a site speedtest.net), but pick anything that you trust.
After you know which places are the best for each network (you may be connecting to different cell towers), test the best options with the router you have. If it can't match the speeds, you know the router is not good enough. You can find "okay" 4G/LTE modems on Amazon or Ebay for less than £60. If not new, at least something used or refurbished... it will do the job.
Band support is important and some of the ones missing are needed for good speeds. Networks sometimes also power down some of the bands to save power (at night, for example) and that may result in slower speeds or force the router to use 2G or 3G. I don't know how important not having B1 or B28 is in your area though, it doesn't matter if all you can get is B20, for example...
By the way, you didn't mention EE. In case you're looking for something not long term just for testing, 1pmobile and plusnet mobile have 30 day plans. You won't find cheap EE plans with lots of data though.
Which bands do you use and where is the cell tower you're connected to?I use
Cell Mapper to find this info. Install it, give the permissions it asks for, and the main page shows the frequencies/bands your phone is using.
The app also has a "map" tab that tells you to which cell tower you're connected to based on their community data and the info from your phone's modem. I think you need to have a GPS/location lock for this to happen automatically, so it may not work indoors. For me it works well for known/older cell towers (newer ones take some time/data collection/moving around the area to guess where it is).
You can also use their website (cellmapper.net) to see the data collected by other users. We can't rely 100% on this data, but if someone got 4G on B1 somewhere, then you'll see that at some point someone was getting 4G in that place from a certain cell tower. Even if you don't use their app, the site can be useful.
(If you leave the app running in the background to collect data, it will drain your battery. You don't have to do it, just be aware.)
VoWiFi:I've read that MVNOs on Vodafone's network sometimes take a long time to activate WiFi calling.
When I tested Smarty (Three) and 1p mobile (EE) it was available right away, but on Lebara (Vodafone) it only started working after a week or so. No idea why.
