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[cancunia]

I live in a rural area, near to Cadwell Park in Lincs, with long line ADSL broadband and have often wondered about 4G broadband as an  alternative for cost / speed. A friend gave me a CAT4 4G router to try and I got hold of some SIMs while the prices for Lyca & Lebara were at 1p / month. Due to problems with WiFi calling / VoWiFi on my Pixel 4 phone I also had to switch to ID Mobile so over the past month I've had 3 SIMS to try on 3 networks, the results are quite different between the networks and to some extent go against the results I've seen published elsewhere.
I used the Google (Measurement Labs) speed test as it's what I use on my ADSL.
So far as I know, my 4G signal comes from the masts at Cadwell Park as there are no others in the area. The router was placed near to an upstairs window where the signal is strongest.

Lebara (Vodafone) - Odd behaviour, starts at 6M then rapidly drops to 1M.
ID-Mobile (Three) - 5M - perhaps this was 3G?
Lyca (O2) - 28M

[meritez]

What 4g router have you been given?

[cancunia]

What 4g router have you been given?

It's a Proroute GEM420 which is a rebadged AMIT 761

[meritez]

[cancunia]

Yes, it's an old eol router and the firmware is not the factory original but everything else works.
Still odd that I could not get VoWiFi to work with the Lyca SIM in the router for either ID or VF, but could get it to work on VF with the ID-Moble SIM in the router.
If I had a more modern router, I'd try VoWiFi via the Lyca SIM again, maybe someone else on here already has?

[celso]

[cancunia]

I did some more testing using my phone at home and also went on a quick trip in my car to a couple of local towers.
My phone with an ID Mobile (Three) SIM, reports that the 4G signal at home is only on Band 20.
With a full 4G signal on my phone, I still only get about 5-6M download speeds, much the same as with the 4G router.
I stopped at Cadwell Park where there are some mobile phone masts. No 4G signal on Three, but HSPA+ with very good download speeds of about 29M and uploads at about 6M.

Based on the above, and my original tests, the Three coverage in my part of the Wolds is less than stellar. I expect that it improves in some of the nearby towns on different masts but that's academic. Interesting that there appears to be no 4G from Three at Cadwell, but the planning applications that I looked at online did not show anything from Three so I'm guessing that they share a mast, and I'm guessing that my good Lyca (O2) signal comes from there too.

Unfortunately, it looks like my basic 4G router cannot be limited to 3G so I can't see if HSPA+ would be better.

[cancunia]

A quick update on the above.
I tested the router again with the ID-Mobile SIM and found the info page that tells me if the connection is 3G or 4G. Today's Speed Test came out at 8M down & 1M up. This is over 3G HSDPA+ according to the router info page. That's way above my 3-4M ADSL.

[celso]

[cancunia]

Thanks for the Cellmapper info, yes it's Cadwell Pk in Lincs.

EE looks like a good option but not tested so far as there's no cheap n easy way to do that. I did contact 1p mobile about it but will have to pay for the data used. O2 was also a good option.
Three still looks better than my ADSL both in terms of speed & cost, hopefully they'll upgrade the Cadwell infrastructure at some point soon.

[celso]

[Alex Atkin UK]

In my experience mobile broadband can be good for speed but is vastly less reliable than a fixed line.

[cancunia]

In my experience mobile broadband can be good for speed but is vastly less reliable than a fixed line.

Yes, that's what I'm expecting too. As my mobile data will be coming from a racetrack, it will be interesting to see what happens to the service when there are big events. Once my ADSL contract ends, I'll get a monthly rolling data SIM, if it becomes unusable, I'll go back to ADSL.
There's also a local wireless broadband service from Quickline which is about the same cost as ADSL so that's a possibility too but I'll explore the Mobile BBand first.

[celso]

Right now I have FTTC and haven't switched to 5G because it's not as stable. I don't mind the speed fluctuations, but latency spikes are annoying. FTTC, while 3x slower, is more consistent. On the other hand, my experience with ADSL was bad and if I had 4G back then, I'd take it.

By the way, not every network is equal when it comes to stability. Here in London I see more latency spikes on Three than I do on EE, for example. Vodafone used to be between the two.

Something to keep in mind in your case cancunia, is that B20 is useful for base coverage and better indoor signal, not performance. If you get your signal from a B20-only far away site that gets busy from time to time, the experience won't be as good as the alternative near you with B3.

[Alex Atkin UK]

One of the problems I'm seeing, possibly due to the router, as Three sometimes stops working entirely until I toggle data off and on again.  That's in addition to the latency spikes.

Vodafone 4G seemed a lot more stable (it should be, the mast is practically on my doorstep) but even that went through a period where it was unreliable.

EE is too expensive.  But of course this was comparing to VDSL not ADSL, although my ADSL was pretty stable last I had it, just not very fast.