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[Chunkers]

I enjoy the Explaining Computers youtube channel, you actually warm to his idiosyncratic style quite quickly and technically they always seem spot-on.  in this recent video Christopher Barnett explains his decision to switch to 5G for his home data connection after his ISP basically cut him off!  I thought it was interesting as he explains his hardware and does some testing, I was shocked at how good it is, and especially how low the latency is.

Considering this I would be tempted myself, if it wasn't for the absolutely tragic mobile network here, I literally have to stand outside my house to have a reasonable mobile conversation and I can't get 4G inside the house but it seemed relevant to people here if you haven't seen it :

https://youtu.be/8R_CpAE_a1Y?si=1822TXMmqP5oIdcU

[roseway]

I agree with you, the guy is actually comprehensible and doesn't gabble. And like you, I don't have a good enough mobile signal to make use of this suggestion.

[HPsauce]

What he didn't say, presumably because he has an international audience, what 5G service package he chose, do people here have any experience or recommendations for supplier/contracts?
We don't have 5G (yet?) where I live but 4G outside (O2 mainly) is as fast as my FTTC broadband around 50mbps; indoors it's somewhat variable and notably slower.
I think EE now have 5G in our area, but not Three, O2 or Vodafone.

[Chunkers]

What he didn't say, presumably because he has an international audience, what 5G service package he chose, do people here have any experience or recommendations for supplier/contracts?
We don't have 5G (yet?) where I live but 4G outside (O2 mainly) is as fast as my FTTC broadband around 50mbps; indoors it's somewhat variable and notably slower.
I think EE now have 5G in our area, but not Three, O2 or Vodafone.

In the video text description he has put a bit more detail on BT / Openreach here is an excerpt : "My new solution is based on a 24 month SIM-only contract from Three, which provides unlimited 5G broadband for £16.00 a month. This deal was only available as I added an additional SIM on an existing Three account. The price for this contact for a new customer is £21.00 a month."

It seems like he has been deliberately very restrained about his experience with ISP (BT) and Openreach's terrible service, look like he just using a standard data-only SIM package, as you say he probably has an international audience who would not be interested.

Its pretty shocking that they literally just disconnected him, he has quite a large following on Youtube - a pretty dumb move

I mean 400 / 40 connection for £16pm is pretty damn good, I pay double that for 80 /10 (ish)

Chunks

[Alex Atkin UK]

My personal experience has been Three is the fastest, sometimes it will even surpass my FTTP speed but there is a mast literally a block away and the next nearest mast isn't very far either.


Vodafone is puzzling, when they upgraded my area to 5G the performance remained identical to on 4G.  It seems it may be throttled as I got a burst to 400Mbit before it reduced to 190.  That mast is only slightly further away than the Three one (across a dual carriageway) and it performs no better if I go outside for clear line of sight.


That said, I did try using Three as my main ISP some time ago and I found it performed inconsistently for normal web browsing.  Still, its excellent for the price.

[kitz]

I may be remembering wrong, didn't max dabble with this last year,  but he ran into problems due to being used as a main connection, or perhaps the amount he downloaded?
I suspect that quite a large portion of Max's downloads were for speedtests.

Vodafone is puzzling, when they upgraded my area to 5G

According to their coverage, this area is green for 5G but I only seem to be able to connect to 4G service from them. 
Speedtests are 179-185Mbps. Latency 24-37ms

[roseway]

The real life performance which I get here is a lot worse than the coverage charts suggest, and I'm sure that the reason is topographical. I live in a small area surrounded by higher ground, and I have no line of sight view of any mobile masts. Other people in the same postcode complain of the same issue. Fortunately we have good FTTC connections and can use WiFi Calling to supplement the poor mobile signal.

[Chrysalis]

I am someone who prefers a wall of text (as evident in the thread I made about 1980 internet), I do feel youtubers just take too long to explain stuff, but I will give one of videos a chance, when I find time to watch it, I usually cant dedicate more than a minute or two due to my attention deficit.  Assuming its about 5g vs wired internet.

My experience is 4G used to be faster than 5G.

On EE I could hit comfortable 3 digits download, and high double digits upload.

Then then rolled out 5G in the area and 4G speeds nose dived.  Read about some robbing pete to pay paul they did with the frequencies and starts to make some sense I guess, although people tried to point out to me my experience still shouldnt be the case, so I now assume my phone is not compatible with the tech EE are using for the sharing mechanism they are using, if I enable 5G download performance recovers with the caveat of really bad battery drain, however upload now looks like its permanently capped at a lower rate, with the pre 5G performance now distant history.

If I was in a DSL only area, and the signal was reliable, low congested area, and unlimited (which isnt true unlimited on mobile broadband), I would consider it.  Although is reports the cell kit, gets put into low power modes over night in some areas which reduces performance over night.

4G was good enough for mass use in my opinion (on EE which to be fair was the only good 4G provider), they just needed to put it everywhere good coverage, and supply adequate backhaul, the problem now is when a new gen is rolled out, phones will keep needing to be upgraded as they downgrade the old gen when the new one is rolled out.

[Alex Atkin UK]

4G was good enough for mass use in my opinion (on EE which to be fair was the only good 4G provider), they just needed to put it everywhere good coverage, and supply adequate backhaul, the problem now is when a new gen is rolled out, phones will keep needing to be upgraded as they downgrade the old gen when the new one is rolled out.

Its a fair point, but as technology moves forward it gets better and better at covering larger areas more reliably using less energy.  So naturally the networks also want to move on.

Sadly the actual environmental cost never factors into these things, why its still cheaper to ship products between multiple countries travelling half way around the planet - than it is to do it all locally.

I will say though that personally I'm finding 5G is a lot more reliable, although I've not had the chance to travel since having 5G to properly test it.