Difference between Three Home-Fi and unlimited

Tempted to sign up for a 4g deal to replace my ADSL - three seem to be the only provider providing unlimited data. You can sign up to a Home-Fi deal which includes a router for £22 a month on a 24 month contract, but three also offer an unlimited data offer for £26 a month on a 30 day contract. As i'm not convinced i'd want to stay with the service for the full 24 months, and I think there are better routers available than the one that comes with the home fi deal, id be tempted to sign up for the 30 day contract and buy my own router - but would this give an equivalent service? Are there any practical differences between the unlimited data sims and the home-fi in terms of backhaul connectivity / traffic shaping etc, or would using this be exactly the same as home-fi?

I was on the Home-Fi product for over a year and then changed to the Unlimited SIM as at that time the Home-Fi was £28/mnth

I have now been running the unlimited SIM for about 8 months and have not noticed any difference in speed.

I can second that - I had Home-Fi for a year (£30pm then), then switched to the AYCE SIM for £20pm (Black Friday 12 month deal) and there is no detectable difference in data speed - I'm using a Mikrotik SXT LTE Kit

The AYCE SIM is still available at £20pm on a 24-month contract. It keeps reappearing. I wonder if the OP hasn't seen it? It can be had on a 12-month term for £22pm, or monthly contract at £26.

I have both the SIM at £20 (the Black Friday deal which IIRC is a 12-month term) and the £22 HomeFi on a 24-month term. (That too can be had on a 12-month term at £27pm but with a £29 upfront charge). I can't detect any performance difference.

The big "technical" difference is that the pure SIM is a "phone" one giving unlimited minutes and text as well, and operating in that full mode even when tethered either as a hotspot to by laptops and iPad, or by USB into my ASUS router. However AIUI the HomeFi SIM is the 100GB data only(?) one with a "free" addon to unlimited.

There is a performance difference of course between the phone acting by or for itself and when used as a hotspot. By itself I can see over 70/17Mbps on speedtest.net. As a hotspot the clients get the same lower speeds as they get via the HomeFi, as does the phone if I let it connect to that as a client. (Saves battery when at home).

(Edit: I suppose I should have addressed this to the OP. Oops!)

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 02-Jun-19 14:31:47)

As well as my post about the comparative products, I suggest getting a Three £1 3-2-1 SIM from a papershop and loading £5 or £10 onto it, and seeing what speeds your phone gets from Three using it. Bear in mind location in the house and orientation can make a difference.

Or get one or more of the Three data SIMs which come with 200 MB free data per month from here. Will take more than a couple of days, but should save you a few bob if only testing.

I'm just thinking about replacing my phone line and FTTC - which is gradually getting slower and slower over the years - with a Three £20 a month unlimited deal.
I have an EE sim with a monthly allowance of 40GB, which I'd like to get rid of as well. I'd be be saving a fair bit of money each month.
The main snag seems to be not having a fixed, public IP address. In theory, 3internet gives that, but I'm told only on 3G, not on 4G - and the best speeds seem to be on 4G.
And that's the other snag: put my EE sim into the router and I get about 40MB/sec up and down. Put a 3 sim in and it is more like 29MB/sec down at best, often less, depending on how far out of the window I hold the router. That's slower than the FTTC.
So I need to consider whether I really need the fixed IP or public IP and DDNS.

In reply to a post by j0el:

Or get one or more of the Three data SIMs which come with 200 MB free data per month from here. Will take more than a couple of days, but should save you a few bob if only testing.

Looks like it comes pre-loaded with 1GB as well! Either that's new or I've been blind. Plenty for a bit of speed testing.

Sadly not. It doesn't come with 1GB preloaded . It says you can purchase a preloaded SIM if you want more data:
"Why not purchase a Data Reward SIM with 1 GB preloaded?"

All that is included is 200MB:
"Register to receive 200MB free data each month and use it to get online abroad at no extra cost in our 71 Go Roam destinations."

Yes. I read that, then somehow thought that you had said "buy" in your previous post, where you actually said "get". It does save £1 though on my papershop + £10. Heh! And you get the 200MB.

Though papershop + £5 is cheaper.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 02-Jun-19 18:32:58)

In reply to a post by hoopla:

The main snag seems to be not having a fixed, public IP address. In theory, 3internet gives that, but I'm told only on 3G, not on 4G - and the best speeds seem to be on 4G.

The 3internet definitely gives you a public IP address with no NAT on 4G. It isn't fixed though, it will change next time you reconnect the 4G connection.

It changes frequently on my HomeFi, which I haven't touched for weeks. IIRC it also changes frequently on my (different connection) phone.

I'm considering DDNS for the MiFi just to get a working BQM. For the phone I don't really care, as of course it moves around with me. Unless later I get really geeky and want to know how the latency varies with location.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 02-Jun-19 22:28:27)

Yes, it looks like I am getting a public IP on 4G. Not sure how often it changes. I'll have to wait untill I stop messing with the config to get a steady signal
The router only has a limited range of DDNS service settings, so I may have to use no-ip, which isn't widely praised.

I use the Mikrotik DDNS, my BQM is rock solid.

I use a Three AYCE SIM along with a £10pm L2TP connection from AAISP - that gives me static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Other VPN solutions that provide a static adress are available.

I experimented with AAISP's L2TP for static IP addresses, it worked well enough. In the end though I settled on a $5 a month Linode VM and installed OpenVPN. Cheaper than the AAISP option, it is encrypted and I can also use the VM for other stuff if I want to.

I used this script to make the OpenVPN install fairly painless (as long as you are reasonably comfortable with command line stuff).

In reply to a post by j0el:

Or get one or more of the Three data SIMs which come with 200 MB free data per month from here. Will take more than a couple of days, but should save you a few bob if only testing.

Thanks for that, that's brilliant and obviously the best way to get a 3 PAYG SIM card. I've got one and ordered another.

In reply to a post by hoopla:

I'm just thinking about replacing my phone line and FTTC - which is gradually getting slower and slower over the years - with a Three £20 a month unlimited deal.
[snip]
The main snag seems to be not having a fixed, public IP address. In theory, 3internet gives that, but I'm told only on 3G, not on 4G - and the best speeds seem to be on 4G.
[snip]
And that's the other snag: put my EE sim into the router and I get about 40MB/sec up and down. Put a 3 sim in and it is more like 29MB/sec down at best, often less, depending on how far out of the window I hold the router. That's slower than the FTTC.
So I need to consider whether I really need the fixed IP or public IP and DDNS.

Well, a month or so later the deed is done.
After careful positioning of the antenna to point at the best base (there are several with clear line of sight) I'm mostly getting speeds well in excess io the FTTC down speeds, and it is always much faster upwards.
The ping is much worse, but I never play games, so that isn't so important.
FTP transfers seem less snappy, but not really what you'd call slow.
The IP address does change from time to time, but no-ip seems to cope with it well, and everything works as it did before.
I had wasted some time trying to make bridge mode work, which proved to be neither possible nor necessary.
Now I'm saving £35 per month and getting faster speeds.