Has anyone switched from fibre to 5G home broadband?

I'm thinking of doing it, I could save £20 a month for 6 months, then £10 a month thereafter and get much faster speeds on Three in my location, compared to getting 48Mb on fibre here. I still will use my home phone though for calls sometimes. Can anyone share their experience so far, thanks.

Edited by Fenris (Thu 01-Sep-22 12:18:59)

You'd want to be sure that you really do get the speeds you expect on 5G during the peak evening streaming hours. I had to abandon first Three and then EE because the evenings speeds were terrible.

That was on 4G rather than 5G though.

Yes - I took out Three 5G home broadband in Jan 2021 and it has been faultless for us.
We get 600-800 Mb down and 50Mb up.
Much better than the 35/7 of our VDSL connection.

Speed Test

Depends, If your a online/multiplayer gamer then defiantly a no as the latency and jitter is very bad, Pings to London anything between 20-60ms so if you just web browsing and streaming then no issues.

If your looking into networks such as 3/O2/EE etc i would advise to get a pay and go SIM and try out there networks first to see what gives the best before getting into a 12/18/24month contract and then regretting it - Also try looking into Voxi https://www.voxi.co.uk/sim-only-plans what uses the Vodafone network, Most plans will do Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Youtube/Netflix without any of your data allowance.

Edited by francisuk25 (Thu 01-Sep-22 23:04:13)

I used to have 2x VDSL connections here, speeds here on VDSL are around 33/7.

12 Months ago I ditched one of them and signed up to three 5G. With that I'm typically getting speeds of 200/50, sometimes more. I use VoIP at home and via the 5G it's a bit variable so it wouldn't work out for me to only have 5G.
However for general browsing / streaming etc. it's been pretty good. It does drop out more often but is often back pretty quickly. During some maintenance 5G was off for some hours during which 4G worked. It's cheaper and faster than what I had before but of course latency is a bit worse.

I think this kind of thing is very dependent on location. I have Three 5G as the building only has a 9Mb ADSL connection (or whatever it is). Ironically enough this is probably the average speed of my 5G connection.

We're within range of the Three 5G tower but it is pretty much permanently congested so the connection varies between bad and non-existent (this is E15 Stratford). We don't even get 5G the majority of the time as the signal is so weak (apparently due to the mast overcrowding etc). Currently have an ongoing complaint at the Ombudsman about this and we are hassling/begging the landlord to get fibre installed. I'm not sure what your rights are with 5G as they don't appear to publish guaranteed minimum/average speeds, presumably due to the service being so dependent on location etc. - does anyone have any insights on the legalities of this?

When it works it's fine (8.8.8.8 ping hovers around 15ms which is lower than wired connections I've had before now) and £27 a month is good value for what *could* be 250Mb+ speeds. But then my connection regularly ping spikes for hours at a time, I've had it go as high as 100s recently. Also the modem/router isn't great as in it didn't seem to handle traffic very efficiently and had poor WiFi range. My Three hub (H122-373, running latest firmware) has Bridge Mode so using an external router and running CAKE seems to have mitigated both of these issues to the extent possible.

EE's 5G was also very poor - I like the other commenter's suggestion of trying other networks' PAYG SIM offerings to assess signal stability. Also if you buy the package online you can cancel a contract for no reason for 14 days but I am pretty sure this doesn't apply if you buy in-store. You should be able to take the router with you when you go to hotels etc as well which is pretty nifty although I’ve never done it.

I don't think my connection is very representative but I can't imagine my situation ever occurring with fibre, personally I would never choose 5G over fibre after my experiences. YMMV!

In reply to a post by dannylonglegs98:

I think this kind of thing is very dependent on location. I have Three 5G as the building only has a 9Mb ADSL connection (or whatever it is). Ironically enough this is probably the average speed of my 5G connection.

I live close to a mobile cell site mast that has both EE and Three on, neither has 5G, and the Three site manages 40 Mbps, and the EE site manages 200 Mbps on 4G.

My friends across town are close to one of the new Three 5G streetworks poles, such as the taller one in this picture, and can get 700 or 800 Mbps.

So tesitng is vital!

I am seeing more and more blogs and videos covering the 5G issues which are mainly centred around the tiny performance radius.

I would test it contract free first before committing.

4G on the other hand based on personal experience worked pretty well for me performance wise 120 down and about 70 up even in the evenings. This was also indoor performance with phone as the modem.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

...
This was also indoor performance with phone as the modem.

Modem/router in fact. (I'm sure you know but not all will realise). Not only that but all its functions remain available.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I am seeing more and more blogs and videos covering the 5G issues which are mainly centred around the tiny performance radius. I would test it contract free first before committing.

Is that UK or US biased videos? The US has some different deployments of the 5G NR technology that we don't have.

In the UK a lot of 5G at the moment is on the 3.5 to 3.8 GHz spectrum which means you need to be quite close to the mast. Three for example has been adding a lot of their new Phase 7 or Phase 8 monopole masts to add this coverage in built up areas. If you are close, and the usage is low, you can see insane speeds (reports of 800 Mbps to 1.2 Gbps).

The operators are gradually adding 5G to lower frequencies, Vodafone in London has a sharing scheme with 4G on the 2100 MHz spectrum, known as DSS, as one example. This shares the spectrum with the two different transmissions.

4G on the other hand based on personal experience worked pretty well for me performance wise 120 down and about 70 up even in the evenings. This was also indoor performance with phone as the modem.

I've seen 400 Mbps on 4G on EE in some areas, but the average is a lot lower given number of users, 40 to 50 Mbps download and 15 to 25 Mbps upload would be more average figures.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Modem/router in fact. (I'm sure you know but not all will realise). Not only that but all its functions remain available.

Many Androids let you leave them on as WiFi hotspots, not all Androids. I've used in the past some that auto disable the WiFi hotspot when the WiFi devices disconnect (e.g. rebooting laptop). iPhones generally disable the hotspot when client Wifi devices disconnect.

They're designed for occasional use, and the disabling is to save battery. (even if plugged in).

Longer term usage should look at dedicated boxes, from the likes of the Expensive Netgear M1 / M2 range which are portable, through to the freestanding routers from D-Link, Huawei and others.

Indeed, using the phone as a hotspot cum modem/router slams the battery. I'm not sure if either of mine could be provide modem supply, (originally Huawei, now OnePlus).

Both give hotspot, and IIRC ethernet if connected to my laptop for simultaneous charging. I ended up preferring independent charging. Now having the mobile broadband router is of course far preferable to using the phone for all devices to connect.

Surely only older phones don't do hotspots now?

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Surely only older phones don't do hotspots now?

It can be restricted by the SIM and the mobile operator by service plan. This happens a lot in the US, and used to happen in the UK but may come back depending on Ofcom's decisions post brexit.

Thanks . I didn't know that.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Thanks . I didn't know that.

On Apple phones its called the "carrier bundle" as the US calls the mobile operators "carriers". On Android its something like "carrier service configuration" or "carrier bundle" depending on version... but basically:

Phone recognises the operator code (MCC/MNC) and configures the phone based on the cached table for connectivity (e.g. APN, any bookmarks in browser, and often voicemail number). Then the advanced settings get queried, and often looked up on a mobile operator database.... In the past even with "unlimited data" service you'd find you had to pay another $10 a month for "mobile hotspot" to be actvated.

The EU push for Net Neutrality solved all this in the UK, but it depends how the UK diverges from EU directives and law in the coming months and years.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2022/ofcom-prop...

In the past Ofcom had to rule against Three due to their activities, more here:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/bulletin...

I think the last one I watched the guy is a UK dude but not sure.

I know in my city 4g is pretty much blanket coverage indoor and out, but the 5g coverage by comparison looks horrid, like its pre release or something with just a few tiny circles of coverage.

My phone if I let it do its thing, will cycle between 4g and 5g constantly and is effectively broken in auto mode, but luckily can force it to 4g mode.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I think the last one I watched the guy is a UK dude but not sure.

This guy is one of my best sources, although his real job has kept him a bit busy in the last two years (mobile comms is his hobby like most of us!). https://www.youtube.com/user/scivids1999

I know in my city 4g is pretty much blanket coverage indoor and out, but the 5g coverage by comparison looks horrid, like its pre release or something with just a few tiny circles of coverage.

Pretty common in the UK today. In my small town we have 2 Three masts and more on planning applications and if you are close to these (and on Three) you get insane speeds, but further away the legacy Three 4G network gives 50 Mbps. On EE and Vodafone however only 4G but ranges from 60 Mbps upto 400 Mbps. O2 has been dire here, but is better in neighbouring towns.

My phone if I let it do its thing, will cycle between 4g and 5g constantly and is effectively broken in auto mode, but luckily can force it to 4g mode.

This is normal, the phone ‘camps’ when idle on 4G, and only engages 5G when transmitting or receiving. This won’t change until “standalone architecture” launches in the UK.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Modem/router in fact. (I'm sure you know but not all will realise). Not only that but all its functions remain available.

With my Android phone it is not easy to alter any of the router settings such as its IP address etc!

Ok interesting to know on the idle state, but I dont think thats quite what was happening, I have it changing e.g. in middle of a speedtest and the signal is really weak on 5g, I am not officially in the coverage but getting a tiny spec of signal. The throughput in 5g mode is single digits, compared to 120 plus on 4g.

If I lived where you are I’d probably disable 5G until more coverage appears.