Best 4g setup?

I’ve been running a B525 router with A VM unlimited sim for about 4 years but since their switch to Vodafone I’ve had to cancel, not without suffering their appalling customer care.
Wondering if I should persevere with the B525 or use an ASUS router and link an android with usb? Anyone got any idea which would be best? I’m quite rural and signal not great and variable

Does that mean you also have landline broadband using the ASUS?

What other mobile provider are you thinking of? That could influence the answer .

No, I gave up my landline 4 years ago as I couldn’t cope with the stream of Openreach engineers failing to fix it 😀
I’ve tried O2 but they are too slow, so just waiting for EE sim to arrive as I know that will work from previous VM experience

In reply to a post by Carvup:

I’m quite rural and signal not great and variable

If you punch your postcode into Cellmapper, and then select a network and tell us one of the eNB numbers, others can have a look around your area without knowing your postcode.

I’d need to register to use that. I’m more concerned to get the right hardware setup. I’ve already tested the various networks 🙂

You don’t need to register to use the website.

If your Android phone is relatively new it will probably have better antennae than the B525. So get a stronger signal. I ran that way for a while, but had to give up that method when I got cloud-linked security cameras. Clearly when I went out with my phone, there was no cloud link.

I would also expect a native EE sim to perform better than a Vodafone or EE-based one from VM, in terms of busy times of day throughput.

Luckily for me, the Three signal here is fine for my needs. (See my sig). To go with EE at the time I did this, over two years ago, would have been far too expensive.

Edit: I'm assuming it's not the Utility Warehouse EE offer.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 17-Feb-21 23:24:33)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I would also expect a native EE sim to perform better than a Vodafone or EE-based one from VM, in terms of busy times of day throughput.

This is load dependent, less likely in a rural area - unless the chosen network hasn't deployed enough capacity.

Thanks all.
Yes I have a fairly new Samsung bought expressly for this so I’ll probably usb it to my Asus router. The B525 has served me well over the last 4 years.
I’ll report back as to wether it’s an improvement on the old EE based VM sim. 👍

In reply to a post by Carvup:

I’ll report back as to wether it’s an improvement on the old EE based VM sim.

It all depends what your local mast is transmitting, and then how many users there are. e.g. EE might have deployed only 20 MHz of spectrum on band 3, but they could have deployed 2 lots of 20 MHz on band 3, and 5 MHz on band 20, and 10 MHz on band 7. The older devices can use any of these but only one at a time. The newer devices can link (aggregate) them together for more consistent service.