Smarty vs. IDMobile

I got my hands on a ZTE MF286D and want to try it on the Three network without locking myself into a 12 month contract not knowing how good/bad the coverage is in my area.

Hence I am considering to get a Smarty or IDMobile SIM on a one month contract and see how I get on.

Any recommendations on which one to chose?

Thanks

I have used both ID and Three on two separate contracts for about 6-8 months and in my experience the Three contract far outperforms ID. I would be cautious about using an ID sim as a guide as personally I think ID is a watered down product. Don't three still offer a free SIM to trial their network?

Thanks, that's useful to know. In the meantime, I splashed out £10 on an IDMobile PAYG SIM (6GB) and started trying it out.

I noticed that speeds vary quite a bit during the day (28.5 Mb/s Down, 16.6 Mb/s up right now), but given that we are in a rural location and -83dBm signal strength this is quite impressive. So, at least the Three network coverage seems to be decent around here.

That's not bad at all for ID. I find in pretty poor in our rural location (sub 5mbit), whereas Three is north of 50mbit in the same area on 4G.

Out of curiousity, what does the Three coverage checker say for your area? For ours it shows no 4G/5G coverage for approx 4 miles (ie to the nearest built up area) yet we still get a good 4G signal and sometimes even a 5G signal.

The coverage checker shows Outdoor and indoor on our side of the road, Outdoor only for my neighbour opposite, so it is somewhat patchy.

The router ZTE MF286D sits in the attic and I carefully positioned it to get -84dBm. Unfortunately, you can't see which band it is using.

I assume that the cell is not too busy (will check again in the evening). If there is such a vast difference between ID and Three, they must be setting different QoS for ID and Three.

Strangely, the default APN setting is 3internet rather than "id". Maybe, that's what is set in the router, need to check the SIM card when I insert it in my phone.

Don't forget that the OP is not looking at Three itself. Only two virtual services based on it.

@pluralist: well, eventually considering to move to Three (mainly to avoid CGNAT).

I can see from your signature "ZTE MF286D router giving about 113/20Mbps". What is the signal strength in your location? Curious to know whether the speed I am getting is limited by signal strength here or due to using IDMobile instead of Three

Can't be sure of which mast I'm on with the router, but I haven't really tried to find out. Re the stats I can get on my phone those aren't any use as it's a far higher spec than the router. Though the router shows all 5 bars.

I'll see what I can find out tomorrow.

Bear in mind you can get a Three SIM from most newsagents for 99p and put a bit of data on, or Three will send you one for free.

Also all Three SIMs are 5G ready and work at no extra cost. In a 5G area I get silly multi-stream speeds of 400Mbps+. Not always correspondingly high upstream, which of course are single-stream and dependent on device power. Highest was 80Mbps standing by a mast LOL.

Edited by pluralist (Wed 17-Nov-21 20:05:02)

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Bear in mind you can get a Three SIM from most newsagents for 99p and put a bit of data on, or Three will send you one for free.

Thanks for the info, turns out that the Three PAYG for £10 is even better value than IDMobile. So, when the 30 days are up on the IDMobile SIM, I will get one from Three.

No 5G where we live, and after putting up with ADSL at 5-6 Mb/s down and max. 700 kb/s up, anything over 10 Mb/s is superfast for me so 4G or 4G+ will be great.

In reply to a post by essex_man:

Curious to know whether the speed I am getting is limited by signal strength
here or due to using IDMobile instead of Three

You have strength and capacity. Your phone or router/modem box will report a strength for the currently selected channel, but Three masts have various configurations. Depending how populated your town / village / city is.

e.g. you could be picking up a signal from a Three mast that is using Band 3 only (1800 mhz) and Three has 15 Mhz of capacity and you could be the only user and see very high speeds.

Or you could be picking up a signal from a Three mast that has Band 3 (15Mhz), Band 1 (10 Mhz) , Band 32 (20 Mhz) , Band 28 (10Mhz) and have capacity of 55 Mhz but have a LOT of users downloading the internet all the time so you get slow speeds.

Radio communications is hard to predict without a lot more technical info.