Cotswold Wireless 4G

I am thinking of signing up to this 4G tariff. Is anyone on it that is able to give an honest review.
I just spoke to their support and told them that i use about 80Gb a month. I thought i used an average of 90Gb, but i just checked the bt website and its 80Gb. Anyway, they said i come in between their standard & advanced tariff's which cost £25 & £30 a month.

Is it their own network or are they reselling EE?

Didn't know anyone other than the mobile network operators and UK Broadband had licenses for 4G LTE. Is it really 4G or just fixed wireless?

They're probably reselling UK Broadband's service in Swindon.

Along with the four mobile networks (EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three), all of whom won some spectrum in the recent 4G auction and all of whom hold other spectrum that they can repurpose to 4G should they choose, two further companies have 4G licenses. There's "Niche Spectrum Ventures" (a BT Group company) who won paired and unpaired 2.6GHz allocations in the 4G mobile auction, who I understood were going to use their spectrum to offer data services, also there's UK Broadband, who hold a huge chunk of spectrum in the 3.5-3.7GHz region.

I'm unsure if I'll be tying my hands behind my back & will be unable to use the service due to going over their limits during business hours. The kids love YouTube & the mrs also like to download a bit if catchup tv, but the don't really like planning to use it like a schedule. I guess the only way around this would be to pay for the premium tariff at just under £50 a month. I was kinda hoping to be paying around the £30 mark.

Additionally I love being able to back up all my hd videos on google plus. This'll also take me over the 350mb an hour limit. Is it worth having faster speeds and not being able to use it, or staying on 4Mb.

I guess it depends on how strict they are. It's a shame they do not offer a 14 day money back guarantee. Another reseller uknow does, but I will not be able to use their service as they don't provide an external aerial which I would require.

"As might be expected, we are most concerned about usage during the busiest period on our network and as a guide we might expect normal usage during that busy period to be below the following.

Package Busy Period Usage
LTE Lite 50MB per/hour
LTE Standard 150MB per/hour
LTE Advanced 350MB per/hour
LTE Premium 1000MB per/hour

These are NOT intended to be hard limits but if a user were to regularly exceed limits such as these then we may have to take appropriate action as defined above and within our AUP (Acceptable Use Policy). On the other hand if such usage were to be exceeded, even regularly, during network quiet periods we wouldnt expect to have to take any further action. The concept is for fairness to our customers and not to be unnecessarily punitive. An example of a network quiet time would be either very late at night or before 8am. Conversely, below is our expectation of usage for times outside our network busy periods."

In reply to a post by Mitchy_mitch:

It's a shame they do not offer a 14 day money back guarantee. Another reseller uknow does, but I will not be able to use their service as they don't provide an external aerial which I would require.

My understanding is that uknow are UK Broadband's in-house ISP. As such, I'd expect them to have access to all the equipment options available. Maybe the issue is that they are unable to give a money-back guarantee on an external option because of the installation costs involved.

It may be worth talking to uknow to see if you can do some sort of deal. Would the service work temporarily at your location without an external antenna? If so, you may be able to do a deal to have a trial period with a money-back guarantee using temporary equipment, with a proper outdoor antenna installation to follow if you decide to keep the service.


Unfortunately, the limited and shared resources of certain systems mean there have to be limits imposed on the users to ensure quality of service. You only need read the complaints about Virgin Media cable in some areas and the recent performance of Tooway satellite to see the difficulties caused when too many users are fighting for the limited bandwidth available.

In reply to a post by 5km:

Didn't know anyone other than the mobile network operators and UK Broadband had licenses for 4G LTE. Is it really 4G or just fixed wireless?

Is there a restriction on using LTE on 5.8 GHz unlicensed spectrum ?

Don't think so but I've never heard of LTE kit that supports 5.8Ghz ... probably because 5.8Ghz would be useless for mobile.

LTE is only just catching up with what fixed wireless can do and has been doing for 3+ years.

Huawei Distributed eNode B (DBS3900) can support multiple frequency bands from 700Mhz
to 5.8GHz. Especially, Huawei is the only vendor to offer 5.8GHz LTE solution.

Nice but I bet it is damn expensive compared to Ubiquiti AirMax which manages speeds that LTE is only just starting to reach now.

maybe, but at least it's a standard.

Point taken. I wonder if ubnt's revolutionary announcement will be LTE kit for fixed access and mobile access. Although that wouldn't be revolutionary. We'll just have to see what they announce on the 16th.

So today it was installed. I am getting 26 down 3 up.
I saw them get 30 down on a speedtest, but i am not currently getting it. 26 is currently fine for me. I am happier with the upload though.

I will just use it the same way that i use my current BT connection and see if i get notified if i need to upgrade my package.

It came with an external aerial and the Huawei LTE CPE B222s-42 wireless router.
To keep my current dd-wrt router, i just needed to enable the DMZ on the new router.

Now, i need to enter into the world of reading up on voip providers. If anyone has some good reviews on voip providers, i would be happy to hear.
Thanks

Which speed test?

Some speed tests and technologies can create burst speeds that are faster for very short periods of time.

The last one was using yours.
The installers used a different one. I cannot remember the name of it now.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

Considering i was getting 4.5 down and about 0.4 up, it is currently looking good.

Edited by deleted (Fri 18-Oct-13 21:59:28)

I asked the guys who did the installation who they use for their own voip, and by the sound of things, they may be dropping their own voip product soon.

The phone issue is probably the biggest problem that i have at the moment. The Mrs doesn't really use a pc, but she uses a phone like it is an intercom. I have been reading over in the voip threads about what products they are using.

Basically i need a corded phone for the mrs. It'll probably be power over ethernet. Otherwise i will try and get a landline number to ring on our mobiles, but a corded phone would be best for the mrs.

Decisions Decisions.

The fixed speed for the tbbx1 suggests a possible rwin issue. As for high speed on other test see how httpx6 is wandering around. Means tests may give varying results

So should the Avg TBB speed be pretty much the same as the x6 http speed. Or is there always a big difference. Regarding rwin, i have not changed this for years, and never on a mac.

If on a mac double check speed with chrome due to some possible flash oddities

Yes the two averages should the same and a nice horizontal line. Most other testers dont show the lines so its not obvious if things are variable

All tests have used chrome. I have just carried out another test, here it is below.

The lines are not flatlining but i am not complaining. Maybe this is normal for 4g wireless.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

It is noticeably better than what i had (at the moment it is anyway)

That's impressive.

So the external antenna what is that like? Got a pic?

Does it have a dual cable from the antenna for horizontal and vertical or just a single cable for one polarisation?

Do you know how far you are from the mast?

The antenna is about 8-10" square

The guys who installed it told me there was 5 masts in the local area. They told me roughly where two of them were located. I just used google maps to find the distance as the crow flies, and one mast was 1.57 miles away, the other was 2.4 miles away.

They were unable to receive a signal from my local mast, probably due to the line of sight. My aerial is definitely pointing to the direction of the mast that is 2.4 miles away.

There is only one cable connected. I just went outside to take a pic for you and i noticed that the cable is just laying on the roof. I wont complain, but may need to if it gets blown off. Also the aerial is attached to the tv aerial. T&K brackets would have been better, but again, it works.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/801/wc97.png/

I am currently impressed. I just need to be a bit more careful with my downloads. As long as i download stuff overnight, i am hoping that i will be ok on my current package. I need to be a bit careful during business hours.

Heres a screenshot of the huawei router if anyone is interested.
I am only using it to receive the signal, i have it dmz'd to a dd-wrt router.

http://imageshack.us/f/513/3u3l.png/

Yeah that cable run could have been done better. There might be enough slack to take it off the tiles and tack to the wall.