If you aren't selling it to the neighbour, one could argue its fine.

One could argue it in debate, but perhaps not a point to take against BT's lawyers in a legal system where the loser pays the winners costs...

It is pretty clear that the term I quoted (from an altnet) contains two restrictions - not for users outside the household nor for commercial purposes.

You could reasonably consider a guest as a member of your household (= a house and its occupants). But this is not the point. The term is restrictive - you shouldn't allow a different household to use it irrespective of who you might rightly or wrongly allow in your own.

BT's term includes a similar dual restriction on who/how
Each service is just for you and your household for personal use (meaning that it should not be used for any trade, business or profession).

(On the face of it that doesn't permit WFH, but I don't think they object to modest use.)

Of course it is up to the user whether they breach their contract and risk any consequences. It seems fashionable these days to ignore national law and international agreements, so why not see if you can get away with it?

In reply to a post by Thinker27:

One could argue it in debate, but perhaps not a point to take against BT's lawyers in a legal system where the loser pays the winners costs...

It is pretty clear that the term I quoted (from an altnet) contains two restrictions - not for users outside the household nor for commercial purposes.

You could reasonably consider a guest as a member of your household (= a house and its occupants). But this is not the point. The term is restrictive - you shouldn't allow a different household to use it irrespective of who you might rightly or wrongly allow in your own.

BT's term includes a similar dual restriction on who/how
Each service is just for you and your household for personal use (meaning that it should not be used for any trade, business or profession).

(On the face of it that doesn't permit WFH, but I don't think they object to modest use.)

Of course it is up to the user whether they breach their contract and risk any consequences. It seems fashionable these days to ignore national law and international agreements, so why not see if you can get away with it?

Just out of interest, I read through the applicable bits of Virgin Media's terms and conditions to see if it was the same, (totally not the first time I have read them) it does seem that if I understood Virgin correctly they sate that working from home is allowed as long as it doesn't impact the income of the user, and doesn't make virgin look bad through a area fault (it says it differently obviously but that's the brief i understood) they basically say, if there's a problem and you can't work its your own problem and not our problem.

I might have read it wrong as I skimmed it, but they don't seem to mention commercial use. I searched for the words, "comercial, work, business" and nothing relevant came up. Anyone know if i did miss a clause?

In reply to a post by mbames:

If you aren't selling it to the neighbour, one could argue its fine.

I guess in theory passing on the ethernet cable, switch or access point would be allowed since its a totally different thing entirely. Since if your neighbour was to have access to a shared file say on your computer which happened to be connected to the ISP's network, then they are accessing the computer not the internet, I'm sure your neighbour would appreciate having access to the shared file which maybe contains information about a street party e.g. for the Queen's Jubilee as preparing for these events is important?
I'm sure you understand that a high speed link such as this is essential for file collaboration.

To be honest the only way a provider will suspect commercial activity is if they notice extremely unusual amounts of traffic and we are talking TB's not GB's. Like back when i first joined virgin I was on 50Mbps and the usage was basically flat out constantly for quite a while since I was on 10 meg before so sorta put off big downloads for a long time, as it basically got a point where my 10 Meg connection was maxed out constantly when people were working from home, in video calls and remote desktop the usage outgrew the connection. I was struggling to load google or websites or do updates in reasonable time.

The upgrade to M100 only took place because we had a lot of guests for a BBQ and needed the bandwidth as there were a couple TV's constantly streaming and the guest network.

The thing is, it wasn't the amount of people that was the problem, I could easily have had 100 users on websites, it was what they were doing.
I mean a 10 people on social media, streaming, uploading, going mad on the network, mainly because they knew that I had faster connections than their 30Mbps FTTC lines and they were purposely trying to make mine struggle, one person just sat there with a constant speedtest open.
I'll be honest and say that I wasn't really bothered because I knew that VIrgin Media didn't care about usage, it didn't affect me much anyway, was too busy trying to stop food burning, the network comes second to the BBQ.

I learnt from this that traffic management on my guest network was needed. Now each guest has to logs in using their email has a max of 30Mbps shared across each device they connect, with bursts of 50Mbps if there is no other traffic. The whole guest VLAN is limited to around 350 Mbps so I can still continue as normal without being affected, by speed testing traffic hogs (one of which will probably see this)


I think you get the idea. But I honestly wouldn't be bothered about it because back when I was on M50 my average monthly usage was 3TB download a month and 1TB UP. I think when the speed doubled the usage didn't really increase much It just condensed in smaller amounts of time allowing devices to be switched off quicker, saving electricity. I will say this year when I was on M100 there were points with days of non stop uploads and downloads so it got unbearable and felt like ADSL. I know full well that I went well over 7TB a few months ago, around 1TB of updates, 100 gigs of speedtests with samknows, video editing used over 4 and so did streaming, at an average of around 25 gigs a day.

I won't go on any longer as I think I have gone slightly off topic but in a nutshell I don't think your ISP will be bothered

Thanks for all the comments.

For the time being we've not renewed the LRS. I've been attempting to get an overview of the neighbours usage but the HH5 restarts quite frequently and/or the line drops and the usage stats seem to get reset.

I may consder putting my SH2 on her line to see if that improves stability. I assume my SH2 is not tied/linked to my service? I think we'll get BT to look at the line / run some tests. I'll perform quiet line tests etc. If the SH2 is linked then I could use my 8800NL R2 for a month or so. However that would mean I'd need to use the SH2 and when I used it a few months ago, it didn't agree with the R7800 router (in AP mode) - it causes the R7800 to see "heavy traffic" and restart on a frequent basis.

It would be interesting to know how ISPs could check for broadband sharing. With other services, e.g. Netflix I guess they could see the same account is being used by two different IPs at the same time.

Anyway, thanks again.

I think you're a super nice and kind neighbour. But I would draw the line at any long term internet sharing arrangement.

It's best too get the folks next door onto the best possible package for their budget and needs. If 4G/5G service is acceptable this is a very acceptable alternative to fixed line broadband, and you can very easily run a rental free "landline" using VoIP over the connection.

I'd agree with this - however nice someone is, and however unlikely it may be, no one wants to be on the end of a 6am knock because the person they've been sharing their internet connection with turns out to have been doing "things they shouldn't" online. By the time you're off the hook because it wasn't you, the neighbourhood knows, your kids' mates stop being allowed over, and so on.

Someone I worked with a few years ago was hauled off for such offences (he'd done it, no connection sharing involved), and you'd never have thought he'd be the type until it happened. Sharing your internet connection with someone outside your household is taking responsibility for everything that person does online, and you never really know a person. It's really not worth it to save a neighbour a few pounds.

In reply to a post by BarkingMad:

BT will allow recontract at £2p/m reduction for 24 months and no PAYG call package and LRS. Approx £28 per month overall.

If she called BT retentions, I imagine she would be offered under £25/month.

I would personally avoid sharing your internet connection or suggesting a mobile broadband solution

@pluralist

May I ask are you just using a ZTE MF286D without an external antenna (e.g. Poynting)?

With help from another post, I've now located the 3 tower (LTE B3 band only - according to Cellmapper) that is providing a signal to my Iphone SE 2020. OpenSignal was pointing in a different direction!

It's about 0.85km away, on the other side of the valley and from street level, I'm 29 metres higher, but of course the mast height would probably remove the height differential.. The "office" room is at the rear of the house and further away from the tower.

At the rear (office room) I get 15.9Mbps/3.66 (-112dBm). At the front, a more reasonable 26.3/10.2 (-100dBm)

Do you think the MF286D would provide better results than my Iphone, if I was just using the two supplied stick antenna?

I suppose I could purchase the ZTE and try it out with my 4GB download SIM.

Thanks

BM

I'm no help re that I'm afraid. Mine is "Three"-badged/logo'ed, and didn't come with any antennae in the box. I didn't even realise it had mounting points, but on looking just now it has a couple of plastic plugs in the appropriate places on the back. Goodness knows what if any firmware is tailoring it has as well.

I literally took it out of its box, put the SIM in that came with it, put it on the window-ledge and switched on. Which mast it is picking up I can't be sure as its GUI doesn't give much info. In that room the direction shown on my phone is also unreliable though I haven't done detailed investigation as my upstairs phone use is the other side of the metal-framed house.

On the very hot days recently I have kept the blind down to help against over-heating, which has always been a worry me even on landline broadband.

(I just ran a speedtest.net on the phone next to the router using mobile not wifi. 606/18.9 LOL, so not much use. A pity I can't get 5G downstairs!)

As for iPhone v mobile router, always a difficult subject. A modern mobile phone is usually a long way ahead of ISP-supplied mobile data routers wrt antennae and electronics. That's how they can in effect give the routers away.