Using 4G for home wifi... out of my depth!

[Scarletpimpofnel]

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing...

I currently use Sky broadband for my wifi but I am fed up of them and realised I could get much cheaper home wifi using a SIM card plus wifi router (like this one for example - https://www.currys.co.uk/products/tplink-archer-mr... )

I don't use much data, don't stream films etc so a SIM with a small data allowance would suit me. However I have two areas that are outside my knowledge and might thwart my plan:

1 - I have a cheap home CCTV system that stores footage to a local HDD, it does not save to an off site location. I have an App on my phone that allows me to connect to the CCTV HDD and view live footage if I wish. I might do this daily for a few seconds if on holiday just to be sure all is ok back home so not using much data. BUT I have read elsewhere that a SIM connection might not allow such remote access/viewing of the CCTV images. Something to do with the likes of Sky supporting CGNAT but SIM telco's not supporting CGNAT. Bearing in mind I connect to the CCTV HDD and not individual cameras will I be able to view CCTV or not with my SIM powered router?

2 - I am unclear if I can use a standard SIM (as you'd buy for a mobile phone) or if I need a special purpose SIM. The reason I ask is because I have seen some SIM telco stating that a SIM is suitable for a router.

I don't want to buy all the kit to then find it doesn't do what I want. I feel I am in the situation where I think I know what I am doing .... but probably don't!

Many t hanks.

[Panamax]

The Three network has been promoting exactly what you're looking for. I've not tried it but am very tempted. Seems there are no set-up costs so long as you don't "Pay-as-you-Go".

https://www.three.co.uk/broadband/home-broadband?m...

[Panamax]

My assumption is the router must have its own SIM, otherwise if the phone owner goes out nobody at home would have any connection.

I also recklessly assume you could carry the router about with you if you have a second home for e.g. weekend use. Don't know the answer though.

[Scarletpimpofnel]

Panamax said:

The Three network has been promoting exactly what you're looking for. I've not tried it but am very tempted. Seems there are no set-up costs so long as you don't "Pay-as-you-Go".

https://www.three.co.uk/broadband/home-broadband?m...

Most of the networks provide similar, my main issue is whether I can connect remotely to my CCTV HDD via this. As per my original post I have seen posts saying you need CGNAT which is professional level stuff ... but I am clueless hence my question whether these types of boxes will do what i want.

[Jordie Barretts sock]

It's a standard sim.

And yes, in theory you could take your router on holiday with you.

I run a Sky Q and a whole host of other stuff, Alexa, PC, PS4, voip landline from a Huawei router and Vodafone unlimited data sim.

I used to run CCTV in my office from a similar set up with no issues.

[Scarletpimpofnel]

Jordie Barretts sock said:

It's a standard sim.

And yes, in theory you could take your router on holiday with you.

I run a Sky Q and a whole host of other stuff, Alexa, PC, PS4, voip landline from a Huawei router and Vodafone unlimited data sim.

I used to run CCTV in my office from a similar set up with no issues.

Good to know many thanks. Could you access your CCTV remotely with that setup?

[Jordie Barretts sock]

Yes. It works just like a 'regular' Internet set up.

[Scarletpimpofnel]

Jordie Barretts sock said:

Yes. It works just like a 'regular' Internet set up.

Thanks. Based on that I'll commit and go for it!

[Ham_and_Jam]

I have that very router at my holiday home, it is very good and reliable.

I use a standard Talkmobile sim (100Gb data / £10 per month). It was fairly plug and play to set up.

I use it for browsing internet on PCs and phones, ROKUs (streaming movies), Alexa dots, and a Blink CCTV.

Would definitely recommend.

[Funk]

My Zen FTTP router is a FritzBox which has a USB socket - that can be used with a 4/5G dongle for failover in the event of a fibre outage. I keep a USB dongle and 4G PAYG SIM from SMARTY in there which I add credit to for a month if the fibre ever goes down (it used to quite a bit in the early days but in the last year or so it's been solid).

The 4G connection functions exactly the same as the fibre in terms of what I can access etc (including live CCTV feeds) - it's even decently quick at 100Mbps which is faster than most Openreach FTTC connections are.

[Turtle Shed]

Not able to answer any specific questions but just chipping in to say that I have the Three 5g home router and it's brilliant. £20/month for unlimited data.

Wouldn't ever go to wired broadband again unless there was a vast improvement in speed and at no extra cost. I get 100-200Mb/s down and 50-100Mb/s up, which with two of us in the house is plenty.

[halo34]

Dont go 3 - EE is far better.

Their customer service and billing is diabolical too.

3 in my experience and many others has a great speed to start with but eventually drop outs and frequent issues during peak periods.

In contrast with EE I have a solid connection and can game happily on it without fear of issues.

[otolith]

I think whether you have any problems with your CCTV will depend on the exact architecture of the system you're using - but I think you can cancel the 3 contract within 30 days if it doesn't work for you. Other providers may offer the same.

[Tye Green]

halo34 said:

Dont go 3 - EE is far better.

Their customer service and billing is diabolical too.

3 in my experience and many others has a great speed to start with but eventually drop outs and frequent issues during peak periods.

In contrast with EE I have a solid connection and can game happily on it without fear of issues.

we have Three 5g router. we're right on the fringe of their service area, positioning of the router is important and speed is consistently about 100 down and about 20 up.

going back to nov 22 we had originally got a 5g router from Three which was a Zyxel NR5103 for one month to try. it was great - 400-500 download speed and were tempted to bin virgin but decided to stick with them so sent the router back to Three - no charge at all.

mid 23 fell out with virgin so did bin them and got another router from Three on the rolling one month contract. this is a newer design - ZTE MC801A. speeds are lower @ 100/20 but I don't know if that's due to the router type or a lower service level after they've tempted you with 400+ download!

it actually drops a couple of times per day but this only lasts for less than 1 minute and then it recovers. it's clear when this happens if we're watching the tv as we get the revolving circle buffering thing but I'm made aware of all such events even when the tv or pc isn't being used due to one of the services we run on it which logs such events. over a 5 day period over Christmas we had no drop outs so I imagine that as a consumer we have low priority over commercial users at busy times etc but I also have a pal with the same set up in a better signal area who doesn't get any drop outs and also gets better much better speeds so maybe a mix of the two issues.

the deal with Three is an auto-renew monthly though we have had it for 8 months and very happy for £23 / month -does tv with firestick

[Lucas Ayde]

Scarletpimpofnel said:

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing...

I currently use Sky broadband for my wifi but I am fed up of them and realised I could get much cheaper home wifi using a SIM card plus wifi router (like this one for example - https://www.currys.co.uk/products/tplink-archer-mr... )

I don't use much data, don't stream films etc so a SIM with a small data allowance would suit me. However I have two areas that are outside my knowledge and might thwart my plan:

1 - I have a cheap home CCTV system that stores footage to a local HDD, it does not save to an off site location. I have an App on my phone that allows me to connect to the CCTV HDD and view live footage if I wish. I might do this daily for a few seconds if on holiday just to be sure all is ok back home so not using much data. BUT I have read elsewhere that a SIM connection might not allow such remote access/viewing of the CCTV images. Something to do with the likes of Sky supporting CGNAT but SIM telco's not supporting CGNAT. Bearing in mind I connect to the CCTV HDD and not individual cameras will I be able to view CCTV or not with my SIM powered router?

2 - I am unclear if I can use a standard SIM (as you'd buy for a mobile phone) or if I need a special purpose SIM. The reason I ask is because I have seen some SIM telco stating that a SIM is suitable for a router.

I don't want to buy all the kit to then find it doesn't do what I want. I feel I am in the situation where I think I know what I am doing .... but probably don't!

Many t hanks.

Yeah, depending on your internet usage at home, a 4G/5G sim might be all you need. It can be a lot cheaper and more flexible than a wired connection. Even a lot quicker in remote areas depending on coverage.

A standard SIM should work for data but you may find some strange stuff going on - for starters, some networks limit data speeds on voice contracts. I've got an EE voice plan for my mobile and even though it works on 5G, the data is throttled to 10mbits up and down. If you do a speed test you can see it starts at 30mbit+ but then rapidly gets pulled down to 10mbit. That would not be the case if you opted for a data plan (for a router).

I recently picked up a cheap 4G router (TP-Link MR6400) to play around with and I was trying out an o2 sim on a PAYG 'voice' account. Aside from the fact that the whole o2 experience was horrible, it behaved weirdly. Initially it would work in the router albeit with relatively low speeds because o2 coverage turned out to be quite poor at my address. However, after a while it just stopped working. Putting it into a spare phone, it worked fine. Apparently companies quite often take issue with people using data on multiple devices with a voice contract. As o2 were so crap to deal with, I just chucked the SIM.

IMO you'd be better using a dedicated data sim (contract) .. there are a number of choices around but Smarty seem to be a pretty good one if you have '3' coverage. I just picked up a Smarty SIM from the local shop and will probably try out their PAYG data offering when I get the time.

[halo34]

Tye Green said:

we have Three 5g router. we're right on the fringe of their service area, positioning of the router is important and speed is consistently about 100 down and about 20 up.

going back to nov 22 we had originally got a 5g router from Three which was a Zyxel NR5103 for one month to try. it was great - 400-500 download speed and were tempted to bin virgin but decided to stick with them so sent the router back to Three - no charge at all.

mid 23 fell out with virgin so did bin them and got another router from Three on the rolling one month contract. this is a newer design - ZTE MC801A. speeds are lower @ 100/20 but I don't know if that's due to the router type or a lower service level after they've tempted you with 400+ download!

it actually drops a couple of times per day but this only lasts for less than 1 minute and then it recovers. it's clear when this happens if we're watching the tv as we get the revolving circle buffering thing but I'm made aware of all such events even when the tv or pc isn't being used due to one of the services we run on it which logs such events. over a 5 day period over Christmas we had no drop outs so I imagine that as a consumer we have low priority over commercial users at busy times etc but I also have a pal with the same set up in a better signal area who doesn't get any drop outs and also gets better much better speeds so maybe a mix of the two issues.

the deal with Three is an auto-renew monthly though we have had it for 8 months and very happy for £23 / month -does tv with firestick

Yeah me and others were getting the little drop outs constantly more and more. Nothing like that with EE.

You have to make sure its a mobile broadband contract with EE however or speed limits and useage limits apply - its different between a voice/data SIM to a data only SIM.

It took me 6 months to stop 3 from billing me for a ceased service and tech support were useless. The second router they sent me to resolve the issue had even less signal than the first.

[Scarletpimpofnel]

Lucas Ayde said:

Yeah, depending on your internet usage at home, a 4G/5G sim might be all you need. It can be a lot cheaper and more flexible than a wired connection. Even a lot quicker in remote areas depending on coverage.

A standard SIM should work for data but you may find some strange stuff going on - for starters, some networks limit data speeds on voice contracts. I've got an EE voice plan for my mobile and even though it works on 5G, the data is throttled to 10mbits up and down. If you do a speed test you can see it starts at 30mbit+ but then rapidly gets pulled down to 10mbit. That would not be the case if you opted for a data plan (for a router).

I recently picked up a cheap 4G router (TP-Link MR6400) to play around with and I was trying out an o2 sim on a PAYG 'voice' account. Aside from the fact that the whole o2 experience was horrible, it behaved weirdly. Initially it would work in the router albeit with relatively low speeds because o2 coverage turned out to be quite poor at my address. However, after a while it just stopped working. Putting it into a spare phone, it worked fine. Apparently companies quite often take issue with people using data on multiple devices with a voice contract. As o2 were so crap to deal with, I just chucked the SIM.

IMO you'd be better using a dedicated data sim (contract) .. there are a number of choices around but Smarty seem to be a pretty good one if you have '3' coverage. I just picked up a Smarty SIM from the local shop and will probably try out their PAYG data offering when I get the time.

Thanks. This is what i was trying to get at with my original post. It all looks good in theory… but then you get odd behaviour caused by telco rules you don’t know about. Ty. I’ll look at data sims.

[Ham_and_Jam]

OP you seem to want to be persuaded to pay a lot more for a dedicated data sim card.

As many on here have testified, myself included, most regular sim cards will work perfectly well at a fraction of the cost.

I have the router you are look at and it works 100% brilliantly with a standard Talkmobile sim card. They are only £16 / month unlimited data.

Why not try a 30 day sim contract. You can get them for pennies. Buy the router from Amazon so it can be returned. If it doesn’t work you have lost very little.

[untakenname]

halo34 said:

Dont go 3 - EE is far better.

Their customer service and billing is diabolical too.

3 in my experience and many others has a great speed to start with but eventually drop outs and frequent issues during peak periods.

In contrast with EE I have a solid connection and can game happily on it without fear of issues.

Mirror this, had 3 but it was too unreliable to rely on for work. They also traffic shape so had to use VPN to get consistent results on Teams meetings.

[Scarletpimpofnel]

Ham_and_Jam said:

OP you seem to want to be persuaded to pay a lot more for a dedicated data sim card.

As many on here have testified, myself included, most regular sim cards will work perfectly well at a fraction of the cost.

I have the router you are look at and it works 100% brilliantly with a standard Talkmobile sim card. They are only £16 / month unlimited data.

Why not try a 30 day sim contract. You can get them for pennies. Buy the router from Amazon so it can be returned. If it doesn’t work you have lost very little.

I have ordered the router as it’s fine for what I need. I’ve ordered a 1pmobile voice/data sim to try. I’m
Trying to understand what the telco will do to catch me out as I’ve been stung in the past with throttling etc.
There must be a reason they advertise some sim as suitable for use in routers… meaning normal sim are not suitable… why not? How are they going to annoy me downstream just when I need it!!??
I get your point, I am being cautious. But once bitten twice shy and all that!