3 Outdoor broadband hub UK

⁨7⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨baggins@beehaw.org⁩ to ⁨unitedkingdom@feddit.uk⁩

Does anyone have experience of this, and more importantly, is it any good?

Thanks

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

Apocalypteroid@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yes. I live in a fairly rural location and can’t get full fibre yet so I thought I’d give it a punt. After a fair few teething issues I now get consistent speeds of around 300mbps which is much better than anything else in the area and is incredibly cheap as well. (If you sing up through uswitch then it’s only £17 a month)

Cons: You’ll have to find a spot outside where you get decent 5g signal, which might mean climbing up a ladder and screwing it to the wall. Personally, I had a bit of a nightmare setting it up because it doesn’t like open VPN protocols and their India based tech support were useless and lied to me when they couldn’t solve my problem.

Overall, I would say if you can’t get cable fibre then it’s worth giving it a try, you get a 30 day trial period so can return it really easily if you don’t get on with it. I’m pretty pleased with it despite the teething troubles, however given my customer experience, will probably look elsewhere when I am able.

source
- Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You can also get your own hardware and then try a SIM card from different providers
  
  source
Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I didn’t know they did an outdoor hub. I’ve been using a Three 5G broadband hub for a few years. I bought my own Pointing external antenna and connected it to the hub. It works well. The antenna boosts the signal significantly (I forget how much exactly).

The issue I have isn’t the hub or antenna, it’s Three themselves. Quite often the 5G gets slow, as in unusably slow. The signal is strong so I assume it’s an issue with their masta or over subscribed. It doesn’t happen as much these days though.

Because I was unsure when I first wanted one I opted for a monthly contract and not a year. It allowed me to test how well it works before cancelling my existing broadband.

source
baggins@beehaw.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Thanks for that - 5G signal here is pretty poor so probably not going to make a significant improvement. Still, I have about a year before Virgin contract ends so there maybe an improvement in the 5G network (it’s been promised for over a year) or BT may even get round to putting fibre into our estate. Not going to hold my breath there though.

Other wise I’ll have to settle for a paltry 30 mbps that I’ll get over the BT Network.

It really does piss me off to see all these claims of ‘up to’ this or that. If it’s on BT network - you can’t improve it. And I know the network here is naff :-(

source
Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If they’re anything like the Verizon 5G gateways in the US that go in the window, then yes they’re great. So long as they use mmWave ultra wideband, and you have direct line of sight to the tower, they’re as good as a wired connection IMO. I get 1400Mbps both ways; literally maxes out my gigabit lines and I have to use wifi to hit those speeds. Latency is good enough to play competitive shooters too. I absolutely love it. And for only $50/mo it’s literally twice as fast as cable for half the price.

source
- Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Have been thinking of upgrading my 4G router to a 5G one sometime. No idea why they don’t have 10Gbit Ethernet though.
  
  source
9point6@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have 3 as my phone carrier with a high end modern phone (pixel 9 pro), so my experience shouldn’t be limited by hardware.

I’d say in a city (Manchester, Liverpool & London mostly) I get 5g about 30% of the time, that’ll get speeds around 50-80mbps. The rest of the time I get their oversubscribed 4g which struggles to do 1mbps

The more rural you get the chances of 5G shrink to like 5% of the time, though the 4g speeds improve a bit closer to the 10mbps mark.

Of course YMMV, but it might be worth getting a 3 PAYG ESIM or something on your phone just to see what the signal is like by you

source
- Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I get 30-50 mbit on 4G, don’t have a 5G router currently to compare that
  
  source