Mobile broadband

[arthurk]

Thanks, everyone - here are the follow-up thoughts and questions:

So we have a 3g/lte/4g router from Huawei....

That makes me a little cautious - isn't Huawei alleged to be an arm of the Chinese government?

Are you with BT? When their line went faulty for a few days my package entitled me to a usb 4g router which was delivered within 24 hours with free data & was just as quick as my normal line.

No, and it's not an ISP or line fault, except insofar as we're moving to a house where the phone line has been disconnected, and they might not be able to get it sorted as quickly as we'd like.

If using a smartphone make sure your tariff has adequate data allowance as exceeding it can be a very expensive way to buy bandwidth 

Noted.

The other thing that's occurred to me is about the method of tethering. The phone manual (Nokia C01 Plus) says:

1. Tap Settings > Network & Internet > Hotspot & tethering .
2. Switch on Wi-Fi hotspot to share your mobile data connection over Wi-Fi, USB tethering to
use a USB connection, Bluetooth tethering to use Bluetooth or Ethernet tethering to use
a USB Ethernet cable connection.

I misunderstood this first time round, thinking that the lack of a landline router would mean there was no Wi-Fi, so it was a bit of a pointless thing to include. However, what I now think it's saying is that the smartphone itself becomes in effect a Wi-Fi router. Will that be right? And if so, would that be a better way to connect than bluetooth?

As far as I can tell from the coverage map we should have a good 4G signal both inside and outside the house, but as some of you have said, we can always keep the idea of a dedicated mobile router as a backup option.

[andrewalston]

Yes, the smartphone behaves like a wifi router. The screen where you turn it on should show you its name (SSID) and password.

[arthurk]

Thanks - any thoughts on wifi vs bluetooth?

[andrewalston]

WiFi has much longer range, and your existing equipment is probably set up to use it already. You just add the hotspot to the list of known routers being remembered by your device.

Many smartphones let you edit the SSID and password. If you set it to the same as you are using now, things will be pretty much automatic.

[arthurk]

Thanks, Andrew.

[groom]

It really depends how long you are going to be away for - if just a week or so it will probably be cheaper to use the phone as a hotspot, but make sure there is enough data on there or that you can top up, otherwise it will work out very expensive if you go over your limit. I find I use about 1 GB a day when I'm away - that's emails, skype, Family History, admining a group, general surfing and perhaps a few YouTubes.

[HarryW]

One question I have is if landline is to end, then why at this moment are gigaclear digging up miles and miles of road to give us fibre to the house.

Mike

What is happening is happening is that BT is gradually shutting down their telephone exchanges so the traditional way of connecting end to end calls will cease, to be replaced by connection via the internet.   As this happens your normal phones will need an adapter to connect to your broadband router and you will be able to continue to use the phones as before.   

Effectively what most people consider to be "landline" is the copper connection from the telephone exchange to your house.   As the migration takes place, the copper connections to the green roadside cabinets will become redundant as the connection will be either by fibre to the house (known as ftp) or fibre to the roadside cabinet with copper connection to the house (known as ftc).   In the long term the goal is to have a full fibre network - this is currently being constructed by a myriad of different companies (too many to list but includes Gigaclear, City Fibre etc).

All the networks are connected to allow for voice calls to be connected using the internet.

There is a lot more to it than the brief explanation I've written and many hurdles yet to be overcome.   A major one being that in the event of a power cut, unless an uninterruptable power is provided at every house, you will lose all communication once we rely on connection via a router.

[mazi]

One question I have is if landline is to end, then why at this moment are gigaclear digging up miles and miles of road to give us fibre to the house.

Mike

There is a lot more to it than the brief explanation I've written and many hurdles yet to be overcome.   A major one being that in the event of a power cut, unless an uninterruptable power is provided at every house, you will lose all communication once we rely on connection via a router.

BT have given me a tiny box battery powered which gives me internet if their router fails, recharged by any usb.

Even tho we have total failure of electricity, which we do, I should be able to use this.
I still have a car with a usb socket, maybe I can use this with a suitable converter to charge phones iPad etc, I already have emergency light with a big battery which can be charged from the car 12v socket.

Mike

[arthurk]

Just a quick update on how this went. As I said in reply #9, this was connected to a house move. We knew there had been a phone line, but it had been disconnected and we didn't know until very shortly before the move how quickly it could be reconnected - one customer service adviser said it might take up to 3 months!

In the event it was only about 5 days, and for that length of time the smartphone was fine. 'Adequate' might be a better word, as it did seem to grind to a halt sometimes, but since by then we had a date for the landline to be sorted, and we had plenty of other things to be getting on with, wandering around the house for a better signal wasn't high on the list of priorities.

Anyway, we now have a sizeable chunk of unused data (including pre-move experiments, we didn't use much more than 2GB), but set against the cost of the move, a one-off month's bundle isn't a massive outlay. And if we find ourselves in a similar situation again, we'll feel a lot more confident in dealing with it.

Thanks for all the advice - and Happy Christmas, everyone