Home Networking – Owen Parry

[David Harrison]

I think I may have forgotten to copy this into a post, Owen’s trials and tribulations and successes in his new home in Abergavenny …

This is an update on my peregrinations with 5G home broadband.

Eager readers may remember that I took out a contract with Vodafone for their GigaCube 5G home broadband service back in January 2021, largely due to the poor performance of the broadband service via a phone line and the number of nuisance calls to that line.

Whilst it was by no means a perfect service, it did yield me connection speeds of around 100 Mb/s download and 3 or 4 Mb/s uploads and no scam calls as we did away with the landline completely.

However, we have now moved to the wilds of Abergavenny where Vodafone has no 5G presence. I won’t wax lyrical about the £82 they wished to charge me on top of the remaining monthly bills until my contract was up, even though they cannot provide the service here. Suffice to say that I won’t be using them again unless absolutely forced to do so.

I’ve stuck with 5G home broadband to avoid a landline and as there is no fibre to the premises. I have gone with 3, whose paperwork to set up a contract involves the destruction of a considerable amount of rainforest and whose staff passed on a dreadful cold to my wife and I. But you walk away with the router and SIM in hand so it’s pretty much an instant service. You can opt to do 30-day contracts or 24 months. And (and it’s a big and) it’s only £10 a month for the first 6 months with a 30-day money back guarantee if the service is poor.  No, I don’t get commission.

At first I located the router in my study so I could connect a data switch directly to it and gain the most benefit at my desktop PC. We did then find the WiFi inadequate in the bedrooms so I added a WiFi extender (TP-Link AC1200 Mesh Dual Band Wi-Fi Range Extender for those interested) which helped but wasn’t brilliant.  Speed tests gave me around 70Mb download at best.

I trawled 3’s support website and came to the suggestion that I try the other side of the house and that I place the router at a window. Lo and it came to pass that WiFi download speeds are now rarely below 300 Mb/s. So there’s a lesson learned and I pass it on interest for comment.

Incidentally, the house is largely wired with Ethernet sockets and has a data switch and patch panel in the loft. But the WiFi is too good to bother!

[Paul de Geus]

Interesting, and a good price, Owen.

Do you get a good WiFi signal throughout the house ?

[Owen Parry]

Yes, I get perfectly adequate signal throughout.

[Author]

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