I have 2 old yellow EE mi-fi portable routers which have worked very well over the years but are limited to 4G.
I’ve ordered a few ‘unlimited’ data SIMs recently, supposedly with 5G capability subject to 500-600GB monthly fair use policy (Scancom).
Anyone using a 5G capable battery or mains powered router have any recommendations?
I just ordered a TP-Link 5G mains powered router for £200 but could potentially return it unopened or if not suitable. Can’t find any reasonably priced 5G battery ones on Amazon apart from obscure brands.
Why is the terminology so confusing? Surely they could have come up with something better than CAT 4/6/12 which is bloody confusing as you think of ethernet! Lots of the blurb mentions great speeds but this is often wi-fi not 4G/5G - equally none of my kit has better than gigabit ethernet.
Hi, with 5G it is rather confusing… there are numerous bands with differing capacities and range. Now much of that is controlled by the carrier and their SIM, but you also need to have a 5G router that supports the bands.
For performance on 5G one needs to look at C band support or higher I suggest for performance. However C bands vary in availability on geographic area and carrier.
The other thing most 5G on the lower bands is interleaved with 4G LTE so bandwidth is limited, but slowly 5G SA (stand alone) is being rolled out in the UK, which is standalone infrastructure and better performance.
For performance one needs to support the higher bands, but these are limited in geographic range. Larger the range the lower the bandwidth typically.
Unfortunately, the names of Wi-Fi and cellular protocols are often similar and confusing. A 5G modem connects via 5G cellular signals; it has nothing to do with Wi-Fi 5 or 5GHz Wi-Fi, which are separate things—although a 5G modem probably supports both.
It’s dabbling a bit to see what I can achieve with 4G/5G SIMs - I seem to be on the edge of 5G connectivity for EE.
Some wi-fi 7 devices are starting to appear but I’m hoping this will give better speeds than the old battery powered mi-fi devices.
Current domestic broadband is a pretty stable low latency 80/20 FTTC connection with Zen. I could get FTTP but Zen suggested I might not have any choice over where they install the connection if I went for it (at least without extra costs).
Then a bit of Googling turned up a very recent article saying the US might ban TP-Link products due to cybersecurity concerns Typical! I have several of their wi-fi cameras, Smart Plugs and a few TP-Link switches which have always worked well.
A 5G router has a built-in cellular modem that connects to 5G cellular service. It creates a Wi-Fi network in your home or place of business, relying on a 5G signal rather than a wired internet connection. You’ll get one if you sign up for 5G home internet. What Is a 5G Router, and Should You Get One?
The portable mi-fi routers I used from EE were fantastic battery powered devices but I cancelled contracts for two (over £70 monthly for 30GB and 50GB services). They were brilliant in rural holiday locations where the local internet was maybe 1-2 Mbps and effectively unusable.
Two years ago I bought an EE ‘unlimited data’ SIM from Scancom (via Amazon) giving 500GB fair use each month for 20 months - this was effectively £11-12 monthly for considerably more data than the EE contracts for £70 monthly - huge saving and they worked in the EE mi-fi portable routers.
A few weeks ago I got an 18 month 600GB monthly 3 SIM in the Black Friday sale (£70) and recently an EE 500GB monthly data SIM for 18 months (£170). This was the reason for wanting to try a 5G router as the older mi-fi devices were 4G. May or may not work as I’m on the edge of EE 5G and probably on 3’s 4G LTE+.
I also cannot believe how poor cellular data rates are in our City (Cardiff).
My iPhone is old and has been dropped several times. I have been using a 3 PAYG Sim for ages for £10 monthly - fine for calls/texts but data poor. Also had an O2 monthly contract SIM in a backup older iPhone - have been out of contract for years but swapped it into newer iPhone and data rates also very poor (1-2 Mbps). I thought that I might have damaged the iPhone antennas through dropping it but was gobsmacked last week when I went to Cambridge to find 4G download speeds of 90Mbps indoors in the hotel (not on wifi) - what a crap service O2 give us locally. EE have always seemed the best locally.
From what I can se the router Category marking hasn’t been widely adopted and only existed for 4G LTE and not 5G.
If you want to map 4G LTE to a Router Category I found this table, but yes the router doesn’t appear to give max LTE throughput… I think I would be inclined to look at your carrier for the max 4G speed
It’s all pretty confusing for the average consumer these days! I used to be far more au fait with these things than I am now, or at least I thought I was.
There was at least one review on Amazon for a different product where th user took 300 Mbps to be the 4G LTE speed but it was in fact the wi-fi theoretical maximum. Also a little frustrating that they specify maximum theoretical speeds which are specified in the given standard but unlikely to be met in practice.
When did 2.5 Gbps ethernet creep in? (Probably ages ago!) Apple have offered a 10Gbps ethernet option for a few years, I’d not come across the 2.5 Gbps ports on routers until recently. Probably not much benefit for most people unless their cabling and ethernet devices are up to it, though maybe handy if there are multiple users of high LAN bandwidth and the router/switches can handle it.
We use a ZTE MC801A. These were the standard Three offering but appear to be unlocked. Ours works fine anyway with an unlimited O2 sum installed. £20 a month.
Three 5G never quite made it here. But we get speeds averaging 240-260 with O2.
Wish I could help you on the 5G MiFi. We settled for an EE 4G unit. The 5G ones seem stupidly pricey - better to hotspot off a 5G phone.
I have Virgin Media’s Gig1 service which gives me 1150 Mbps down and 110 Mbps up. But you need more than a 1 Gbps network to be able to use it. So mainly because I wanted to be able to check the download speed, I bought a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet to USB-C converter and plugged into the 2.5 Gbps port on the router, use that to get the stream into my Lenovo PC.
Nice, I guess I’ve been assuming most people are limited to Openreach 1 Gbps FTTP.
Feel like a dinosaur with 80/20 FTTC but it is mostly rock solid and quite adequate for multi room video streaming on numerous AppleTVs. It doesn’t seem that long ago I was limited to 1 Mbps and an SD movie used to take 10-12 hours to download onto the original AppleTV - 15 years ago I suspect, but despite being in the city I could only get 5-6 Mbps at most on ADSL for many years until we had FTTC.
I looked at that ZTE, but am not familiar with them or maybe as the seller wasn’t Amazon I went for something Amazon had in stock. Yet to open the TP-Link will do so later.
This is also thoroughly confusing - AFAIACT it doesn’t support WiFi 7 but the graphics suggest 4G-LTE Advanced 300 Mbps, but in the image below this on the left it suggests 1.6 Gbps/200 Mbps 4G speeds!
I’m on the edge of 5G coverage for EE and worse for 3. If I could get anywhere near CAT 12 or above performance on 4G (supposedly excellent 4G for EE here in and outdoors) it would be ideal.
Can’t see why there’s that wi-fi 7 popup bottom right. Could there be some upgrades in future firmware I wonder. Also seems to be a V1 and V2 hardware - not sure which I have yet.
4G is the fourth generation of broadband cellular network technology. Succeeding 3G and preceding 5G, in most countries and mobile services, 4G is the most widely used cellular network system used to connect mobile devices to the internet.
4G’s potential and current applications include mobile web access, gaming services, high-definition mobile TV, and video conferencing.
Here’s how three cellular network systems compare in terms of speed:
I am not sure you can say that for 5G, it just doesn’t work that way. The speeds completely vary on geographic area, frequencies available, and frequencies offered by the carrier, and also whether its 5G / LTE combined or 5G SA. There are many many many variables.
Typical! I have several of their wi-fi cameras, Smart Plugs and a few TP-Link switches which have always worked well.
