Does anyone use 5g home broadband?

Mike_SE

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I am moving house soon to an area that Virgin Media unfortunately doesn't cover, so I'll have to cancel that. The best options I can get are around 70mb/s which is a bit rubbish and I've been looking at possibly getting a 5g broadband with Three. Has anyone been using this? Any feedback? Is it reliable for gaming and working from home etc? Also, is it compatible with a mesh WiFi system? Our new house is very old and the walls are thick so I'm going to need one. Any help well received!
 
Compatibility with mesh depends on how you plan on routing it. It you separate the routing and WiFi then you can pretty much put what ever you want for WiFi.

As for 5G, have you already tested it at the new property ?
 
Just planning to use the 5g router as a modem and plug in one of the mesh system nodes as the sender of WiFi signal with 2 more round the house, like I would have with Sky or BT, I assume this would be fine. I haven't been able to test because there's no mobile 5g signal there, it's just the broadband because apparently Three bought out Relish who previously provided the 5g broadband there. It's maybe more if a risk but they do say you can cancel within 14 days if it doesn't work well enough.
 
Have you looked at Starlink? And since was 70Mb 'a bit rubbish'? What is it you need to do that out-strips that performance? The average speed across the planet is 55MBs and the average for the UK is 75MBs so 8% below the national average is fairly normal. 5G is great until it rains hard, snows, hails or any of the other great weather that the UK experiences, then expect to see a decrease in performance.
 
I'm on VM 350 at the moment which is nice for downloading games, updates, 2 people working from home etc etc. Basically, downgrading the speed to these levels is why it's disappointing and I want to see about alternatives, of which this 5g broadband is one. If it's not reliable though, then I'll just stick to the bog standard Sky offering. I have just had a look at starlink now, seems like a large upfront cost and quite high monthly fees for not particularly good speeds (at the moment), unless I'm missing something?
 
I would advocate viewing some of the "debunking" videos about Starlink before parting with any money.

If gaming is your thing and latency (colloquially and somewhat inaccurately referred to as "ping" times) matters, then anything satellite based is likely to be "challenging."

Fixed line comms, albeit that it isn't without it's own challenges, is always likely to be more reliable. So there's perhaps a trade off to consider in, "faster and less deterministic" versus "slower but more deterministic." A value judgement.
 
Yeah that is a point. I wouldn't be going with starlink personally anyway. I am planning to try and use an ethernet power line extender with whatever ISP I end up going with, alongside the mesh WiFi to make sure signal is available all round the house. I do want to game and the latency will be important, which is another consideration with the 5g broadband option. There's a lot to consider I suppose, and I don't want to make a mistake and be tied in for a year/18 months, that's for sure!
 
Have you looked at Starlink? And since was 70Mb 'a bit rubbish'? What is it you need to do that out-strips that performance? The average speed across the planet is 55MBs and the average for the UK is 75MBs so 8% below the national average is fairly normal. 5G is great until it rains hard, snows, hails or any of the other great weather that the UK experiences, then expect to see a decrease in performance.
I had actually mentioned startlink then deleted it. Don't know if it's ready for general usage yet, would probably say that in conjunction with FTTC as back up.

And 5G as a complete BB replacement is ok for low usage environment but using it in high usage environment might challenging as more and more people move over to it.
 
I would expect around 20ms latency to the local network hub Vs around 5ms or less for fixed line connection. Starlink is around 50 to 80ms at the moment but should improve in the future.
 
Oh and forget about using power line adapters as well as that will limit throughout. You will be lucky if you get 150Mbps through that…
 
Thanks for the replies guys, I do appreciate it. I think I'll go with the cable option for now, I don't really want any cutouts slowdowns.
 

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