5G Router performance in the area?

Has anyone here moved from standard fixed line internet to using a 5G router, like the Gigacube from Vodafone (I think it’s the same device EE and Three sell)

My measly 16meg download 0.6Meg upload on ADSL is starting to cause serious problems in my home working, especially when my wife is working from home at the same time and it could be some time before there’s any hope of me getting fibre.

I’d be interested to know if anyone in SE23 has one and what the performance is like? The coverage checkers say indoor 5G reception in my area is good, but I’d like to know the “real life” experiences of others before committing to £30 a month or more and cancelling my existing ADSL service.

Some previous discussion here - mainly about 4g routers but people were getting good speeds.

Interesting. I guess I’m also concerned about stability though as well as speed. Despite being slower than a drunken snail, my ADSL is at least stable and I don’t think I’ve ever had to reboot my router. I hope 5G routers offer the same reliability!

Does anyone have an unlimited bandwidth 5G package? Last time I looked they were around 30Gb a month which is just about enough to upgrade a couple of laptops let alone a few 4K streams.

I think if you play games then 36ms ping might be an issue but not for streaming which is mostly 1 way.

Stability I’m not sure. 4G has always worked for me locally but ironically up in the City bandwidth is crap. 5G should alleviate the latter issue though.

I’d love to switch to wireless if it’s viable.

Three are offering unlimited 5G for £29 a month which is what has prompted me to look at it.

EE are offering unlimited too, but for about £50 a month, plus £50 upfront.

I play games casually, but my ping on ADSL isn’t great anyway so I’m sue 5G may be comparable.

My biggest issue is doing IT work remotely but struggling when my wife is on a Teams call (which is a lot) - or there was one instance I was remotely working on our HQ routers from home and lost connection as soon as I hit return after issuing a command. I thought I’d wrecked our entire infrastructure until I realised the wife had started streaming a Yoga video on Amazon Prime. I almost had a heart attack.

When I looked into this 18 months or so ago, there were quite a few negative comments on the reliability of Three’s 5G service, albeit dependent on location, and I couldn’t get much feedback locally though I think one person had given up and sent their router back who lived in Forest Hill. But if you order online, would the router not be subject to the distance selling regulations, meaning that you could send it back for a refund and contract cancellation, if it turned out to be unsatisfactory?

Yeah, I think theres a 14 day returns period so I can give it a go then cancel my existing broadband after that which I might just do, but I was hoping for more real life experiences of it to make a more informed decision before going through the faff of ordering then returning something.

you could tweet @thirstforwine to get his feedback. Sadly he no longer participates on the forum.

I’ve just gone ahead and ordered it.

I’ll play with it and report back in case it’s of any interest to anyone.

Even LTE alone can be quite fast and > 100Mbps in a good spot at a good time.

Unfortunately this data studio tracker shows that of 26 planning applications for new 5G masts by Three, only 6 have been approved in Lewisham so improvements maybe slow in coming:

Will be interested to know how this works. I agree that stability is more important for remote working especially with virtual desktops and the like.

AIUI 4G and 5G are UDP connections. This means that some packet loss is tolerated. No problem for video or Teams call probably but not so sure re desktop access especially if issuing commands. Am on Zen FTTP so no issues with stability or speed but could be useful when on the move.

The reason that they many get rejected is because the telecoms companies are cheap and lazy and apply for them to be set up on public pavements, often this means a big cabinet as well as a mast. One example was by the Esso/Tesco garage, they applied to put the mast on the corner and not in the car park where they’d have to pay rent (if I recall correctly).

I’d love to have some decent 5G infrastructure here, but similar to electric car charging points, these should be properly sited and not on the pavement. Otherwise they’re a danger to cyclists. That last part was a joke btw.

Excellent, thanks for playing guinea pig, we’ll buy you a pint

Even on 4G, there’s a huge difference in performance. I switched from Three to Virgin and the 4G speeds quadrupled which was a pleasant surprise. I ended up running the work laptop from a mobile hotspot for a couple of weeks until the fibre was installed. It was a lot more robust than my previous ADSL connection had been.

There are still a few deadspots around that I’m sure are topographical but are still frustrating given that we’re in London. At South Circular/Horniman/Wood Vale, there’s a circle where calls and data just seem to drop out. So frustrating!

I’ll also be interested in the 5G experiment!

I (on Dacres Road) gave up on Three after a couple of weeks - it was absolutely hopeless! But I’m now paying for unlimited with EE, and it’s working brilliantly. I don’t have a 5G router (yet), but even at 4G, I’m getting vastly, vastly better speeds than I was on ADSL or with Three: generally 50mbps upload.

I get 5G on my phone indoors, so getting a 5G router is probably on the cards (since fibre is not an option in my building), but they’re expensive, and for the moment, I’m doing just fine with the 4G.

Edited to add: no problems using my work VPN either, but YMMV.

For anyone interested in my experiment, it’s not going well. First day was fine. Second day it is unsuable to the point I was lucky to get the speedtest website to even open. Doing a ping to Google I’m getting around 40% ping loss and round trips in excess of 2000ms.

5G router gives the signal as perfect, so it’s not that. I think I’ll be sending this back.

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That’s a shame - what were the speeds you were getting on the first day?

About 200mbps down with a ping of 30.

After doing a full reset of the router to factory settings, things have improved. I will continue to monitor before deciding whether or not I Should keep it, but it’s a drastic improvement…

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