Tesco Mobile vs O2 broadband speeds and devices

MichaelR

Hello,

According to Comreg, I am living near an O2 mast that has UMTS (3G) on it. Voice coverage with O2 is excellent in the house - some years ago I and my wife left Vodafone for O2 because of better coverage indoors

We have DSL broadband but I decided to try and get a faster, even if data-capped, mobile solution for work. I am trying out Vodafone 4G but for now I only have 3G and I'm not sure I'm getting 4G. But for 3G I would definitely want to try the closest mast. And that means an O2 or Tesco Mobile broadband device.

Of these I like Tesco's offer better (yay 50 GB, yay 1 month contract if not buying a device).

So my questions are:

- Will Tesco give the same speed (upload is critical) as O2, given the same location?

- Will Tesco and/or O2 allow the use of an Android phone as an access point? I'd like to avoid long contract lock-in for 3G because 4G might arrive in some months; to get a short contract one needs to avoid buying a device. And I have a phone that my wife won't be using because we got a better one for her. Originally O2 locked but they did give me an unlock code, so it will work with Tesco too. It definitely can do 3G to Wi Fi gating.

jay93

Yeh Tesco and o2 can be used as a hotspot in an Android phone I have used both before.

Speeds are the same for me on my Samsung that I have with Tesco the ping is actually better than when I was with o2 which will load pages faster. All depends on individual areas though. Are you on a 4G plan with Vodafone ? You need to be on their RED plans on bill pay and on pre pay you need to buy the 4G RED bundle to get the 4G signal. I have it on my iPhone and its great I also have a 4G modem with Vodafone and the speeds just blow my DSL away only annoying thing are the limits .

I would go for Tesco though instead of o2 as you said there is no contract and the data limit is higher also . I find Tesco customer support to be better than o2 also.

jay93

jay93 wrote: »

Yeh Tesco and o2 can be used as a hotspot in an Android phone I have used both before.

Speeds are the same for me on my Samsung that I have with Tesco the ping is actually better than when I was with o2 which will load pages faster. All depends on individual areas though. Are you on a 4G plan with Vodafone ? You need to be on their RED plans on bill pay and on pre pay you need to buy the 4G RED bundle to get the 4G signal. I have it on my iPhone and its great I also have a 4G modem with Vodafone and the speeds just blow my DSL away only annoying thing are the limits .

I would go for Tesco though instead of o2 as you said there is no contract and the data limit is higher also . I find Tesco customer support to be better than o2 also.

Im not sure if you're trying Vodafone on a phone or a modem but for their broadband plans you have to be on bill pay to get 4G service for their mobile broadband.

tenifan

Being close to a mast doesn't necessarily mean you will get a good signal.
tesco mobile allow tethering. http://www.tescomobile.ie/support/question.aspx?id=33

MichaelR

I am on a 4G plan with Vodafone but there have been issues with activating it. The issues are resolved and I have excellent 4G coverage with amazing speeds, but the 20 Gb data cap is a concern. so I guess I'll need to give Tesco a try.

It may be that I'd have to get a device to get all of Tesco's broadband features, because it turned out the Alcatel 983 does support HSDPA and HSUPA but not HSPA+, so if it's an HSPA+ mast... The downside is the contract, which means I'm locked away from 4G even if Meteor (with a better cap) reaches the area or Vodafone improves the cap. Anyway I'll do some extensive testing with my wife's phone to see if we are actually getting a good signal here.

MichaelR

OK, experimentation showed that Comreg is apparently wrong - the tower does not provide 3G. On an O2 phone, there is excellent 2G coverage, but when locked to 3G it just gives one bar outside the house, with speed measured at 1M download (upload varies from 0.05 to 1 M).

ShaunC

AFAIK Comreg only use data supplied to them by the mobile networks. So you can take it for granted that the coverage shown will be a little exaggerated.;)