MBB : Vodafone, Three or Meteor ?

Happy_Harry

Time for a change in MBB provider now but I am not sure what to do.

Apart from a 1.8Mb/s fixed DSL line, that is very stable and works fine for work and netflix (SD obviously), I have had a Vodafone 4G connection for the last 18 months. It costs me €30/month for 20GB. I usually get speeds of about 8-12 Mb/s downloads (on 3 bars signal strength) and is good for youtube and downloading larger files quickly.

I notice that I am going through the 20GB fairly rapidly and sometimes it is not enough (even though I would use my DSL line for really large files download over night)

So I went and did some research.
Continuing with VF would cost me €50 for 50GB- that is the baseline

I tested :

Meteor : With a mifi I can get 4G signal in one particular spot in my house - 2 bars and has given me around 15Mb/s but more often around 9 Mb/s. With a 3G+ dongle plugged into a router it gives me around 5-6 Mb. 3G signal I get most of the times 4-5 bars

Three : With my old VF mifi the best it ever gave was 6Mb/s on a 4G signal (1-2 bars). In the dongle about 2-3Mb/s.The 3G signal strength is 3-4 bars

I wanted Three to do well as I can get a 100GB (€55/month) or 250Gb (€70) cap and would never have to worry about usage and could enjoy some netflix in HD..
Meteor has 55GB for €30, but on a 6 month contract as opposed to the 12 or 18 months for 3 and VF.

VF annoyed me by stating that they don't have unlock codes for their modems, which is bull of course, since they are freely available on the web.
Three more than annoyed me by making me buy a €5 top up on top of the €15 sim card that had €10 credit so I could test their service. But the €10 was enough to get me 2GB for a week. So now I am sitting here with an unused €5 top up. Thanks 3... I am not surprised that 99% of feedback I found on Three is shockingly bad.
Meteor has impressed me with their customer service so far.

My questions:
1. Would a "real" 4G router as opposed to a mifi device make a difference in the speed I get. Would it make sense to get one and install an antenna as well ? I'd like to hear from anyone who changed from a mifi device to a 4G router , first hand experience so much better than review sites..

2. If the answer to 1 is Yes , should I fork out € 150 for an unlocked modem and do an additional test with 3 ? Or get one for €69 from Meteor and lock myself in for 6 months. (I presume the €69 "refurbished version" is one that someone gave back after the cooling off period?)

Or should I just be happy with a stable 4-5Mb/s 3G service from Meteor ? Do I need more ? I don't do online games and don't have a 4K/UHD TV.. I have an unlocked (no thanks to VF) 4G mifi and a dongle plus supported router.

Timmaay

Try a three AYCE prepay sim? 20e/month, Working nicely for me at the sec.

Happy_Harry

Thanks, but the three prepay MBB connection I have tested at the moment has the lowest speeds, weakest signal and is not very stable. Doubt the AYCE prepay SIM will do any better.

warlikedave

Happy_Harry wrote: »

Thanks, but the three prepay MBB connection I have tested at the moment has the lowest speeds, weakest signal and is not very stable. Doubt the AYCE prepay SIM will do any better.

What are you testing your results with may I ask? 3g or 4g stick or router?

The b593 is very good on weak signal i found - here is a speediest on 3 bars of 4g using WiFi & Pre Pay Phone Sim (Ethernet is a good bit better speed wise regarding this router):



This result is a bit lower than usual but you get the idea - its pretty decent for gaming and watching Netflix

Happy_Harry

warlikedave wrote: »

What are you testing your results with may I ask? 3g or 4g stick or router?

I am testing both with a Vodafone R215 (Huawei E5372) which is the 4G MIFI and also a 3.75G dongle in a modem.

I now found a place in the house that gives me 4 bars of 4G on meteor with about 11-12 Mbps down and 3 Up.

I am still wondering if it would be a more stable signal and better speeds with a B315 , the B593 is on the way out and more expensive.

I have more or less 2 options now ..
Sign up with Meteor for 55GB for €30 /month 6 Months - and either stick with the E5372 that I have or buy the B315 for €99 ( the refurbished ones for €69 are always out of stock)
Buy a B315 on amazon for £ 117 and continue testing and then decide on 3 or Meteor.

Maybe just be happy with the 11-12 Mbps I can get and hope it stays stable , means no further investment in hardware and see in 6 months what has changed..
(but this means not knowing whether I could have had something better- the grass is always greener....)

warlikedave

Happy_Harry wrote: »

I am testing both with a Vodafone R215 (Huawei E5372) which is the 4G MIFI and also a 3.75G dongle in a modem.

I now found a place in the house that gives me 4 bars of 4G on meteor with about 11-12 Mbps down and 3 Up.

I am still wondering if it would be a more stable signal and better speeds with a B315 , the B593 is on the way out and more expensive.

I have more or less 2 options now ..
Sign up with Meteor for 55GB for €30 /month 6 Months - and either stick with the E5372 that I have or buy the B315 for €99 ( the refurbished ones for €69 are always out of stock)
Buy a B315 on amazon for £ 117 and continue testing and then decide on 3 or Meteor.

Maybe just be happy with the 11-12 Mbps I can get and hope it stays stable , means no further investment in hardware and see in 6 months what has changed..
(but this means not knowing whether I could have had something better- the grass is always greener....)

Three with 3 bars of 4g on the b593-s22 is excellent I have to say:



The b593 seems to have the best reputation in terms of reception capabilities but it is limited to a max of 100mb download so in terms of future proofing the one your looking at or the e5186 seems to be the way to go.

As for providers - three offers the biggest packages but you could get a pre pay phone sim off them and use the massive limit on that and test it out with no commitment involved?

Happy_Harry

Two more things.. I have now found out that where I stated 4G on Meteor , this was in fact HSDPA+, so will need to get a new 4G plan and test again.

More annoyingly I found out that 3 and Meteor don't support VPN - and whereas it works for my work VPN, it doesn't work for PIA, I can connect to the service, but no data will make its way to me.
VF does support VPN. VPN is something I would very much like to use, but I guess it is not red line issue. I guess nobody out there has found ways of making this work on MBB other than Vodafone ?

Happy_Harry

Two more things.. I have now found out that where I stated 4G on Meteor , this was in fact HSDPA+, so will need to get a new 4G plan and test again.

More annoyingly I found out that 3 and Meteor don't support VPN - and whereas it works for my work VPN, it doesn't work for PIA, I can connect to the service, but no data will make its way to me.
VF does support VPN. VPN is something I would very much like to use, but I guess it is not red line issue. I guess nobody out there has found ways of making this work on MBB other than Vodafone ?

editorsean

With Three, I have to lower the MTU size for data to flow over it in some areas, at laest with the HMA VPN service. For example, at home and in Ballybofey, a VPN connection works fine, but in Letterkenny, I need to lower the MTU size to 1300 for it to work. I know someone else who used PIA VPN successfully with Three, so I would suggest trying a 1300 MTU size to start with.

Although I haven't checked with Meteor, I suspect it's a similar issue where the MTU size needs to be lowered.

If you're using the VPN connection on your PC, you can try adjusting the MTU size as follows:

Connect your VPN, bring up an administrator command prompt and type the following at the command line:

netsh interface ipv4 show subinterfaces

Look for the VPN connection in the listing, take note of the current MTU size (likely 1500) and type the following, replacing 'VPN_name' below with the Interface VPN name listed above:

netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface "VPN_name" mtu=1300 store=persistent

Now check if you have connectivity.

To undo the MTU size, just repeat the above, but type 'mtu=1500' in place of 'mtu=1300' for the above line, assuming 1500 was the original size.

Happy_Harry

Thanks Sean..

The idea I had was to use a PC to setup a virtual network that is using PIA (that is what I have right now with my DSL network), so I could easily switch us the VPN network on any device and be able to use it for devices that I can't install PIA on. But I can take your instructions one step at a time and see what is possible, if anything.

Thanks for the very clear steps, gives me something to do this weekend..