Three Ireland 5G

Does anyone know if 3 still offer a free trial of their mobile broadband in order to ensure you have 5g coverage before committing?

It's online. 14 day cooling off period for online and phone orders. Doesn't apply to purchases made in store.

The Huawei CPE pro 2 only works with Huawei's own external antenna by an ethernet port connection which three offers. However they recently just added the ZTE Mc801a which does have the connections for 3rd party external antennas. I've been hoping three would add this modem for a while now thankfully they have. The 5G external antenna I bought won't go to waste. Also I should note that far as I know three only allows 5G to work on these two modems. Other people have tried buying 5G modems that three don't sell but 5G won't work on them.

German Tech website Sotel sells it for €275. They sell it on Amazon also for €313. Cheaper to buy it directly. I'm not sure if three's 5G will work with one that isn't sold by them though. My guess is they don't want people topping up prepay SIM cards for €25 and putting them in 3rd party 5G modems for proper unlimited data like people already do with 4G.

Well that answers that question then. Glad to hear. Are you topping up a three prepay SIM for 5G yeah? I might start doing it with the ZTE MC801a.

I don't mind paying the extra fiver for 5G but if it times out as much as you say it may not be worth it.

Depends on the frequency band used, the higher the frequency the shorter the range. The MNOs are using the 3.6 GHz band for 5g now, also the 1800 MHz band iirc.

4g is used further down in the 700/800 MHz bands, so greater coverage. The 700 MHz band is a future 5g band.

Last time I tried was about 14/15 months ago, not long after 5g was launched, it may have been an early teething issue and might be sorted out now, or it may have been only on the sector or mast I was connected to.

The problem I had was with video, If you were streaming video from some sites, the timeout would last long enough and the reconnection was slow to intiate, so video would stop and it would be several seconds to a minute before it would restart.

I'm about 9km from the nearest 5G mast and on the edge of the coverage area according to their map. I think I will wait a little longer and test it out with a 5G phone down line before getting a 5G modem and prepay SIM setup. In regard to the external antenna it cost around €250 I think with extra cable that I needed. Had to run a lot of cable though the attic to reach the room with the modem. I attached it to a pole so I could change the direction in future if I need to. There is a lot that goes into the installation but it depends where your modem is and where the best coverage/speed spot around your house is.

Wow! That's the fastest I've seen yet.

Text ‘Add Data’ to 50272 to see what data add ons are available.

https://community.three.ie/t5/Products-Services/Self-Serve-SMS-Options/ta-p/760571

Probably only option on legacy plan is 500MB add on

have you tried Eir 5G? I'm in doubt between Eir and Three

Randomly got 5G the other week in Seapoint, strange how you can sometimes get a service you dont pay for

My installation is scheduled for aug 30th so I'll let you know. From the research i've been doing it seems highly unlikely it will work. It's actually an outdoor router rather than just an antenna. whether that makes a difference I don't know.