DIY Mobile Broadband with PrePay Sim vs "Official" Mobile Broadband

joesoap91 · 08-02-2026 07:35PM #1

Moved into a new house a couple of weeks ago and Sky are taking forever to get us set up for broadband. In the meantime, I'm using my 5g phone to connect my work laptop to the internet and it's working pretty much fine (average speeds of 190 mbps), albeit at the expense of my phone's battery life. That made me investigate the possibility of using Vodafone's 5G mobile broadband, which costs between €40-45 per month, but comes at a downside of having to pay €99.99 for their Huawei mobile router.

However, a friend mentioned that I go the DIY route - buying a network unlocked 5g router from Amazon for under €200, ordering a prepay sim card from Vodafone or Clear Mobile and signing up for a prepay data plan for €15-20 per month. While I would pay slightly more upfront, the savings over a year would be considerable. However, this friend mentioned that if the ISP found out (e.g. based on traffic patterns), I could find myself throttled/blacklisted.

Has anyone had any experience of doing this? How did you fare?

eronayne · 08-02-2026 07:52PM

A few of the mobile providers will take an interest in your usage if you go over about 150 Gigs every month for a couple of months.

Fairly typical monthly fixed line usage for a family would be about the 1Tb mark

The Cush · 08-02-2026 07:54PM

My brother is going on 4 years using a €10 GoMo SIM in a 4G router connected to an Iskra P60 MIMO antenna.

Fibre is on the road since August and Starlink has been available for years but he's staying with his 4G router for now, meets their needs for now.

NotShero · 08-02-2026 07:59PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058432362/diy-mobile-broadband-with-prepay-sim-vs-official-mobile-broadband

You won't be blacklisted as they can't discriminate in what device you use under EU rules afaik but they could possibly start throttling if you used huge amounts of data, but that's the case no matter what device used.

There's 48 (Three) - €12.99pm, Clear Mobile (Vodafone) - €12.99pm & GoMo (Eir) - €14.99pm.

For your Sky issue, you could try sending an email to their complaints email - ROI-complaints@sky.ie

joesoap91 · 08-02-2026 08:28PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124218549#Comment_124218549

Thanks! Would I be safer if I go with the main providers (e.g. Vodafone) rather than one of their budget brands (e.g. Clear)?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124218577#Comment_124218577

Thanks for clarifying regarding blacklisting. I gather that high usage would potentially result in throttling? I'm struggling to make sense of the unlimited data plan ToS. They don't seem to have a written fair use policy, so it's hard for me to gauge what is reasonable/fair usage and when they would start throttling. We would probably use about 1TB a month on average, between video conferencing for work, streaming etc.

NotShero · 08-02-2026 09:01PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124218682#Comment_124218682

They don't show in the T&Cs if there's any throttling policy in place. Someone posted yesterday that they used 1.2TB this month with Clear Mobile and there was no issue. A few people have posted being throttled by 48 after using different amounts of usage. But you can just move to a different provider, if one seems to be throttling you.

smuggler.ie · 08-02-2026 10:29PM

With 3 €20/28 PAYG for over decade, there was time where i would use 1TB+ per month for several months per year - never an issue.
Times changed, but as far i remember, 2022 was last announcement from three - no restrictions. Could have changed again.
As of today, i use ~0.5TB per month and never thought of worrying about it

Shellfishfcuker · 08-02-2026 10:56PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124218577#Comment_124218577

Don't forget Lycamobile, €10 for unlimited data.

NotShero · 08-02-2026 11:09PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124219091#Comment_124219091

There's still mixed reports whether their FUP is enforced as it says in the T&Cs and that price is only for 12 months, €20 thereafter.

"Unreasonably Large Data Usage: The policy specifies that using a significantly large amount of data, such as around 100GB within a specific period, would be considered excessive. It’s common for service providers to set such limits to prevent a small number of users from monopolizing network resources. Reduced Speed: If a customer exceeds the defined data usage limit, the service provider may reduce their internet speed to a slower rate, such as 256Kbps . This reduced speed is typically referred to as throttling."

Shellfishfcuker · 08-02-2026 11:24PM

Thanks for that, I'll just have to change after 12 months (only signed up with them today!)

joesoap91 · 12-03-2026 05:00PM

I'm using Vodafone because of the lack of FUP. Speeds are normally between 150 mbps and 300mbps. But sometimes the speeds drop down to a snails pace, before magically increasing again after a reboot (switching off the power at the wall and switching it back on again after a minute).

The router allows me to set a time for a daily reboot and I have it set for 3am. However, that does not really seem to make any difference. So I'm confused if the culprit is the ISP or the hardware.

NotShero · 12-03-2026 05:19PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124307285#Comment_124307285

Maybe try a SIM from another provider, all the below offer unlimited 5G data.

You might get reduced speed with some after a certain amount of data usage, which might be what's happening with Vodafone for you currently.

eir Prepay - €20pm

GoMo (eir) - €14.99pm

Three Prepay - €20pm

48 (Three) - €12.99pm

Clear Mobile (Vodafone) - €12.99pm

eronayne · 19-03-2026 12:03AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124307285#Comment_124307285

I have seen that before with Vodafone, At the start of covid the only connection I had at home was 3mbps ADSL, nowhere near enough for the two of us to work from home and the kids do online school and fill the time with Netflix.

through work I was able to get my hands on a couple of Vodafone "unlimited" SIM cards.

after a couple of weeks exactly the same started happening, I would have to reboot the router at 8:45, again at lunch time, and sometimes around 3pm.

If I swapped the sim card to another one it would be fine again for a few weeks, Wash Rinse & repeat.

Eventually my router stopped connecting to the Vodafone 4g network and would only connect to 3g no matter what Vodafone SIM card I put in the router, swapping to a Three SIM would connect to 4G no problem.

joesoap91 · 20-03-2026 08:21AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/124307313#Comment_124307313

I tinkered with the settings of the router and disabled the fallback to 4G. Magically the speeds have stopped dropping! So it seems to have been a hardware issue.

kaptioksam · 31-03-2026 04:47PM

Using a DIY mobile broadband setup with a prepaid SIM in a 5G router is pretty common now, especially when fixed-line installs are slow, and your speeds sound solid for everyday work and streaming. The main downside is that “unlimited” data often hides soft caps or congestion-related slowdowns, so testing a few providers over a month or two is usually the best way to see who actually holds up.

DIY Mobile Broadband with PrePay Sim vs "Official" Mobile Broadband

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