I had a look at the small mobile router by the Chinese company that has a predilection for vowels in a weird order plus a random 'h' and a 'w'. From what I could see it had a USB socket but no RJ11. Also the EE shop doesn't seem to mention them but has some routers they market as 4Gee and 5Gee.

E

Quote: Steamdrivenandy wrote in post #32

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I had a look at the small mobile router by the Chinese company that has a predilection for vowels in a weird order plus a random 'h' and a 'w'. From what I could see it had a USB socket but no RJ11. Also the EE shop doesn't seem to mention them but has some routers they market as 4Gee and 5Gee.

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If it's not broke, dont fix it !
If a smart salesman calls to your door and offers you top o' the range warp speed megagiggabites for a fraction of what you are currenty paying and that you just have to sit back, they will do the changeover, this is what you do: set the dogs on him. No warning.
If I had to type the full story my fingers would wear out, suffice to say what started at my front door in Ireland ended with an argument with a lady that was, I think, located somewhere in India ( such a wonderful time we had with accents and time delayed speech ! ) and a solicitors letter to the salesman's service providers company. I almost lost my reason.. so dogs at the ready !
Chris

Amusing comment seeing the origin of this thread was the loss of a land-line based internet connection:)

The subject of hotspots were only mentioned as a potential short term solution to the resolution of the land line router problem. It took sky 3 months to get my land line reconnected after they cocked up my connection: needless to say I’ll never be a customer of theirs again!

Sounds like your problems were similar.

The advantage of a mobile hotspot is you can always get a connection yourself whereas a land line switch/problem will involve the ISP, Openreach, the Asian sub-continent and Uncle Tom cobley and all

Quote: Just_Chilin wrote in post #35

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AThe subject of hotspots were only mentioned as a potential short term solution to the resolution of the land line router problem.

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We are currently on our canal boat and managing quite well using the phone mobile hotspot with a 4G connection. My Virgin mobile contract costs all of £10.50 a month for 15GB plus usually 5 GB carried over which is usually plenty for a couple of weeks trip either on the boat or Erica, with my wife’s Vodafone as a backup. As long as you have a decent phone it works fine.

I just looked at the Which? site that shows actual mobile reception performance based on info from an app on people's phones, rather than computer models that the mobile networks provide.

Round here '3' is useless, EE and Vodaphone are on a par and fairly good, with O2 somewhere in between.

Thats what i meant about choosing a network with a transmitter close to your home that provides good coverage:)

It's interesting looking at those maps because the coverage is really only shown along major roads and railways because that's where there are enough passing phones to generate a report. With the M6 about a mile east, across fields, there's plenty of coverage and along the WCML, a few hundred yards west the same applies but the country lanes and side roads have no info at all. So if you live on such a road you have to take a gamble that nearby spots with reports are going to indicate whether decent reception is likely, though it's noticeable that next door little 100yd hexagons on the map can go from excellent to carp for no apparent reason.
One interesting little anecdote though. A nearby lane is about 2 miles long and a dead end. It serves a couple of farms. On all the network maps bar one the whole area is just a mass of clear white hexagons, nothing to report. However on the one network map, right over one of the farms, there's a blue hexagon indicating good service. It's still surrounded by acres of white hexagons but presumably the family there have the reporting app on their phones and they're all run on that particular network.

Andy you can get a free ''3" sim card with 200MB of free data each month. Presumeably its a marketing ploy, hoping you will join. But you could try it out with no commitment.

https://3g.co.uk/three-data-reward-sim

Steve

If someone is using a 4G signal booster that could possibly explain the one good cell amongst a sea of bad ones pehaps?

Andy, you can get a payg sim sent free from all the providers. You can see the signal strength on your phone without activating them.

Steve