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UK here. I pay £20/month (USD $26) for unlimited data, voice and SMS. I have two such SIMs, one for the home router (because it's cheaper and faster than FTTC
by jlokier 6y ago
UK here. I pay £20/month (USD $26) for unlimited data, voice and SMS.
I have two such SIMs, one for the home router (because it's cheaper and faster than FTTC) and another for my phone.
Usage varies, but on a busy month the home SIM will see 100-300 GB, mostly for Netflix. The phone SIM sees about 10-30 GB.
Speed varies by time of day, but at peak it's 90 Mbit/s down, 20 Mbit/s up. At the slowest times of day it drops to about 8 Mbit/s down. The phone is faster than the router, so I've occasionally switched to using the phone to download something large.
Last time I checked, there was technically a cap on the monthly data of 3 TB. For a while they also limited tethering to 30 MB, i.e. using the phone as a wifi hotspot, and then (if they detected it) you could theoretically be charged a lot for tethered data over that cap. But they officially removed that restriction a few years ago.
The links are a bit unreliable. But the FTTC connection I had before was more unreliable, and more than twice the price. The FTTC connection before that was nearly three times the price (gouging - it started out cheaper than quietly kept increasing a lot). And if I move home, I can take my link with me now, instead of being tied into a 12 month contract at a fixed location.
- blibble 6y agoas another data point: my FTTC was basically perfect, 110mbit sync, dropped maybe three times a year I was sort of sad to replace it with FTTP, which has been slightly more unreliable
- gorgoiler 6y agoWho are your providers, and did you have to negotiate these tariffs or do they come as standard offerings? Crucially: how long are you contractually tied to your cell provider?
- dan1234 6y agoUnlimited deals are fairly standard in the UK (though the signal in my area is far too slow to consider it). https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/compare/sim_only_deals/ https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/compare/sim_only_deals/
- mdrzn 6y agoWhen I visited the UK for a couple months in late 2014, as soon as I landed I bought a random sim card (I think the provider was "3 UK"), and for £15 a month I had unlimited internet data. And no contract, it was a monthly rechargeable plan. I'm sure they're even more available now. In Italy now most of the mobile providers give 50GB/7€/month.
- ksec 6y agoInteresting, do they actually use the term FTTC during marketing? As far as I am aware, FTTC is just VDSL2 up to 35b or G.Fast ( or Cable DOCSIS 3.1 which isn't popular in UK ).
- jlokier 6y agoI originally wrote ADSL in the comment, then realised that was misleading because it wasn't old-school ADSL to the exchange. There's a fibre component and it's still worse than 4G for my needs :-) So I edited the comment to FTTC for clarification. When sold it was probably just "Superfast Broadband". Looking at marketing now, I see "Faster Broadband", "Fibre Broadband", "Superfast Fibre", "Ultrafast Fibre", "Fibre Optic Broadband"... It's impossible to tell from marketing whether it's FTTC, FTTP or something else.
- simonjgreen 6y agoYes they use the term fttc. It's vdsl up to an 80/20 profile. Docsis is very very popular, virgin media is the only national Docsis network and accounts for a significant portion of urban connections (though less than the percentage that would trigger a competition breakup like bt)
- sumedh 6y ago> if they detected it) How can they detect that?
- lozf 6y agoThe post at https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/47819/how-can-phone-companies-detect-tethering-incl-wifi-hotspot https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/47819/how-can-ph... offers some explanations. I'm pretty sure I've come across different APNs being used before (on the Giffgaff MVNO using O2s UK network), but don't recall the details.
- sumedh 6y agoInteresting, didn't know that.