As my fiber optic contract is about to expire, I consider not renewing it and using a portable WiFi router with a SIM card instead. I know that the speeds are not the same, but for my needs it would not be a bad idea.
I am currently a Sunrise customer, and I see on their website that there is the ‘We Connect Surf’ option which provides a 5G internet connection up to 100Mbps. I am considering this, but when I call them, they say that this is not recommended for a WiFi router (a TP-Link for example). They insist on saying ‘not recommended’, which makes me think that it would work fine, just not as fast as a fiber optic connection. Does anyone have any experience with this?
Alternatively, do you have any data SIM recommendation to be used with a TP Link WiFi router for internet connections at home? Ideally with no SIM/activation fees and no minimum contract duration? I could use my mobile phone and create a hotspot/tethering, but this would be my last option as this drains the battery like crazy and I would effectively need to have it always plugged in.
I’d you have a good sunrise network, look at Yallo, they have sim based home wifi.
If you are happy with the Sunrise network have a look at yallo, they are owned by Sunrise.
Perhaps this might interest you. If anything its a nice read.
https://www.galaxus.ch/en/page/devolo-5g-router-fast-stable-wi-fi-using-the-mobile-network-38633
Personally, I would stick with fiber.
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I’ve just decided to implant pi-hole directly at the router, except my 5G router didn’t let me specify the Raspberry PI as the DNS server… so I ended up buying this little box
I’m impressed, it’s a quality product. You can plug any USB modem or tether your phone to it on the go. I’m still using my old 5G router just as a modem, having this new toy taking the role of a router. Actually, it’s quite suitable for on-the-go, as it’s capable of running VPN with decent speeds and has integrated AdGuard. I haven’t tested the latter, but since I’ve already prepared pi-hole I prefer a home based solution vs cloud based.
Ok, here is an update.
First of all, I decided to keep the fiber at home, to be on the safe side. I ended up paying something like 40 CHF per month because I have 2 mobile phone contracts with them as well.
I also got the 4g SIM card from Yallo, used on a ZTE portable router ( Zte MF79N Portable Router).
I originally got the 150Mbps limited at 20GB per month and I was usually getting around 8-10Mbps. But 20GB is not enough, so I upgraded to unlimited data at 21Mbps down and 8Mbps up. However, I am only getting 1-2Mbps and in best case 5Mbps, which is way too low. I cannot understand why I still can’t reach the 8-10Mbps, this is strange. I can also not understand why I can get 40-50Mbps on the mobile phone with tethering but only 1-2Mbps on the portable router. I get that one is 4G and the other is 5G, but the difference is huge. Is it possible that the provider is doing some sort of traffic shaping?
At this point, the 1-2Mbps is pretty much useless, so I am thinking about cancelling it. Good thing is that there is no fixed term contract, just 2 months notice.
I go via handy hotspot, just now I got 38.03 up and 7.23 down, on 5G.
I’m with Wingo (Swisscom), unlimited usage for Fr. 20.95/month. It’s one of these “for life” deals which went up Fr. 1.00 this year (I must have died and resurrected according to Wingo long enough to change circumstances).
It all works perfectly fine. I only charge my handy to a max. of 80% and no speed charging. If the laptop is online like 15 hours I charge it once on average, max. twice in 24hours I’d say. The handy bleeps at me when it needs charging so it’s all seemless.
I connect the laptop, an old pc (with wireless stick) and - seldom these days - the wifi printer through it.
I was very sceptical about this and let a friend try it out for years. Now that’s all the internet connection I have for several years (5G is new of course, they only just started to deliver that) and I’m perfectly happy. If I still had a lot of uploading to do it would probably be uncomfortable.
Interesting info. Although at the moment I don’t see the need for connecting an additional device to the electricity-net 24/7 while my solution works well I will keep this in mind. Also I’ve worked with all kinds of Devolo products over the decades and was always satisfied with their performance.
edit: Strange: Brack sells it for Fr. 429.00, Digitec for Fr. 356.00, that is an immense difference. Same Devolo product code.
Don’t bang your head on the wall, LTE (4G) is way inferior to 5G in terms of tower bandwidth and protocol latency. The latter matters a lot, I used to travel a lot having to make conference calls over mobile with 4G on the go, the voice was often stuttering, but nowadays on 5G even with ~10Mbps speed calls are fine. Also, I noticed that LTE is essentially dead. At some point I bought a new phone just to have 5G. Not long ago my phone died, so I had to temporarily switch to the old one (still working well) but I immediately noticed the LTE coverage is almost non-existent. My theory is that it’s not the increase of traffic on LTE band, I’d rather say the operators are replacing LTE towers with 5G according to the demand. Smartphones already moved to 5G, so why to keep the disproportionately large resources of LTE towers?
Regarding Yallo, check the details of the contract, speed cap is not the only metric, what matters more is the priority class. Hint, yallo Go Max doesn’t have any speed limit or de-prioritization.
I was using 5G at home out of necessity. Today I’m living in a flat with fiber connection. Seeing the various discounts for fiber at 40 chf/m, it’s tempting. Fiber is definitely better in many parameters, but the 5G is also way enough for me (I have a really good and stable coverage here). In the end, I simply stopped thinking about switching internet providers because I suddenly realized that switching to publicly connected internet requires a certain amount of work. With CG-NAT, I could even literally turn off my firewalls.