Hello Coolsmartphoners. At home I’ve got that “FTTC” gubbins that most people either know as “BT Infinity” or, when it’s sold through other providers, “Fibre broadband” ..which it isn’t quite, not all the way.
Anyhoo. I’m pretty lucky. However, if you’re not, you can try this.
The idea sounds a bit risky to start off with. It basically combines your home broadband (and this targets ADSL connections up to 12Mbps) with your smartphone data connection to deliver faster speeds and better reliability. My initial concerns here were, “What about the damager to my smartphone data plan?” and “Is this classed as tethering?”
Well, we’ll get to those points in a moment. First, the requirements. You’ll need …
1 – Home ADSL Broadband connection of up to 12Mbps in speed
2 – A home ADSL Broadband WiFi router with at least one free Ethernet port
2 – A USB charger or perhaps a free USB port your router to supply power.
You’ll also need your Android or iPhone to have a good 3G or 4G signal.
The installation is crazy simple. Just plug it into a spare ethernet port, power it from a USB port and then download the app. That’s it. You’ll need a myboosty.com account too – this will let you see what’s happening with the device and how much data is going over your home broadband. The default setting is for Boosty to only gradually bring in mobile data when the home broadband connection is full. If you’re in a household full of gadgets and people, this will definitely help a great deal. You can also use the “Turbo” feature, which adds an instant boost, but this’ll mean more data is used on your phone.
Plug it in and you’ll get a blue and green flashing LED. It’ll settle to a solid green, then begin flashing. The BoostyLink is available for Android and for iPhone.
Browsing on your laptop or PC will be interrupted when you plug it all up, and you’ll start getting the setup screens. These will get you setup with the myboosty.com account, plus you can specifically select which devices on your internal network can use the Boosty (and your mobile data account). I chose to have all the devices use my phone in this particular test.
I fired up the app and that quickly found the Boosty Router. It then, thankfully, gave me this screen. This is something I was really hoping to see ..
Yes, you can tell the Boosty Router just when to stop using your phone data. Brilliant. Now, some of this isn’t a great test, because my broadband connection at home didn’t get “full” that easily and I had to do speed tests to try and fill my home data connection. If, as an example, you’re on a slower or unreliable ADSL connection (or you’re in a busy office where the broadband isn’t great), this could be just the ticket.
To get more speed instantly you can hit the “Turbo” button. This is accessible from the app itself or the little router. This gives you some extra capacity instantly, and can help you out if you’re in a rush or you’re perhaps doing a speed test like I was.
Overall
For those with lots of people in the house on a not-very-fast ADSL connection, this is the ideal solution. It’s a tiny gadget which automatically detects your device, sets up quickly and you can control the amount of data it pulls from your phone. Better yet, I didn’t see any tethering charges. If you don’t want to have your phone in use, you can use a dongle too.
Pricing. Let’s talk about that. The starter pack is £69 which includes a connection fee, 12 months of service and the hire of the router. It seems that the router isn’t actually yours, and from what I can make out it connects to your phone and then your phone connects to their service to route the traffic without notching up and tethering fees. That said, £69 and, if you’re careful with a dedicated phone on a good data plan (and let’s face it, you can get a 4GB data plan for £10 per month) it’s a very good offering indeed.