It’s doubtful that mindsets will change overnight, but getting broadband into your home or business no longer means sticking to a wired provider. With 5G on the horizon, the mobile networks are poised to take a substantial slice of the market – potentially delivering faster speeds in more places.
As an example, those living in rural and remote parts of the UK are stuck with either slow, expensive or laggy broadband because they’re too far from the local exchange. As an example, BT Openreach recently gave a massive quote of £502,586 to upgrade a sub-1Mbps internet connection in Cockermouth, Cumbria, which was already costing £70 every month.
David Roberts working on his laptop
The potential customer, David Roberts, refused to pay the amount and continued on with his expensive and slow connection instead. A BT spokesman told us at the time that..
His property is several kilometres away from our nearest usable network, which means significant civil engineering, build and cabling work is needed to provide a connection.
So, sniffing an opportunity, specialist internet service provider, 4G Internet, got in touch with David to offer him a solution – internet via 4G.
Now sure, I know what you’re thinking. If you’re in such a remote spot then chances are that you’ll have no 4G connection on your phone either. However, if you’re in an area like this, their engineers will fit a small high gain directional 4G antenna to the outside of your property. Once correctly aligned and installed, this latches onto available 4G signals, boosts them and pipes them down to the 4G router inside.
This means that a relatively weak 4G signal becomes a strong one, and – via the WiFi router which is fed from the antenna – you get much better connectivity.
4G Internet visited Mr and Mrs Roberts’ home and succeeded in connecting them via the 4G mobile network instead of relying on BT’s underperforming copper landline connection. The couple are now accessing speeds between 11 and 14 Mbps – at least ten times better than they had previously. The entire bespoke installation process, which costs under £400, also involved the professional fitting of an external 4G antenna and took just one day to complete.
The company does unlimited plans at £39.99 per month and you just need to pay for a 4G router and / or an antenna if there’s only a weak 4G signal.
David Roberts told us…
My wife and I had no idea we could access the internet through a mobile phone signal and we were initially sceptical that it would work. Since the installation we are now able to watch TV and movies from streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime with no buffering and without losing the signal altogether.
Head to 4G Internet for more information.