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Tell me about tethering .... (Moto G4 / giffgaff)

gentlegreen

gentlegreen

I hummus, therefore I am ...
I'm totally fed up paying through the nose for Virgin and I'm considering going 4G SIM ...
So I've ordered a WIFI dongle for my PC and I'll buy a goodybag ...
My thinking is if this works, I will end up also joining the modern world and having mobile data in the park ... as well as having redundancy ...

If it works REALLY well I would be tempted to upgrade my 5 year old phone ... which I was planning to soonish anyway - maybe when 5G is established...
 
What do you need to know? It's as simple as turning on the hot spot feature on your phone and connecting to the WiFi network it generates.

How good it is depends on what the signal is where you live, but when we moved and we're waiting for Virgin to be installed I was able to stream Netflix at 4K using my phone as a hotspot.
 
gentlegreen said:
I'm totally fed up paying through the nose for Virgin and I'm considering going 4G SIM ...
So I've ordered a WIFI dongle for my PC and I'll buy a goodybag ...
My thinking is if this works, I will end up also joining the modern world and having mobile data in the park ... as well as having redundancy ...

If it works REALLY well I would be tempted to upgrade my 5 year old phone ... which I was planning to soonish anyway - maybe when 5G is established...
Click to expand...

Do you know what your data use is at the moment?

If I'm on a downloading cycle, I can easily download 5Gb in a day.
 
So I'm using 140GB on my PC (and about 50 on my phone just in bed !)

So 200GB a month - which would be a £35 "unlimited" goody bag on giffgaff - half what I'm paying on Virgin ...
 
gentlegreen said:
So I'm using 140GB on my PC (and about 50 on my phone just in bed !)

So 200GB a month - which would be a £35 "unlimited" goody bag on giffgaff - half what I'm paying on Virgin ...
Click to expand...

Probably worth Googleing your mobile company to find out if it really is unlimited or if they throttle you after a certain amount.

I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be paying £70 either. I pay just over 50 for a business connection with fixed IPs and 800Mbs down.
 
UnderAnOpenSky said:
No its just the madness that is the modern world. They deliberately don't mar this simple and try to overcharge people who don't question it. I assume your out of contract so tell them your leaving.
Click to expand...
I texted and complained with no effect, I haven't yet been able to face phoning them on voice.
I'm hopefully only here for another year to 18 months ...
A lot of my poor money decisions is because I've been in denial about staying in the country for yet another year ...
 
Last edited:
gentlegreen said:
I texted and complained with no effect, I haven't yet been able to face phoning them on voice.
I'm hopefully only here for another year to 18 months ...
A lot of my poor money decisions is because I've been in denial about staying in the country for yet another year ...
Click to expand...

You need to speak to the department that handles you leaving. Given your circumstances it might just be easier to cancel and switch to mobile data, but expect some brilliant offers when you do!
 
UnderAnOpenSky said:
Probably worth Googleing your mobile company to find out if it really is unlimited or if they throttle you after a certain amount.

I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be paying £70 either. I pay just over 50 for a business connection with fixed IPs and 800Mbs down.
Click to expand...

I'm paying more than that, but it is with a phone line.

The phoneline is never used for outbound, but a number of people who phone regularly (wrinklies one and all) don't have mobiles.
 
UnderAnOpenSky said:
Probably worth Googleing your mobile company to find out if it really is unlimited or if they throttle you after a certain amount.

I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be paying £70 either. I pay just over 50 for a business connection with fixed IPs and 800Mbs down.
Click to expand...
In the UK, giffgaff now offers a choice of two goodybag plans with unlimited data:

  • The £25 Always On goodybag gives you 4G coverage on giffgaff. You’ll get uncapped download speeds on the first 80GB per month. After this, there’s a maximum speed of 384kbps between 8am and midnight (equivalent to a basic 3G connection).
  • The £35 unlimited data golden goodybag gives you 5G coverage on giffgaff. You’ll get uncapped download speeds on this plan, subject a fair use limit of 650GB per month.
gentlegreen
 
If you have a good Three signal you can get their 4G router (or 5G which falls back to 4G) - no need to tether a phone. £20pm unlimited data on a 24 month contract (£10 for the first six).

We dumped our landline last May so we're a third of the way through our contract, works out at £13.55/month as we got a Quidco cashback.

We're not looking back - speed test this morning was 130Mbps though it can drop to "only" 40Mbps when congested (still better than our previous ADSL).

My son & DiL moved house last week and got a Three router. They have a 30 day guarantee to return it while they arrange fibre or whatever.

We did a week's trial in Oct '21 to test it - sent the router back and weren't charged anything, even for the 100GB data we used. When our Shell broadband contract expired in May we got a Three router which came the next day.

Tomorrow we'll have our son & DiL working from our home, streaming youtube for the 3yo gs, no problems.

ETA: Our usage is around 400GB data/month
ALSO - we can take the router with us when we go away or put the data sim in a dual sim Nokia and tether.
 
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UnderAnOpenSky said:
Probably worth Googleing your mobile company to find out if it really is unlimited or if they throttle you after a certain amount.
Click to expand...
Many years ago I had a blackberry that I tethered quite a lot - it cost a fiver a month and had a data limit of 2TB. Sadly the mobile company stopped doing blackberry services. :(
 
If going to do this, I would get a separate mobile router. otherwise you will really be hammering your mobiles battery. i’ve got an old TP Link one. Don’t get a business class one they are stupid money. some you put the Sim in directly others you use a USB mobile dongle.
 
I'm really impressed with GiffGaff - have said before but I've had £10 credit for a couple of years now (I'm dreading it running out because it's been so long I can't remember how to renew it) and they don't complain at all. They just send me a reminder every three months or so that I need to use it, so I make a 10p or so phone call and I'm good for another three months.
 
My WIFI dongle will be here today - initially it's almost more of an insurance policy in case Virgin breaks again - the WIFI on their router died some time ago - luckily my secondary one is better in any case ...

I've speculated on 15GB for this month for my phone to play with hotspots and see how much data I use on the move.
At the very least it will allow me to stream French radio and YT channels in the park - and post on Urbanz :D
 
Mind you I have data saving turned on...
I'll see how it is when I get home.
I know I'm in a 5G hole. I don't know when the two new towers are going up it presumably may improve 4G too ....

While I have all these unlimited calls I suppose I will phone Virgin in any case...

It's cool streaming French radio in the park but difficult to stop YT accessing the Internet even when playing downloaded files..
 
gentlegreen said:
Mind you I have data saving turned on...
I'll see how it is when I get home.
I know I'm in a 5G hole. I don't know when the two new towers are going up it presumably may improve 4G too ....

While I have all these unlimited calls I suppose I will phone Virgin in any case...

It's cool streaming French radio in the park but difficult to stop YT accessing the Internet even when playing downloaded files..
Click to expand...

4g can be really quick, like faster then most home Internet connections, so wouldn't sweat the 5g to much.
 
two sheds said:
I'm really impressed with GiffGaff - have said before but I've had £10 credit for a couple of years now (I'm dreading it running out because it's been so long I can't remember how to renew it) and they don't complain at all. They just send me a reminder every three months or so that I need to use it, so I make a 10p or so phone call and I'm good for another three months.
Click to expand...
Same with me, I keep my old UK number but rarely use it so do occasionally have to send a random text to keep it active but it's handy for when i do come home and use it for two factor authentication for UK accounts.
 
Not brilliant ...
It works though - no issue streaming HD video which is as challenging as my Interweb usage gets...

tethered.png
 
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In the process I "fixed" my Virgin WIFI.
The new router insisted I capitalise the first letter of my SSID and I had somehow forgotten to do that on my phone.
For some reason my PC won't connect to my old WIFI router ...
 
I feel like people renaming their SSID is dying out with people sticking to the one issued by their isp.
 
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