On Friday 9th of February 2018 EE launched their 4G Home Broadband to general availability.
Living in rural Cumbria a lot of us are used to slow broadband speeds unless you happen to be one of the lucky ones living in a fibre enabled town and close to either your local telephone exchange or the green street side cabinet.
EE have been testing 4G equipment and connections for residential properties in Cumbria as an option for those of us at the end of long telephone lines in out of the way places where speeds can be, let’s kindly say, sub-optimal.
EE are promoting their 4G Home Broadband as having speeds of up to 100Mbps. The speeds sound promising, although as always these should be taken with a grain or two of salt as an independent survey of the EE network showed average speeds of around 30Mbps UK wide. These are still in excess of the speeds that some of our clients experience on their usual ADSL lines.
To put these speeds into perspective, a standard broadband line is capable of up to 18Mbps with average speeds of 10-12Mbps and Fibre Broadband (VDSL) is available in up to 38Mbps or 76Mbps where the averages can vary far more.
Some of our clients experience far less than this though, in the extreme cases only an unstable 1Mbps which is not fast or stable enough to run a business on. For a number of these clients we have been able to provide long distance point to point wireless connections from a donor building with faster speeds to alleviate the problem. We may now have another tool in the toolbox to help our customers out.
The costs that EE are indicating seem fairly reasonable. Admittedly there is a £100 upfront fee for the installation of the external antenna (a normal broadband activation can be up to £50) but from then on it is £35 a month including 50Gb of data allowance or £60 including 200Gb of data, this compares favourably to £30-£40 for a ADSL/Fibre service including line rental. During the installation an EE engineer mounts an antenna to the outside of your property for a better signal pickup and then wires this to the inside of your property to a new EE router. It should be noted that EE provide 4G Home Broadband without the external antenna and installation costs, but this will not provide an optimal signal for most users.
For a selection of our commercial customers this solution could also be used as a backup to physical line installations to protect against downtime due to line faults or other issues.
We have yet to see one of these installations live, however we have a few clients in immediate mind for which it may resolve their internet connection woes. We will be reaching out to these clients in the near future.
If you would like to discuss the possibilities of adding one of these connections to your business please give us a call on
017687 75526 or email info@kcssolutions.co.uk.
Further information:
EE have produced an introduction video on the 4G solution which are be viewed here:
EE – 4G Home Broadband – Connecting Rural Communities Across the UK
To check the coverage and expected speeds please see the EE Combined Broadband Checker here: https://shop.ee.co.uk/broadband
For more information on the plans available and costs from EE please see here: http://www.ee.co.uk/4GEErouter
Note that EE’s page doesn’t make it obvious that you need to call them on 0800 079 0131 for the external antenna option.
Please note that KCS have no affiliation with EE and are not recommending this product or its qualities, we are simply providing the details about its new availability. All ordering and service payments are made directly through EE.