Finally booted Virgin out

[TJBi]

We had a little problem with BRSK the first couple of days but it's running really smoothly now, I'd not recommend the "Better TV" package as it really isn't better, but we had 6 people here last night 5 were streaming stuff and one was on headphones on Spotify? and no one was suffering from lack of speed etc, so quite impressed with the service and the price.

Here's a link if you need to switch your ISP, we would both get £50 Amazon vouchers so it is a blatant plug if I get ten signed up, it'll cover most of my van repair bill.

brsk | Join the BetterNet

Brsk is an independent Full Fibre broadband network provider. 14x faster than average UK broadband speed, using fibre only optic cables. Contact us today.

brsk.uk

Seems very expensive vs Smarty unless you need very high upload speeds.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

How much is Smarty?

 

[Geek]

There is no comparison.

Brsk is not just faster, it is also very low latency and consistently reliable.

I tried SMARTY a few years ago. The speeds were OK-ish but it was terrible because of poor latency, dropped packets and endlessly changing ip addresses.

Smarty must have got better (they're still in business) but comparing a basement-budget LTE service against a reliable fibre connection is just silly.

Fibre to the premises (whoever the provider) is incomparably better than a wireless connection.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

Didn't realise it was a mobile network, I'll stick with Brsk.

 

[TJBi]

There is no comparison.

Brsk is not just faster, it is also very low latency and consistently reliable.

I tried SMARTY a few years ago. The speeds were OK-ish but it was terrible because of poor latency, dropped packets and endlessly changing ip addresses.

Smarty must have got better (they're still in business) but comparing a basement-budget LTE service against a reliable fibre connection is just silly.

Fibre to the premises (whoever the provider) is incomparably better than a wireless connection.

Not all BRSK packages are faster.
I've used Smarty in a Teltonika 4G router with loft aerial for some years with entirely satisfactory experience (except for VPN inability to cope with network [IP address?] changes) and recently upgraded to a Zyxel 5G router with internal aerial only and am very satisfied so far. I also appear to have pretty much eliminated the problem with the VPN. The Smarty unlimited data bundle costs £20/month (or £18 if you have another Smarty SIM on the same account), and when away touring one can reduce the data bundle and thus the cost.
I have no performance comparison against BRSK, but can say that I have enjoyed reliable Internet with Smarty whereas my partner, who has Virgin fibre broadband, has experienced numerous outages.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

I'm no expert but these results are using Ookla just now, £25pm I'm happy with that, I could get cheaper, but I want reliable.

This is my old laptop Dell Lattitude i7:-



And My S10+ Phone:-

 

[Pudsey Bear]

Not all BRSK packages are faster.
I've used Smarty in a Teltonika 4G router with loft aerial for some years with entirely satisfactory experience (except for VPN inability to cope with network [IP address?] changes) and recently upgraded to a Zyxel 5G router with internal aerial only and am very satisfied so far. I also appear to have pretty much eliminated the problem with the VPN. The Smarty unlimited data bundle costs £20/month (or £18 if you have another Smarty SIM on the same account), and when away touring one can reduce the data bundle and thus the cost.
I have no performance comparison against BRSK, but can say that I have enjoyed reliable Internet with Smarty whereas my partner, who has Virgin fibre broadband, has experienced numerous outages.

Virgin are Tw@s Tom, they admit to dropping their bandwidth? to customers at peak times when they're busy to eat it out, we would get outages once or twice a month I'd just log into my phones hotspot, but their TV packages were why we stuck with them but not cheap unless you like streaming UKTV etc and watching the adverts.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

https://www.reddit.com/r/CellBoosters/comments/1cqiuno/can_any_android_cell_boosters_work_via_usb

 

[trevskoda]

I see this picture.

 

[Geek]

Not all BRSK packages are faster.
I've used Smarty in a Teltonika 4G router with loft aerial for some years with entirely satisfactory experience (except for VPN inability to cope with network [IP address?] changes)

Yes, BRSK does offer a slower, slightly cheaper package with possibly a slower published data rate, but it would still be better than the best of Smarty. The latency, jitter and IP changes were the Smarty problems.

Sounds like the IP address changes are still an issue. I found that Three didn't have the same problems with the same router at the same time in the same place. It was a Smarty backhaul issue.

If you think Smarty is entirely satisfactory, that's fine, but you'd find Brsk vastly better nonetheless.

 

[nabsim]

The thing is, many mobile or fixed connections you can get now are many times more than the user will ever really need. Smarty is part of 3 so not just a small company selling on the back of others.

I used to have a 3 SIM in the van but changed it to Smarty about a year ago to see how they were and I haven't noticed any difference at all. When EE lost the 5G signal where I live I took the EE SIM out of my 5G router at home and swapped round with the Smarty SIM.

Since retiring I don't need to connect all over the country, I play online games but not ones that have a big overhead and not first person shooters where latency could come into play. Almost all viewing is streamed with very little coming via the aerial. Apart from streaming there are three of us using social media or forum much of the time and again no issues.

While the 4G through my teltonika router in the van and the 5G at the house may not test as fast as a fixed line fibre connection it is more than enough for my, (and an awful lot of others) needs. To just say you can't compare doesn't tell the story, I have two connections that do whatever I want, the dearest being £20 a month and the cheapest I forget now but less than £12 a month. If we were all either in the house or in the van at the same time then I would only need one of those

 

[Geek]

Well, at one time I was using 4G for home Internet. With a Three sim it worked well enough, but I tried a (cheaper) Smarty sim and it was terrible. As for Three being big and dependable, I beg to differ. Three is in financial difficulties and is merging with Vodafone in an attempt to stay afloat.

You may find Smarty good enough for your needs.

I do agree that you don't need huge speed. I generally reckon that 20mb/sec is fast enough for most people, but the small extra cost for a good fibre connection (if available) is well worthwhile.

Being faster isn't the thing that makes the difference: it's the reliability and consistently low latency, and also the unplink speed.