Mifi Update & Choices of Sim Cards for MiFi’s

[The Raptor]

My MiFi (Huawei E5785) arrived today and the Poynting Puck-2 is installed (I drilled a 20mm hole through my Autotrail Roof ). It worked with my phones Sim on Three but I didn’t want the Faff of taking my SIM out of phone and putting in MiFi…,,,,,Looking at Data Sims, I followed Geeky Phillip’s Quidco recommendation on YouTube but the contracts are now 24 months . Researching other providers I ended up getting a Smarty sim (Three masts) which is a 1 month contract with unlimited for £18 putting on hold after 30days or rolling, the other SIM i ordered in case no Three signal is one from 1pMobile (EE masts) which I paid £30 upfront and the credit (=30Gb) is valid for 1 year.
Hopefully this may help anyone looking into data sims.
And if anyone knows anything different please comment

 

[Exwindsurfer]

My MiFi (Huawei E5785) arrived today and the Poynting Puck-2 is installed (I drilled a 20mm hole through my Autotrail Roof ). It worked with my phones Sim on Three but I didn’t want the Faff of taking my SIM out of phone and putting in MiFi…,,,,,Looking at Data Sims, I followed Geeky Phillip’s Quidco recommendation on YouTube but the contracts are now 24 months . Researching other providers I ended up getting a Smarty sim (Three masts) which is a 1 month contract with unlimited for £18 putting on hold after 30days or rolling, the other SIM i ordered in case no Three signal is one from 1pMobile (EE masts) which I paid £30 upfront and the credit (=30Gb) is valid for 1 year.
Hopefully this may help anyone looking into data sims.
And if anyone knows anything different please comment
View attachment 59615View attachment 59616

I took the Quidco deal about 3week s ago but it only the year contract.I also have a smarty deal the £10 one and to try and cover all bases my wife is with virgin she gets 30g data that rolls over ever month so hopefully we will be covered .Virgin are part of EE .

 

[Alberto]

Utilities Warehouse are doing unlimited data on EE for £20 month 1st sim and £10 month on second sim.
This is on a monthly contract.
Only been connected for one month so cannot comment on service etc. Uw.co.uk/services/mobile/
Al

 

[UFO]

the other SIM i ordered in case no Three signal is one from 1pMobile (EE masts) which I paid £30 upfront and the credit (=30Gb) is valid for 1 year.

My understanding of 1p mobile is that calls are 1p a minute, texts are 1p and data is 1p a Mb. £30 = 3,000p, which buys 3,000Mb = 3Gb.

Data boosts, which last 30 days are -
2Gb for £6 = 0.3p/Mb
10 Gb for £10 = 0.1p/Mb = which is the 30Gb for £30 you quote, but only last for 30 days
50 Gb for £15 = 0.03/Mb

If I have got my sums and understanding right!

 

[The Raptor]

My understanding of 1p mobile is that calls are 1p a minute, texts are 1p and data is 1p a Mb. £30 = 3,000p, which buys 3,000Mb = 3Gb.

Data boosts, which last 30 days are -
2Gb for £6 = 0.3p/Mb
10 Gb for £10 = 0.1p/Mb = which is the 30Gb for £30 you quote, but only last for 30 days
50 Gb for £15 = 0.03/Mb

If I have got my sums and understanding right!

Thanks for spotting that UFO, very clever advertising which I didn’t see .

 

[in h]

Utilities Warehouse are doing unlimited data on EE for £20 month 1st sim and £10 month on second sim.
This is on a monthly contract.
Only been connected for one month so cannot comment on service etc. Uw.co.uk/services/mobile/
Al

I've been using them for several months, with three SIMs live. The mobile service is as good or as bad as EE, even though you're meant to use a different APN.
The customer service rather less efficient. I ported one number, but they moved it to the wrong UW sim: not a problem, but it might have been!

 

[Obanboy666]

Stopped using my mifi early this year, now just use my iPhone as a hotspot for iPad and MacBook saving me the £10.00 a month I was paying for the mifi sim.
No issues to date with 3 sim in iPhone giving decent coverage.

 

[in h]

The 1pmobile deal is excellent value for a low user of calls and texts who doesn't use data. Your credit lasts indefinitely, but you have to top up £10 after 120 days.
If you make more than 500 minutes of calls or send 500 texts (or a combination) you are better with the Smarty 3GB contract: unlimited calls and texts, and if you don't use the 3GB data allowance, you get 1p per unused 10MB off the next bill. So it only costs £4 per month for unlimited calls and texts.
However, if you use lots of data (basically, if you watch video online) you need something else.
All the PAYG data bundles I know of are limited to 30 day expiry.
Your best options are usually a 12 month / 12GB or 24 month / 24GB prepaid Three SIM, or if you use more data, a Smarty or Utility Warehouse contract SIM.
Data-only Sims cost more. Cheaper to get one with calls included.
Worth noting that UW are on EE, and has better coverage and MUCH better latency than Smarty has on Three.

 

[maingate]

Stopped using my mifi early this year, now just use my iPhone as a hotspot for iPad and MacBook saving me the £10.00 a month I was paying for the mifi sim.
No issues to date with 3 sim in iPhone giving decent coverage.

I put the Wifes iPhone5 on to the £10 - 30gb Smarty deal so we could use it when away in the van as a hotspot. So far (on 2 trips) she has barely had a signal at all and it proved useless.

 

[Exwindsurfer]

I put the Wifes iPhone5 on to the £10 - 30gb Smarty deal so we could use it when away in the van as a hotspot. So far (on 2 trips) she has barely had a signal at all and it proved useless.

I’ve got the same deal Jim and your right it’s not great .

 

[trevskoda]

I put the Wifes iPhone5 on to the £10 - 30gb Smarty deal so we could use it when away in the van as a hotspot. So far (on 2 trips) she has barely had a signal at all and it proved useless.

My ph gets no signal wifi unless im in a free wifi shopping centre, any way far to small to read and i dont like android one bit, pine ph next with linux loaded.

 

[number14]

I put the Wifes iPhone5 on to the £10 - 30gb Smarty deal so we could use it when away in the van as a hotspot. So far (on 2 trips) she has barely had a signal at all and it proved useless.

Reception is not just a matter of signal strength, it is also affected by the bandwidth on any given network antenna and the demand. A few weeks ago (Bank Holiday) we were parked high up not far from Tenby. Three (smarty) was non existent but EE was five bars of 4g. Even so, on EE , browsing was painfully slow and streaming TV impossible. In contrast, when in the Peak District the other day, EE was dead and there was only one bar of 3g on Three, but this was enough to give us pretty snappy browsing and smooth streaming in SD.
I use a mifi with poynting puck antenna BTW.

 

[Deleted member 5729]

Reception is not just a matter of signal strength, it is also affected by the bandwidth on any given network antenna and the demand. A few weeks ago (Bank Holiday) we were parked high up not far from Tenby. Three (smarty) was non existent but EE was five bars of 4g. Even so, on EE , browsing was painfully slow and streaming TV impossible. In contrast, when in the Peak District the other day, EE was dead and there was only one bar of 3g on Three, but this was enough to give us pretty snappy browsing and smooth streaming in SD.
I use a mifi with poynting puck antenna BTW.

You are right about the signal in Tenby, we are with O2 and can't get a mobile signal in the house. They are on about 5G, 1G would be a blessing here. When we are about, we use a three mifi at £9.40 a month for 20Gb. Monthly 24 month contract, but doesn't roll over. We find that network coverage is average, but not great.

 

[jagmanx]

I use Giff-Gaff.
No contract and just buy whichever goody bag I think will last 1 month.
Usually £10 or £15. Can start a new goody bag early of you run out of data. Uses the O2 network and coverage/speed ok. No streamimg as such just the odd clip.

 

[in h]

My personal experience of Giffgaff was not good.

The price is fairly good, the coverage almost good enough, but the data speeds were pitiful.

I tried it three times over a couple of years. They seemed to be worse than before on each occasion.

I threw the last Giffgaff SIM away with loads of credit on: it was unusably slow.

I've not tried O2 itself to compare, but I found Three about five times as fast, EE ten times as fast, in the same place at the same time. Yes, I have several identical mifi units to compare with.

As Giffgaff are still in business, other people must have better experience of their service, but I'd definitely choose Three* Smarty or UW if I wanted a cheap deal.

*I tried Smarty and found it quite a lot less good than Three, but only marginally cheaper.

 

[Deleted member 117]

I tried a giffgaff data sim once to back up my EE. The speed was ok for the first 10GB then it was painfully slow (all in same location) I think this is common with sims using other providers masts...the deal looks good but is rubbish performance !! Anyway, got a great deal with EE as we have a data sim in mifi for home (no landline) and two phone sims for our mobiles. The beauty is you can transfer data from one sim to another. So, when going away I transfer data to a phone and use as hotspot (never failed yet) The mifi stays at home allowing remote access to various gadgets. Mark. ....Oh, regularly streamed Netflix at home no probs and streamed footy via firestick and hotspot no probs...

 

[in h]

How good is your EE deal? We have three UW (EE) Sims all with unlimited calls, texts and data. Costs are £20 for the first, then £10 each extra sim. £40 per month for all three.

 

[Deleted member 117]

How good is your EE deal? We have three UW (EE) Sims all with unlimited calls, texts and data. Costs are £20 for the first, then £10 each extra sim. £40 per month for all three.

Hi, ours is £18 a month for mifi sim but 100GB limit. Each phone sim £8 unlimited calls, texts but just 5GB data. So £34....but this was negotiated months ago. TBH we had a £7 Netflix add-on which was data free but decided Netflix was rubbish so stopped it. Might pester EE for your deal if we feel short of data...do you have landline ? Oh, are UW sims subject to dodgy speeds being piggyback to EE ?

 

[in h]

We have had landline on and off this year (it's a long story), but mostly we use 4G. However, the connections are all aggregated together through a proxy server, so they all* appear as one fast connection.

*All being two UW/EE connections, one Three connection and one slightly slow rural FTTC connection. The other UW is used in a phone.

We only need two or three of these four, but one SIM goes away in the motorhome mi-fi and another is really meant for our other house, which should get really fast FTTC because it's in an urban area, but we haven't sorted that yet.

 

[Alan Sh]

I've got a 4G router (TP Link) and I just upgraded my Virgin broadband and was give a free unlimited mobile sim as part of the package. Underneath, it runs vodafone, so I'll see how well it works when I go out and about.

Alan