Mifi Update & Choices of Sim Cards for MiFi’s

Just tested the upload/download speeds sat in the Motorhome parked off A9 about 70 miles from Aviemore so quite rural.
Connected to MiWi with a Smarty SIM (Three)
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And then using phone signal only which is a Three contract so will be same mast
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So it is making a big difference in this rural location
 
And for completeness I have just tested upload/download speed in an urban area (parked outside Lidl in Thurso)
With MiFi and antenna (Huawei E5785/Poynting Puck-2)
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and phone alone (iPhone XR)
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Which shows in a good signal urban area the iPhone as a hotspot is equivalent to the MiFi, although upload speeds always seem to improve.
 
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 .
Virgin have just moved over to Vodafone
 
And for completeness I have just tested upload/download speed in an urban area (parked outside Lidl in Thurso)
With MiFi and antenna (Huawei E5785/Poynting Puck-2)
View attachment 59752
and phone alone (iPhone XR)
View attachment 59753

Which shows in a good signal urban area the iPhone as a hotspot is equivalent to the MiFi, although upload speeds always seem to improve.
The speed people get depends on several links in a chain in either direction. It's as slow as the weakest link.

Some base stations and transmitters use channels with low channel bandwidth, so even with a perfect connection, nobody else using it, you'll not get great speed.

The Three base I use has a very small bandwidth for band 20 and much more for band 3, so I use band 3 even though the signal is less strong than on band 20.

Just to complicate matters, my router uses both band 3 and band 20 at once for extra speed when my connection is being used heavily. It was tricky to make it revert to band 3 afterwards!

Some base stations are more heavily used than others, so you may get better results from a further away base that gives weaker signals.

My nearest Three base is hopelessly overloaded, so I have to make sure I connect to one that's further away (and much faster).

The radio link connection from Three is symmetrical: the uplink speed of the link is the same as the downlink, but the data throughput is slower for downloads. That's simply because the others using the same base are downloading more than they are uploading.

Even though those speeds look good, the ping times in those speed tests seems very poor indeed. I generally get between 35 and 56ms pings using Three (20 to 25ms on EE). What happens if you do a tracert to a server in London?
 
All very interesting. I've been using a Vodafone and a EE PAYG sim for about 20 years each. I used to top up as needed, but since I got a smartphone I started getting a £5 bundle, still PAYG. They're trying really hard to get me to upgrade to a £10 bundle, but I just keep topping up £5, has to be monthly now to roll over, but sometimes forget and just top up £5 when I remember. I am a low user as use the landline at home for calls and wifi.(BT).
One of them usually has enough signal, even 4g, wherever I travel. (Mainly Spain and Scotland, I live near Fort William) I've used a dual sim phone for the last 6 years. A lot of smartphones are these days. I also have a 2014 Spanish payg sim which seems to survive not being used for 9 months or more...I tend to just use that in an old mobile for calls and Spanish-specific data.
I've just got a tablet and have considered setting up a mobile hotspot for that and the the laptop but usually happy to sit in a cafe or wait for campsite wifi....
 
Has anyone seen or used the Superdrug pay as you go sim? £20/month seems pretty reasonable to me and unlike smarty the data is unlimited in Europe without capping.

It appears to use Three which the same as smarty. Best part for me would be that it treats the Isle of Man as being part of the U.K. unlike smarty which is why I left them.
 
Superdrug is owned by the company that owns Three and Smarty.
Well that confirms my belief that smarty and Superdrug are both affiliated to Three. I was firmly in the ‘smarty camp’ as far as U.K. and a European travel went because of the wonderful connectivity using a HUAWEI 5577 with antenna.

That was until smarty dropped the Isle of Man, but how come Superdrug accept us (even on the island) and more importantly don’t restrict ‘unlimited data use in the U.K. or Europe? Smarty on the other hand restrict data use to 12GB/month when in Europe - why the difference if both affiliated to Three?

Price difference - smarty = £18/month & Superdrug = £20/ month.

If the Superdrug sim works as well as smarty’s then for us it’s a no brainer.

That said, I ask again - has anyone used the Superdrug sim?
 

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