[cefk]

Hi Guys,
I just wanted to know if anyone was successfully tethering from a basement flat. I've been doing it on 3 with iphone 4 and was considering upgrading to an iphone 5 just to get better tethering. I get 1 to 3 bars, but have recently been struggling to get good download rates for streaming video.

Today I got a Virgin Media phone line set up with broadband that offers 9MBit-16MBit dowload rates.The faster hybrid fibre coax stops about 50 metres from our house unfortunately.

It's frustrating that the wired connection will be such a small improvement on paper over the tethered solution, but I'm assuming that it will be much more reliable with a much faster average download rate than DC HSPDA (in the 3 store today in Brighton, their demo iphone 5 only managed 6MBit download rate with full bars)

Anyone else think this is the best way to deal with a tough situation? Ideally the fewer telco's to deal with the better. It might be worth buying a secondhand iphone 5 in 12 months time?

[jabbamk1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cefk

Hi Guys,
I just wanted to know if anyone was successfully tethering from a basement flat. I've been doing it on 3 with iphone 4 and was considering upgrading to an iphone 5 just to get better tethering. I get 1 to 3 bars, but have recently been struggling to get good download rates for streaming video.

Today I got a Virgin Media phone line set up with broadband that offers 9MBit-16MBit dowload rates.The faster hybrid fibre coax stops about 50 metres from our house unfortunately.

It's frustrating that the wired connection will be such a small improvement on paper over the tethered solution, but I'm assuming that it will be much more reliable with a much faster average download rate than DC HSPDA (in the 3 store today in Brighton, their demo iphone 5 only managed 6MBit download rate with full bars)

Anyone else think this is the best way to deal with a tough situation? Ideally the fewer telco's to deal with the better. It might be worth buying a secondhand iphone 5 in 12 months time?

Most likely. And that's why i'd say stick to Virgin for now. If you find that your data usage is dropping and you don't use the internet much then tethering can be a good option for occasional usage.

But relying on a mobile network as a fixed line alternative 24/7 is not a good idea. Only if it's a last resort would i consider it.

9mbps is more than enough tbh. If you think it's not then even more reason to not go down the tethering/mobile route as you'll find speeds will vary even more.

[Lidtop2013]

6mbps is not great, must be your area.

I can get around 8-10mbps on my iPhone 4S on Three

[cefk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jabbamk1

Most likely. And that's why i'd say stick to Virgin for now. If you find that your data usage is dropping and you don't use the internet much then tethering can be a good option for occasional usage.

But relying on a mobile network as a fixed line alternative 24/7 is not a good idea. Only if it's a last resort would i consider it.

9mbps is more than enough tbh. If you think it's not then even more reason to not go down the tethering/mobile route as you'll find speeds will vary even more.

Thanks for the support. It will be for a share flat of 3. I had about 20 mbps for a share house of 5 back in 2006 (we would use 10GB/month max) but web content is more data intensive now. I've basically been limiting activity to podcasts, lowering resolution on videos etc. The main problem was VOIP call quality.

FYI the NBN is being rolled out in Melbourne, so I'll vote for fibre to the home (FTTH/Labor) in September. It's missing my parent's houses in the first couple of rollout phases, so there'll only be patches of 100mbps throught melbourne for a while. When Labor lose, unfortunately the NBN will revert to fibre to the node (box in the street) under coalition. This will be a little slower. Nevertheless there's a good article about how to fully utilise a 1gbps connection and basically the author just gave up.

Cheers

[Lidtop2013]

Lol you didn't mention your not even in our country(UK)

[cefk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lidtop2013

6mbps is not great, must be your area.

I can get around 8-10mbps on my iPhone 4S on Three

Brighton must be treated as a student town with high usage and low priority. (Virgin said that the Cable will 'never' be installed for our house)
Still, that moment in the 3 store was priceless - deafening silence.

[cefk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lidtop2013

Lol you didn't mention your not even in our country(UK)

Haha. I'm living in Brighton UK. There is a Brighton in Melbourne too.

[alan1302]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cefk

Haha. I'm living in Brighton UK. There is a Brighton in Melbourne too.

And there is a Melbourne in the UK