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Internet connection - lots of video calling!


DannyC

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Hi all,

 

I am looking to start boating in the next couple of months.

 

I work about 20 hours a week teaching online through Skype and various platforms. This uses a fair amount of data. I have been using a EE 4G box to pick up signal from my flat with strong download and upload speeds and a pay monthly data package. The connection is good and never seems to drop out. It is certainly not the cheapest way to get internet but my current flat can't have fiberoptic.

 

I am curious as to whether the EE box will work on a boat. I imagine that in most locations, especially around London, you can pick up 4G signal. I have a fixed schedule per week so I will ensure that I am stationary for teaching time.

 

Does anyone else use a large amount of data for their work? How do you get round connection problems?

 

This is a bit of a deal breaker for me, so any help is much appreicated.

 

Cheers

Dan

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3 hours ago, DannyC said:

Does anyone else use a large amount of data for their work? How do you get round connection problems?

 

This is a bit of a deal breaker for me, so any help is much appreicated.

 

Cheers

Dan

Dan, how much data are you using? One person's large amount might be quite different to someone else's.

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3 hours ago, Rickent said:

We have an ee osprey box on our boat and it works well, when it is mounted on the window it gives four bars of 4g signal but anywhere else in the boat only gives one bar.

I do pretty much the same though I stick my Huawei MiFI device in one of the portholes, secured with velcrow allowing me to remove/move it on the fly if needed. Nothing fancy, works a treat with EE.  I remote on to other machines to avoid using all my data but this won't work for voice/video calling.

Masts/networks go down from time to time, so I also use Three as a backup. 

 

The main issue with voice/video calling will be data usage so it will be necessary to find a plan with a high allowance. I pay £30 a month for 64GB data with EE.

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5 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

Dan, how much data are you using? One person's large amount might be quite different to someone else's.

The monthly allowance is a very different issue from the basic one of connectivity.

 

In my experience (Samsung mobile and Three network) the coverage is always increasing - one of the reasons for going with Three originally several years ago wast that they had a reputation for better canal coverage than others. That difference is gradually closing as competitive and regulatory pressure sees the number of not-spots reduced. Even so, as with general mobile use, there remain some surprising places where there is no usable signal. When I get a signal it is more than likely to be 4G - but that does not really say much as its throughput can still be iffy.

 

I have not bothered with installing a fixed external antenna although I would have done so if there was evidence of a real benefit. Most of the time the mobile sits in the main cabin (on the edge of the galley space) and the hotspot readily covers the whole boat, including sitting in the front well deck of a 60ft nb. There are occasions when the signal is too weak for usable activity (such as uploading pix for my blog) and that is usually fixed by placing the phone in the hopper side of the nearest window. If it does not work there it usually seems not to work when fully outside so probably a not-spot.

 

As far as data allowance is concerned, you do have to check that the mobile provider allows that data via a mobile hotspot - some limit it although I think that competition has largely eroded that at the moment. Whilst you can do some estimation of what you need by comparison with your land line usage, do remember that your usage pattern may well change. Is your usage fixed by having to do a particular set of work or does recreational use figure highly? On the boat it may depend on whether you are residential, CMing or genuinely cruising each day. That will reduce your demand for recreational use. You may well find that after a day of cruising, especially one with plenty of locks or swing/lift bridges, your energy for watching a long movie just is not there! Your use of streaming music has increased (mainly via a radio app).

 

If the mobile access really is a deal breaker then it would be wise to do some experimentation (actually on a moving boat) before making the final commitment. It sounds as if you are close to the typical upper limit of what the mobile providers offer so the only way in which you would be able to extend it is by having multiple accounts.

 

Overall, what you are thinking of doing is beginning to come within the range of what many folk do regardless of being on a boat - the use of fixed lines is becoming increasingly specialised, particularly for businesses. One thing you may also need to consider is whether your business activity would be impacted by only having a mobile number. I guess that there is till quite a bit of suspicion around mobile-only businesses, like not having an address to serve legal notices, especially when things go wrong!

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We use EE for our 4G router on  the boat. An external antenna is important otherwise reception would be poor. We have never had a bad signal with the external antenna on our travels around the Midlands even in areas which are said to be black spots. Make sure your router can take external antennas.

We use the EE to stream video including BT sport which uses HD....so 2-3Gb per hour. We currently have 140 Gb a month limit via BT and EE .....but both use the EE network. I was recently offered 50Gb of data from Vodafone for £15/month. Data costs are comig down.

Our current deal with EE is £45/m for 60Gb....another 10 months to run (taken out a year ago) and £20/m for 80Gb from BT (but that is a double your data deal 'cause we have a BT broadband 'Plus' in the house.)

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13 minutes ago, DannyC said:

Dr.Bob - which external antenna do you use?

 

I think I would need one of these.

We bought the antenna from the solwise site.

https://www.solwise.co.uk/4g-antenna-omni-xpol-a0001.html

and also the router from them

https://www.solwise.co.uk/4g-routers-rut950.html

Like I said before, on the roof it is no problem. We use it 1 m above the roof line. It will easily cope with video signals in and out.

Dont forget though that the data you use is both uploading and downloading. It is amazing how much data is taken up in the 'upload' when you are just streaming a movie. In your case you will have a lot to up load.

I find the speed of the connection on the boat very good and dont notice any difference to our fast fibre broadband at home.

  • Greenie 1
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With my hotspotted / tethered iPhone I'm on Three. From what I understood they don't have their own mast network bu rent bandwidth off the other companies. As such the coverage is good (this is my experience with time in the mountains too where my phone often has reception where others dont) however speed is sometimes less than it would be on voda or the like as Three drops down the pecking order because they are renters.

 

This is my understanding anyway.

With watching streaming services exclusively (netflix, amazon, redbull etc for about 1.5 hours per day avg) and streaming music, I use around 150 Gb per month

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You need to keep your eye out for deals. I get 100 Gbytes per month for £25 from Virgin (which works on the EE network). If we don't use some data it rolls over to next month. Like Dr Bob we have a 4G router (from Maplins ? ) which runs on 12v with  an external antenna from Solwise. It's very rare to have a bad connection as long as we don't moor in cuttings.

Edited by Alway Swilby
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5 hours ago, sirweste said:

With my hotspotted / tethered iPhone I'm on Three. From what I understood they don't have their own mast network bu rent bandwidth off the other companies.

Nope, that’s incorrect. Three is one of the four mobile providers in the UK along with EE, O2, and Vodafone. Any other provider rents from one of those four. 

 

There’s a little table some way down on this page which shows it:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/piggybacking/#tablepiggyback

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23 hours ago, DannyC said:

Wow - £30 a month seems cheap. Maybe I need to look and see what deal I can get.

 

Thanks for the info.

I pay £30 per month to Three for 100Gb per month. It's offered as a home solution but it's just a SIM, so works fine on the boat.

 

If you don't get a good signal in the boat, there are plenty of ways of connecting to an external aerial.

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On 10/09/2018 at 13:59, DannyC said:

Good point!

 

So I was paying £35 a month for 40GB with EE through the 4G EE box.

 

This just about covered my online work.  I would probably got for a bigger package to ensure everything is covered.

 

Dan

I use EE and have 32GB on a MiFi dongle and 30GB on the phone which I use almost exclusively for tethering. I pay £14.50 for the MiFi GBs and £25 for the phone contract (SIM only) per month. I rely on it for work and when busy use pretty much all of the 62GB. As others have suggested, I put both the phone and the dongle in/near the window and use the suction pad bendy arms designed to mount phones/satnavs to car windscreens. It's a simple and reliable set up and speeds are very acceptable. You'll find which device is best in terms of other traffic overload at different points in the day and use accordingly!

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On 10/09/2018 at 10:32, Rickent said:

We have an ee osprey box on our boat and it works well, when it is mounted on the window it gives four bars of 4g signal but anywhere else in the boat only gives one bar.

Ditto....  we have two because we use a lot of data. Today we're getting 

 

springwood.jpg.3996f72248cbd7315c90beeb38a9d2c7.jpg

 

 

ee.jpg.e30a50f0a88204ee5295f79dbbe1ab82.jpg

 

We move the dongle around, different side of boat, in the bow, to pick up the best connection.

 

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On ‎10‎/‎09‎/‎2018 at 17:42, Alway Swilby said:

You need to keep your eye out for deals. I get 100 Gbytes per month for £25 from Virgin (which works on the EE network). If we don't use some data it rolls over to next month. Like Dr Bob we have a 4G router (from Maplins ? ) which runs on 12v with  an external antenna from Solwise. It's very rare to have a bad connection as long as we don't moor in cuttings.

unfortunately maplin is not longer there the last store closed june 14th (mine btw) what router did you buy

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Dunno if this is any help, but GiffGaff do a £25/mth goodybag which has 'always on' data. There are conditions for going over 20GB:

https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-plans/always-on

 

I use GiffGaff on my Android phone as a tether point which I can use for my tablet/laptop. Works just grand even for watching YouTube, etc. 

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