Any long term reasons why Wireless broadband would be bad choice for my parent's house?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Any long term reasons why Wireless broadband would be bad choice for my parent's house?

turtleattacks

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#282668 5-Mar-2021 10:14

Hi guys,

My parents who live in the Remuera area have been sold/switched to Spark Wireless Broadband and phone.

I believe they are paying about $80 for unlimited usage, which they stream content - (around 60GB-120GB?).

I've also noticed that sometimes, their phone lines would not work or could be very distorted as it runs down the 4G network.

Apart from the obvious reasons of switching to fibre - are there any reasons why 4G would be a bad choice in the future (i.e. capacity, speed downgrades).

Lastly - I assume that they can get fibre installed for free but anyone know how long this govt subsidy will be around for?

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quickymart

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#2668146 5-Mar-2021 10:40

I would just go ahead and get them to order them fibre. By the sounds of it the wireless network in their area may be a bit congested. Fibre doesn't have issues like that.

It's free for now but won't be free forever.

Senecio

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#2668148 5-Mar-2021 10:44

When I read the thread title I had assumed they were rural. Wireless broadband for elderly people in rural settings is perfectly acceptable as they're unlikely to be troubled by data caps.

But as they are in Remuera it makes absolutely no sense to remain on wireless when fibre is available at no cost.

Scott3

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#2668152 5-Mar-2021 10:53

Wow, just looked on sparks website and they are pushing wireless hard. Its the default option for my address, and When I chance the radio button I get a "now is a great time to go wireless" message, which you have to click past to get UFB pricing.

The big advantage of wireless is it is a little bit cheaper ($5 per month). If the connection meets their needs, might as well take the saving.

Downsides:

While the higher user tier doesn't have a cap, the terms say you will get booted from the plan if you use 350gb + in a month or 300GB+ in three consecutive months
Will have less bandwidth and longer ping times than fiber.
Some area's have poor reception adding to the above
LTE has got a lot more congested in my area. With another band, but used to be able to get 40mbps from my desk via LTE when it was newish tech. Now only 5mbps.
Fiber installs currently free, no body knows when or if this will end.
Having both a fiber fixed connection & Cell phones in the household gives redundancy if either network has an outage.

Frankly I think fiber is well worth the extra $5 a month.

turtleattacks

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#2668159 5-Mar-2021 11:17

Scott3:

Wow, just looked on sparks website and they are pushing wireless hard. Its the default option for my address, and When I chance the radio button I get a "now is a great time to go wireless" message, which you have to click past to get UFB pricing.

The big advantage of wireless is it is a little bit cheaper ($5 per month). If the connection meets their needs, might as well take the saving.

Downsides:

While the higher user tier doesn't have a cap, the terms say you will get booted from the plan if you use 350gb + in a month or 300GB+ in three consecutive months
Will have less bandwidth and longer ping times than fiber.
Some area's have poor reception adding to the above
LTE has got a lot more congested in my area. With another band, but used to be able to get 40mbps from my desk via LTE when it was newish tech. Now only 5mbps.
Fiber installs currently free, no body knows when or if this will end.
Having both a fiber fixed connection & Cell phones in the household gives redundancy if either network has an outage.
Frankly I think fiber is well worth the extra $5 a month.

Yes, that's exactly why for my price conscious parents the extra $10 or so savings per months is attractive. They had no idea of the weaknesses of the 4G technology.

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nztim

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#2668193 5-Mar-2021 12:17

Not having to pay chorus is the name of the game for pushing Wireless/HFC connections

Unless someone was on a really bad sub 20mbps ADSL I wouldn’t go for it - Fibre been my first pick

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

xpd

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#2668203 5-Mar-2021 12:41

Only advantage I see in going to wireless, is portability.

Do have a friend on Spark wireless tho up the road - shes only on it because the Chorus techs completely stuffed up her fiber install and they never came to a resolution. That was probably 18months ago now......

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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#2668220 5-Mar-2021 13:28

No experience of Spark but I was on Vodafone-supplied RBI for a couple years. At first it worked well but then I started having endless buffering issues due to congestion of the only mast in range. I switched to a WISP and it has worked pretty well since then. If they can get fibre at all at similar cost, They should definitely do so.

I remember from the early days of PCs a saying that you can never have too much disk space or RAM. The same wisdom applies to Internet communications.

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xcubed

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#2668271 5-Mar-2021 14:34

xpd:

Only advantage I see in going to wireless, is portability.

If you mean the ability to move the modem to another location, Spark don't like you doing that:

nztim

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#2668331 5-Mar-2021 15:13

xpd: Only advantage I see in going to wireless, is portability.

you are only allowed to use it at the nominated address or they can disconnect you

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

xpd

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#2668333 5-Mar-2021 15:18

So if you have a holiday home you spend a total of 5 days at a year, you cant take it with you ? Lemme guess, theres actually no way for them to know....... :)

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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nztim

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#2668342 5-Mar-2021 15:35

xpd:
So if you have a holiday home you spend a total of 5 days at a year, you cant take it with you ? Lemme guess, theres actually no way for them to know....... :)

It would be polling a different tower wouldn’t it?

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coffeebaron

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#2668425 5-Mar-2021 17:05

nztim:
xpd:

So if you have a holiday home you spend a total of 5 days at a year, you cant take it with you ? Lemme guess, theres actually no way for them to know....... :)

It would be polling a different tower wouldn’t it?

They do know, and they actively enforce it. They may not know if it's moved a few doors down the road, or across town (when its a small town with one tower), but any significant move will trigger an alert and follow up.

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nztim

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#2668531 5-Mar-2021 18:10

coffeebaron:

They do know, and they actively enforce it. They may not know if it's moved a few doors down the road, or across town (when its a small town with one tower), but any significant move will trigger an alert and follow up.

Thought so!

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cokemaster

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#2668542 5-Mar-2021 18:55

My folks WERE on Spark Wireless and in the beginning, things were good. Speeds from DSL2 went from 15mbps down to about 60mbps.

However after about 6 months, it became clear that capacity on the site was becoming constrained. Speeds during peak times often tanked to under 1mbps, making Netflix unwatchable or limited to SD viewing only. After 11PM, speeds and latency would return to ‘normal’ levels.

They weren’t on a rural site but were situated in a township that was serviced by one cell site only, located a fair distance away on a hill.

They were low users so stuck with it for a few years but as soon as Fibre became available in their area, they jumped at it and never looked back.

My advice: if they are low users, it can be a easy to set up path for them. But make sure your 4G performance is good. Any sign of slow speeds - i would recommend alternative access technologies (eg. Fibre, copper or 3rd party wireless Internet providers ). If fibre is there, would seriously suggest considering that instead.

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