How stable and reliable is VF 4G wireless BB for home use?

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#2538713 11-Aug-2020 16:54

Geektastic:

We are moving and the new house has no wired internet available.

One option is VF 4G wireless at $82 for 600GB. Another is the local wireless BB company, slower and more expensive but not sharing their towers/bandwidth with mobile phones.

I was wondering if anyone had a view as to how reliable the 4G would be in this sort of setup? The VF rep said 40Mbps down and 20 up. Local system is 25 down and 10 up.

The VF offer is faster and cheaper but I have no way to gauge its reliability and stability compared to a dedicated connection with line of site.

Any thoughts?

Spark win? :P

Or......may be worthwhile paying $300 for a copper connection, depending on your location.. :)

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#2538717 11-Aug-2020 17:12

There are more Spark units on those maps for sure. The house is up on the hill looking out over the top of Carterton - considerably higher than the cell towers. The house elevation is 170 metres. Is that good or bad?

Geektastic

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#2538830 11-Aug-2020 20:11

I made some enquiries of Whiz and their customer service is winning me over.

I asked whether the speed could be faster and they said

"VDSL only works over very short distances (< 800m) from a fibre enabled cabinet. Over a much longer wireless connection, we're limited by the channel bandwidth we can utilise. The radios can do approx 80Mbps and in some areas we're quietly trialling 50Mbps to our customers on 25Mbps plans. However, as with any ISP we have contention. Unlike many other ISPs, we don't feel its in anyone's interest to oversell and advertise speeds they likely won't achieve when our network is busy in the evening. We prefer happy customers! We also believe our data plans are more realistic in the modern world as compared to cell providers.

I can't answer regarding your bandwidth requirements. A High Definition TV stream is typically around 4Mbps.

At present our fastest residential upload service is 15Mbps (10Mbps upload is extra $20 per month and 15Mbps is extra $40 per month). All our customers get a static IP address and if a customer rings us up we get in our truck(s) and fix most faults within 24 hours. Our customers can also change their plan up or down as it suits them.

If you require faster speeds (up to 4GBps) we can deliver broadband (either ours or a 3rd party "tail" from 2Degrees, Spark, etc) via a dedicated radio to your property. Whilst delivering a tail starts at a mere $60 per month, your property will likely only see one of our solar sites (as opposed to mains powered) so this will likely start around the $250 per month mark ($100 "tail" plus $150 to transit it over our network) to deliver a 100-200Mbps connection plus initial radio costs.. If this is something you wish us to investigate further please advise.

Whilst our initial contract is 12 months, in the rare event of a customer being unhappy with the service we're delivering and we can't put it right, we're more than happy to refund on a pro-rata basis and remove our equipment."

To be honest, you could not ask for a more prompt or helpful response and even though the cost is higher, I am going to give them first go and see what they can do - especially since they have said that they will terminate early if we ask them to at no cost to us.

I am not sure I want to pay them $250 a month (although 200Mbps is something to drool over) unless it becomes seriously necessary so will start at the normal 25/10 and see how that goes for a start.

Anyone who has read my posts about customer service will know that I am inclined to favour companies that do it well and this is an unusually helpful reply. Supporting them has the additional benefit of supporting your local gunfighter, as it were, and local employment etc so that is a bonus.

I will report back in a few weeks as to the efficacy of the internet service.

nztim

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#2538853 11-Aug-2020 20:49

When I worked for a WISP in the late 90s before DSL became main stream it was all about that personal customer experience.

WISPs of today still offer that

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

sJBs

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#2538907 11-Aug-2020 21:53

I've been using 4G as my primary internet connectivity ever since it became available a couple of years ago, and have been using it for more than a year here in NZ.

If you have a decent signal, make sure you have a good modem that can aggregate the channels like the Huawei 618. I would recommend that you test the signal at the house using a coupe prepaid sims first, and if you have or more bars, you should be good to go.

The advantage of 4G over copper is relative immunity to lightning damage. However, if you need to install external antennas, you are re-introducing the lighting risk again.

With something like the 618, you should be getting more than 50Mbps, up to close to 100Mbs, depending on the network congestion. Less capable modems would struggle to achieve 30Mbps, in my experience.

W.R.T. reliability, if these are correctly configured (both your side and the network side), it will be a very reliable experience that will rarely have any issues. My system consists of around 15 devices, of which 5 connect via wifi, and can easily run multiple HD streams without a problem now that the upstream configuration issue was corrected. It is good enough for working from home and reliable streaming at night.

The downside is that it can be a bit pricy in NZ, except for Spark's Wireless Broadband offering. The other network's offerings might result in you either running out of money, or data, or being throttled.

Linux Mint 19.3 (Yes upgrade is overdue) with ZFS and multiple replicating XigmaNas servers (BSD with ZFS) for storage, all connected via Mikrotik Routerboard (firewall) to a Huawei 618 for Spark Wireless Broadband...

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#2538955 11-Aug-2020 22:29

nztim: When I worked for a WISP in the late 90s before DSL became main stream it was all about that personal customer experience.

WISPs of today still offer that

I think I might start one, just so I can call it "Will O' The WISP".

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#2538981 11-Aug-2020 22:55

We are on Rural Broadband in the Canterbury back-blocks and have been on VF 4g for a couple of years after dropping a local wireless service. Ultra reliable, though speeds are only around 26mbs up/down which is plenty for our needs.
Of course the user loading affects the speeds, so unless you have several towers in your particular area the loading on a single tower can vary immensely. The speed of data through your cell-phone isn't necessarily what you get through your BB modem as I have been told that the two are quite separate. No doubt the gurus know more about that. 😀

cheers

TCABW

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#2539033 12-Aug-2020 06:52

it really depends on

1. distance from tower

2. line of sight to tower vs obstructed path

3. how many people is using data w the tower at that point in time

have you stood in the middle of the house and did a speedtest? also try other providers to compare.

rogercruse

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#2539034 12-Aug-2020 07:07

Moved into a rental property without any internet access while we waited for completion of our new home.

Setup our Vodafone Ultra Hub Plus with its sim card to provide internet access and access to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sparks Sports, etc

Never had any problems.

K8Toledo

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#2539117 12-Aug-2020 09:06

Geektastic:

There are more Spark units on those maps for sure. The house is up on the hill looking out over the top of Carterton - considerably higher than the cell towers. The house elevation is 170 metres. Is that good or bad?

Good. An advantage over a 170m hilltop obstructing LoS. . lol

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#2539219 12-Aug-2020 10:42

Maybe try Skinny if there are lots of Spark towers. But go and do a speedtest before you sign up with anyone.

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#2539230 12-Aug-2020 10:57

5k's to WBB. I'd be thinking hard about this option... :)

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#2539268 12-Aug-2020 11:45

I think you need to take down the pic I'm not sure he wants the Russians to know where he lives. Pretty sure they're after him hence relocation and no landline.

K8Toledo

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#2539511 12-Aug-2020 16:14

Batman: I think you need to take down the pic I'm not sure he wants the Russians to know where he lives. Pretty sure they're after him hence relocation and no landline.

Do you see his address, because I don't?. There's nothing in the pic OP hasn't already made public.

That said, I'm happy to take it down at OP's request.... :)

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#2539761 12-Aug-2020 21:18

Batman: I think you need to take down the pic I'm not sure he wants the Russians to know where he lives. Pretty sure they're after him hence relocation and no landline.

Not the Russians. Former client. I could not bring myself to kill the target so we eloped...😎

Or was that a movie?

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