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After suffering months of abysmal internet speeds at my rented apartment I've decided to get my own.

I can't really get wired installation put in so have been looking at some 4G modem solutions - the kind that use the mobile network but are designed to be used at home.

So far, smart@home seems like a good choice - 18USD for 10Mbps and unlimited downloads. But I've heard that you'd be very lucky to get what they promise.

Does anyone have any experience of smart@home or can anyone recommend anything similar?

Thanks

xandreu wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2019 3:16 pm I can't really get wired installation put in

Why not?

xandreu wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2019 3:16 pm
So far, smart@home seems like a good choice - 18USD for 10Mbps and unlimited downloads. But I've heard that you'd be very lucky to get what they promise.

Does anyone have any experience of smart@home or can anyone recommend anything similar?

Thanks

Smart@Home is OK most of the time but it goes through spells of cutting out entirely for 5 minutes. Streaming videos can be iffy in the evenings. You cannot download from torrent at all.

xandreu wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2019 3:16 pm After suffering months of abysmal internet speeds at my rented apartment I've decided to get my own.

I can't really get wired installation put in so have been looking at some 4G modem solutions - the kind that use the mobile network but are designed to be used at home.

So far, smart@home seems like a good choice - 18USD for 10Mbps and unlimited downloads. But I've heard that you'd be very lucky to get what they promise.

Does anyone have any experience of smart@home or can anyone recommend anything similar?

Thanks

I used smart@home for 4 months and I have only good things to say. Maybe hour a day (evenings between 6pm-9pm) it was bit slower at times but rest of the time the speed was what was promised. Even at worse it was just little bit slower. I believe it really depends where you live so your best bet is just getting it and trying it out.

I just ditched Cootel's most basic package, which was $10 a month and no idea on the speed etc.

It was okay, service would sometimes go out but it wasn't consistently down at a certain time of the day (it would just lose signal for a few seconds and then come back), but the company was good to deal with. I also took it to Kampot a few times and it was nice to have my little internet box with me.

Also on Smart, when there are power cuts everyone jumps onto 4G because their wired internet has gone down, which then causes 4G data to grind to a halt. Hopefully the load shedding is coming to an end.

Just in case anyone else searches for this kind of info in the future, I'll update my findings. I bit the bullet and got the Smart@home today. Been using it for a few hours now and I'm very happy with the results.

I paid for the 10Mbps option, and I keep doing speed tests to test it. On my mobile phone I always get between 9-10Mbps. My laptop is a little slower, usually between 8-9Mbps. Not sure why my laptop is a little slower, but it's clearly the laptop rather than the router. It's perfectly usable however. (I've tried moving the router around the house - despite what I was told about putting the router next to a window, it seems to work a lot better if it's closer to the device you're using it on, even if that's far away from a window)

3 months was advertised as $54 but she gave me $10 discount for some reason. So $44 for three months at 10Mbps internet is more than reasonable. She also said that if I wasn't happy with the speed for whatever reason, I could return the router within a month for a full refund. She even checked my address on her database to check what speed I would likely get before she even began the process of setting it up and taking my money.

So far, so good. I will update if I run into any major problems.

How different are speed and delay for Smart@Home compared to what you would get if you directly used your phone’s 4G with a Smart SIM?

yongchi wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2019 6:11 pm How different are speed and delay for Smart@Home compared to what you would get if you directly used your phone’s 4G with a Smart SIM?

I don't know. I don't use Smart for my mobile provider. I did check if my mobile provider has an 'at home' kind of service and they do, but it's something like $10 per month for 10GB data allowance. Smart@home is unlimited (there is a 400GB fair use allowance, but who would ever use that in a month?)

I do know people who use Smart as their mobile provider, and from what I can tell, they don't have the best reputation when it comes to connectivity and speeds. That's why I was wary of buying the smart@home service.

xandreu wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2019 6:19 pm

yongchi wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2019 6:11 pm How different are speed and delay for Smart@Home compared to what you would get if you directly used your phone’s 4G with a Smart SIM?

I do know people who use Smart as their mobile provider, and from what I can tell, they don't have the best reputation when it comes to connectivity and speeds. That's why I was wary of buying the smart@home service.

Thanks Xandreu.
I used to use Smart’s mobile 4G and wasn’t impressed. That’s why I am asking.
More recently Cellcard’s 4G, which was great for a while, has also gone downhill for me, to the point were it becomes unusable at times. That’s in particular mid-morning.
Maybe I need to to give Smart another go.