Three UK Launch Outdoor Hub Router for 5G Home Broadband
Mobile operator Three UK has today done something a bit different by introducing a 5G Outdoor Hub option for their Three Home Broadband service, which as the name indicates is a mobile router that you “self-install” on the outside of your home in order, we presume, to hopefully get a better 5G mobile signal and thus performance.
Consumers can already buy external routers for mobile broadband connections via third-party brands, although they can be quite expensive and require some additional skills (DIY and IT/Networking) to deploy (we also prefer the Router + External Antenna combo). The advantage of Three UK doing one is that it will come pre-configured and that helps to simplify the installation, but you’ll still need some skills to do the DIY side properly.
The other difficulty for things like this is that you still need to wire them up to power, which when deployed externally will often mean drilling holes through walls – unless you’ve got an external power socket that remains well shielded during wet weather and is positioned close enough to where you mount the Hub (usually at the highest point available / accessible).
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Speaking of wires, the 5G Outdoor Hub also comes with one of Amazon’s eero 6 WiFi routers, which naturally goes indoors and that’s of course another device you’ll have to wire up to the Hub. By the looks of it, the power and Ethernet (LAN) connection is handled via a single PoE cable and adapter (Power over Ethernet), so you’ll need both a spare AC plug socket for the Hub and one to power the eero router too – see the user guide.
As usual, Three says customers taking a package with this device “can expect average download speeds of 150Mbps“, but the reality is that this will vary depending upon your location and a variety of other factors (e.g. device placement, capacity at the local mast, spectrum bands used etc.). Suffice to say that your mileage may vary, a lot.
At present we could only see one ‘Outdoor Home Broadband‘ plan available, which costs from £24 per month on a 24-month term and that price will increase by £2 per month from April 2025. The first 6 months are currently also being offered at half price.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Aren’t there some limitations to Wi-Fi use outdoors? Perhaps someone can enlighten me!
As above, it looks like the eero device is being used to handle WiFi and that goes indoors. You can of course stick any home router outside a window and Ofcom won’t care (but you might when it rains), so the rules around outdoor WiFi usually relate more to devices that are actually designed to make an outdoor network. This one isn’t.
I would assume that the outdoor part doesn’t make a WiFi network right? Because it would seem like an incredibly inefficient way to get WiFi inside of your house. If it’s the eero that connects via an ethernet cable then that would make sense – not as essentially a range extender.
This is essentially a modem, the router is separate and goes indoors
Pointless to have that unless Three need to sort out congestion network first!
I have had Smarty sim system on the apex of a 2 storey property.I was getting 80/96 mps.but in the last month it has dropped to a maximum 35mps
My phone signal is rubbish a d rarely shows even 1bar WiFi
. The installer wants £75 to check a d £100/£300 for any work.Three doesn’t want to know as my contract is with Smarty but Smarty is linked to Three.Nightmare!!!
No need for drilling holes. The wire from the outdoor hub (which in effect is just a modem wired to the eero which serves as the router) goes through a window which as they clearly state can be shut with no effect to the wire or window seals. Of course depending on best location for the hub, one can chose to drill holes. I think it’s pretty cool and will guarantee an uninterrupted signal making it just as reliable as wired connections.
I have a Three 5G (Zyxel NR1503) in an ABS enclosure on the rear outside wall of my house. 900mbps/60mbps. Power controlled by a smart plug in cas it needs a reboot.
I’ve read their terms and conditions, sticking with their 5G equipment policy this remains a loaned device that has to be returned at the end of service, it doesn’t become yours at the end of a contract. There is a ZTE external 5G router on Amazon for £391 which works out to be just over £16 per month over 24 months so if someone has a decent data SIM now such as via Scancom they may be better off buying outright.
Isn’t that true of all ISP’s who provide routers as part of their contract? It’s just that some do not enforce it or have bad admin departments.
most people aren’t going to use random equipment bought from cex, and a SIM from a company they’ve never heard of
if they want a simple solution they’re just going to do this. same reason why so many people use ISP routers even though a lot of users on here claim they’re crap.
I picked up a Three badged Zyxel NR1503 for £50 that currently connects to 4G and 5G concurrently with a combined speed of 900mbps/60mbps. It is capable of 1600mbps. It has two 2.5Gbe ethernet ports.
Given the negative comments about the three network 4G mobile broadband and potential problems in their backhaul, how would a 5G RAN make any difference?
I note that the user manual refers to Stand Alone and Non-Stand Alone use so presumably only the SA will minimise the shared components with their 4G legacy, however three network have no SA offer!
Yes they most certainly DO have 5G SA infrastructure in place. please do some research
Ken – That’s news to me, pretty sure Three 5G is only NSA. There’s a new story on this site about three mentioning for now they have no interest in launch SA 5G, i assume the Voda merger is another reason.
This is a bit bizarre, wouldn’t it just be easier to sell an external antenna.and keep the powered bit inside! I presume this is maybe for more external use, maybe covering outbuildings, yards, temporary events etc
External antennae are passive and just catches the signal. This, according to the description, actively looks for the best 5g mast (if available in the area), locks on and amplifies the signal.
The antenna would need to be a MIMO 4×4 which means it would require 4 cables to be run. You wouldn’t want those to be crushed either and the cable run ideally needs to be less than 1 metre.
this allows them to guarantee some level of performance, which they can’t do when someone uses an eBay or Amazon special antenna, let alone the signal losses involved with even a good antenna. No idea if this thing supports mmWave (a long way off in the UK) but for that you’d definitely need to do it this way.
It’ll also be an easier sell to have a flexible cat5/6 cable going into the property instead of numerous coaxes. If they’re using some kind of flat cable that can go through a gap in a window without drilling, even better.
Ordered this yesterday, arriving today and will report on the results once set up. Three installed a new tower 500 yards from my house last year and have only recently commissioned it. Ookla speed tests are very promising near the tower where d/l speeds are around 1.2Gb. Moving only a few yards from the tower reduces the speed to about 900mbit. Hoping this will ensure the best possible speed as even being indoors slows down the speed significantly.
Definately for people who are not gonna get FTTP anytime soon.
The main problem is the support or the lack of it.
Today, although not a common event my local antenna refused to supply 5G and my router struggled to cope only with 4G.
The same on my mobile.
End result = No Internet today
so, which router is it? who is it made by etc?
An interesting development, that should work better than external aerials for those that need it
Wonder if the cable connecting their external 5G modem to their indoor router is a flat cable, as it says it can go through windows with no effect on their seal
This is of appeal to me, but my local mast is still on 4G, and even if upgraded to 5G it likely won’t be 5G SA, so will still suffer all the 4G back haul issues- So given Three’s colossal congestion and connectivity problems – I’ll hang fire
If this is an outdoor router, with aa separate wifi unit, then they should be connected by ethernet – in which case, the outdoor router could be powered by PoE.
Looking forward to picking up the hardware off ebay in a few months for £100.
My Three 5G Home Broadband has gone from 300/400Mbps in 2022 to bouncing between 20Mbps and 80Mbps in 2024. Complete waste of time!
I ended my SIM at the end of it’s term and got one of the unlimited business SIMS when they were £6, so I suppose I can’t complain about the price
Interesting and welcome development. I’ve got a Three 5G setup in one of their rural single mast locations (Holt, Norfolk); I wonder if Three would be able to do a swap of the existing router for this solution (I’m in contract at £11pm for 24 months–if the renewal is too high then I would buy my own hardware and get a Three PAYG data SIM for occasional use; EE doesn’t have 5G in Holt yet on the mast they share with Three and O2/Voda mast is not as well placed)
I’m getting OK performance (better than Openreach FTTC, the only other option available at the moment) but my Samknows reports show the bandwidth bouncing between 60 and 450, averaging around 100.
This new solution would get me better line of sight to the mast which might improve part of the performance (I’m 700m from mast over flat ground but at ground level I am a little shadowed by nearby houses; up the existing TV aerial pole would reduce but not eliminate the shadowing; and this would be cheaper/easier than buying/cabling a 3rd party 2-cable MIMO antenna to the existing router, moving the router to the loft to keep the antenna cable run as short as possible)
Answering my own question after contacting Three
I am 10 months into a 24 month contract at £12pm (rounding up).
Answer: No you can’t have a free upgrade, would have to upgrade contract plus pay an early upgrade fee. (So that will be at least £24 pm, unsure if they would give me the 6 months at £12 as part of the swap; err no thanks, failed opportunity to make me a really loyal customer).
No thanks, my connection is not so bad that I need it now, will negotiate when I am end of contract.
The current 5g hub hardware has 2 x Mimo sockets for an external antenna, I will consider buying an antennal to connect for that although it would practically mean relocating the hub into the loft to minimise the antenna cable run to the most sensible mounting point (external TV aerial pole).
The property is a bungalow and the loft location would be above the main room where I want the strongest signal (no metallised insulation to create issues), and could choose to run an ethernet cable down an existing gap where the TV/DAB aerial cable currently goes to get to streaming box and my “desk”.
Anyone have experience of best antenna to buy for Three 5G indoor hardware (Zyxel)? Only one 5G mast locally (and no other Three masts close by) so I could sensibly choose a directional antenna, Aerial pole mounting should give me almost clear LoS (nearly lifting me out of shadowing from 2 story houses opposite I think); I’m consistently getting over 100mbs so it’s not awful currently (better than available VDSL on my phone line which is 36, no other options currently available other than mobile–and no other 5G locally, surprising that EE does not offer 5G although sharing mast with Three who do, satellite would be too expensive)
As it is 3 has problems keeping an internet connection stable inside the house. The signal on my device keeps dropping. Wonder how this’ll work out….
Any ideas on how to get this because its saying I have great indoor coverage when I really dont?
One of the biggest issues with 5g is latency. I have a decent 5G/4G signal and speed but the latency of course gets worse when the rain starts. Because 5G is mm wave length it is impacted by all wet weather. I wonder if they sent two separate polarity signals going the opposite ways at 90° to one another they might create a diverse link connection to the router which should reduce the losses.
They want £24 a month when you can get 900 Mbps fibre from Vodafone in my area for £36 they have always said that 5g home broadband was not available due to congestion. Yesterday, this popped on their website, and it now says it’s ok for 5g broadband in my area. I’ve been testing my three unlimited sim in my Zyxel router. It’s OK during the day, but the speed tanks at nights can see is this making the local masts even more congested at peak times. They need to fix the congestion before rolling out products like this.
Does anyone know if this will be using CGNAT or normal NAT?
As I am looking for something to use on the Xbox and PC. The internet around here is slow.
I did here that 3 was the only ones that didn;t use CGNAT in the past, but just want to make sure they don’t now.
If they do can I get out of via support or a static IP from 3?
I think Three is CGNAT and no Static IP option available but I am not 100% sure.
I suspect similar is true for all mobile 4G/5G providers (invoking Cunningham’s Law that someone will provide a more correct answer quickly)
I am 400 M from tower, very much thinking of going this way as the copper /aluminium cables in road a nightmare ! 400 M from tower 50 M of trees in the way, external modem on TV pole, 2 story house, I am mostly getting 60Mb from BT but often intermittent , which they cant fix, no hope of fibre , How can it be worse ? how can it be worse then 60mb 400M from tower?
Your situation is similar to mine.
From my Samknows reports I’m getting consistently better BW than VDSL (unless I had G.fast), tolerable latency (not a gamer, OK for teams meetings and HD streaming), occasional loss of connection (maybe once every few weeks) but no more than a minute or two. Most of the time around 150, rarely above 300 from theoretical max of around 450. Getting out of the shadows likely would add 50-100.
You could have both VDSL and 5G for a while and if Three is not delivering to spec request to cancel ASAP as not working.
I’m in a area where the population is not dense and I suspect 5G mobile is not heavily used most of the time (peak summer tourists excepted), and most existing internet users are FTTC/FTTP (or maybe another mobile network).