4G EE - Broadband - NOTSPOT

[IceBoy]

Hi All,

I've just spent hours trawling through all the post and some very interesting reading for me!

We moved in to the country 2 years ago and suffered with BT broadband at 0.3mb. It was basically unusable.

I then purchased a TP-Link Mobile hotspot type thing and put an O2 sim with 25gb.

I have two teenage boys and this was not enough as you can imagine. I finally found a company called NOTSPOT, who installed an antenna on the side of my house and ran 2 cables (5m max) to a mini router with a EE sim inside.

Up until then I was sceptical as we only got O2 reception in our home but this service worked wonders.

We get between 18-30mb/s down and 10-12mb/s up which is more than enough for us.

This deal comes to an end in the next 3 or so months and I want to be able to shop around for the sim deal. So a couple of questions:

1. Am I right in thinking I could use the same router and insert a 3 or Vodafone sim inside?
2. Do I need to stick to EE sim?
3. I don't have the model of this mini router (I'm at work) but it is the size of a cigarette pack and has two screw things, where the antenna cables screw into, can I get a better router and use the existing antenna on the side of my house?

Help, what should I do? Is the world my oyster now that I have this Pringle tube antenna? Or do I need to stick to EE?

IceBoy
PS. NOTSPOt sent an installation engineer and he was testing speeds and signal strength, which I guess was related to EE only? Then installed it at the best location on our home?

 

[Mark.J]

I guess this really depends upon whether NOTSPOT has locked the router to EE, so you'd have to ask them. Certainly it might help to know what the model is.

You could potentially get a different mobile router but you'd need to make sure it supported the right connector for the cable that goes in the back. There are a couple of different standards around so it's not always clear. You might also have to do some fiddling if you change the SIM as different operators have different settings and this can be fiddly.

PS - By Notspot do you mean this lot?

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/isp_list/ISP_Detail_Wireless.php?NotSpot-371

 

[IceBoy]

Hi Mark,

Yes these guys: http://notspotbroadband.com/

Really nice people to deal with and always answer the phone when you call them.

IceBoy

PS. I will take a photo of the router and so you can see what the fittings are.

 

[Digital Expert]

Beware, http://notspotbroadband.com/ are a dreadful organisation. Very good to deal with when you sign up, but the technical support and service is abysmal. They actually are rude and unhelpful. We were left without broadband for a month while they incompetently tried to resolve a problem that they were unable to resolve.

 

[Mr.T]

I agree with Digital Expert. Very bad company to deal with once they have your money. Avoid at all costs. Go direct to EE to go elsewhere.

 

[Jim Weir]

Notspot / Mastband use these antennas

https://www.westlake.co.uk/mimorad-outdoor-mimo-4g-antenna/

This is an Omni Directional Antenna with SMA Male Connectors - you can attach that to almost any 4G Router including the EE 4G Home router.

You can sign up for any EE 4G Home contract upto 500GB and this will work or you can try Three AYCE Unlimited upto 1TB, but you should test on a PAYG sim first to see if you get signal.

If your router is a small black metal box with plastic end caps on each end, it is probably a RUT950 from Teltonika http://www.rut950.com/ in which case this can be factory reset and used with any Mobile Network.