Sponsored Links

Best backup SIM for Three 5G home broadband?

Steve1980

Regular Member
I'm setting up "DIY" 5G home broadband on Three. As I'll no longer have a landline and my mobile is also on Three, if they go down I will be cut off.

I'd like to get a second SIM for another network for standby use only. I don't want to be paying monthly for this as I hope not to need it. I'd like to be able to top up (via public wifi or using my phone from another cell, I guess) only when required.

I'm struggling to find anything. I though PAYG bundles (top up £20 to get 50GB of data for 30 days style of thing) might be the solution but they all seem to want to work on a rolling automatic top up basis, which is no good to me. A secondary consideration is that ideally I don't want to be forced to faff around with making calls or topping up just to keep the SIM active until I need it.

Does anyone have any suggestions please? Worst case I guess is buying the standby SIM when I need it, but I then have to wait two or three days for it to turn up in the post.

Is there any scope for ordering a SIM now but not activating it until I need it? Or is such an unactivated SIM going to expire after a few months anyway?

5G data would be nice but if it happened to make things cheaper I would be reasonably happy with 4G only, since this is just for backup.

Thanks for any advice!
 
If I am not mistaken, Giffgaff SIM Cards don't seem to expire when unactivated. So you could keep one of them in a drawer indefinitely and pull it out to activate when you need it. Once active it would expire for inactivity though. 6 Months of no chargeable activity I believe would close the account.

Giffgaff definitely aren't the cheapest for data on the rolling monthly plans, and since they are owned by O2 they certainly aren't the fastest either. But it would do the job in an emergency situation.
 
Thanks Koda! I've had a look at their site and I can order a SIM for free, so maybe I should just do that anyway (and try not to lose it before I need it! :) ), even if there are other options.

Looking at the options, I obviously don't want an 18 month contract. They also do monthly rolling and PAYG, with the former giving better value - is there any reason I couldn't set up a monthly rolling and then cancel it a few days later, thereby getting the monthly rolling price for a single month?
 
Sponsored Links
I'm setting up "DIY" 5G home broadband on Three. As I'll no longer have a landline and my mobile is also on Three, if they go down I will be cut off.

I'd like to get a second SIM for another network for standby use only. I don't want to be paying monthly for this as I hope not to need it. I'd like to be able to top up (via public wifi or using my phone from another cell, I guess) only when required.

I'm struggling to find anything. I though PAYG bundles (top up £20 to get 50GB of data for 30 days style of thing) might be the solution but they all seem to want to work on a rolling automatic top up basis, which is no good to me. A secondary consideration is that ideally I don't want to be forced to faff around with making calls or topping up just to keep the SIM active until I need it.

Does anyone have any suggestions please? Worst case I guess is buying the standby SIM when I need it, but I then have to wait two or three days for it to turn up in the post.

Is there any scope for ordering a SIM now but not activating it until I need it? Or is such an unactivated SIM going to expire after a few months anyway?

5G data would be nice but if it happened to make things cheaper I would be reasonably happy with 4G only, since this is just for backup.

Thanks for any advice!

You could get a Scancom SIM from Amazon?

I’m sure there’s cheaper going but 10GB for 12 months at £30 doesn’t feel too bad for a backup?

 
Thanks Koda! I've had a look at their site and I can order a SIM for free, so maybe I should just do that anyway (and try not to lose it before I need it! :) ), even if there are other options.

Looking at the options, I obviously don't want an 18 month contract. They also do monthly rolling and PAYG, with the former giving better value - is there any reason I couldn't set up a monthly rolling and then cancel it a few days later, thereby getting the monthly rolling price for a single month?
You can absolutely take out a rolling monthly contract with them and cancel it immediately. That's no problem at all. The only difference between the PAYG and Monthly rolling one is that the rolling version automatically renews if you don't remember to cancel it. But if you do remember this it's better value for money.
 
Thanks guys!

That Scancom option is interesting. I am a cheapskate and £30 (or £25, unless I'm getting confused) for 10GB isn't a great price, but the fact this SIM can sit there and be ready to use instantly with no need to start faffing around trying to top up without home internet is a useful feature. I see it says it expires one year after initial activation, but do you know how long it would last if I didn't activate it?

Actually, now I know "data bucket" SIMs like that Scancom one are an option, I did another search on Amazon for "data SIM" and there are some other similar deals which might be cheaper, e.g. an EE 50GB for £15 one. I suspect the catch with a lot of these might be the small print around what happens if you don't activate the SIM as soon as you get it. And I suspect the networks don't want to tell you so you're relying on some else's experience and hoping they don't change the rules. (That EE one on amazon has some fine print about an "extra data" offer, but I can't see anything about the rules for how soon you have to activate the basic 50GB you bought with the SIM, for example.)
 
There are many options here depending on your use and the likelihood of any THREE failure and its expected type/duration.

One option is a Sky SIM as a good backup option. More likely to remain active and be unrestricted (band/speed).

You can get a modest 3Gb for £6/m but as they still support their piggy bank if it is unused it simply grows, Although you have to call off the piggy bank in 5Gb chunks this can be repeated multiple times if your main SIM fails. Depending how much you want to pay and if it will ever be used. If the Sky piggy bank grows or the data will expire you can simply switch to use it up.

The Sky SIM is especially useful if you have a dual SIM phone and use it as a data backup coverage SIM for your THREE phone and then use it if and when the home broadband fails.

O2 may not be as fast as Three in places but often better overall coverage.
 
Sponsored Links
Thanks Meatball, that is quite a tempting option and one I had no idea existed. I'm currently paying £5/month to iD for less data than that on my phone (although it's more than enough) and they only let you roll over data for a single month. So if I switched to Sky for my mobile, I'd probably build up a piggybank of 2GB+/month and after the first year I'd have ~24-30GB of piggybank for standby use.

And it's O2, which is the same network as giffgaff. I'm not sure I'd get 5G from them indoors in my area, but as I said 4G would be good enough for standby use. (Perhaps even better, as the slower speeds might help reduce my data use.) And I don't have a 5G phone anyway, so no loss there.

I have been fairly happy with iD though and I do like the fact they haven't put my price up since forever, which has saved me the hassle of switching providers every year or two. Certainly worth thinking about though...

(I do have a dual SIM phone and could keep iD and use the Sky SIM as a backup, but I'm tight enough and optimistic enough about Three going out that I don't really want to pay £72/year extra for the backup. But swapping iD to Sky would mean I'm only paying an extra £12/year for the backup and I'd get more data to use on the phone if I really needed it as an extra bonus.)
 
I have a backup Asda payg sim, which uses Vodafone, it was 50p from an Asda store, you can top up online or at a Asda store, as long as you may a chargeable call/text every 180 days, (I do it when the clocks change) the sim stays active, plus when I bought it, the store sim came with 50p credit, that’s 2.5 years before you have to top it up again, the last time I topped it up the minimum was £5.
I have had to use it when my broadband went down, I bought the then £20 , now £24 unlimited bundle for a month, it was a godsend even though I only get 20-25mbps form Vodafone where I live.
 
Thanks Officina red, that's another solid option. The existence of relatively cheap unlimited bundles with capped bandwidth (e.g. £22 for a month of unlimited 10Mbit) as well as fixed-sized bundles is something I don't think giffgaff offer. (giffgaff do have an unlimited option at £35/month, but no cheaper capped bandwidth options.)

And nothing to do with data or standby, but I had been using Three PAYG SIMs in a couple of old phones because they only require a chargeable call every 180 days, but these Asda SIMs look even better for that as they charge way less per call.
 
1pMobile will give you very good EE network access without needing to pay a monthly charge to keep it going - top up at least every 180 days I think? THe data charges are 1p per Mb so if you cut over to the 1pMobile sim due to a Three outage, you should then purchase a 'data boost' - these are reasonably good value - £13 for 50Gb for 30 days, rising to only £18 for 200Gb (4 times the data for 5 quid more).
 
Sponsored Links
Thanks Norfolk&Signal! That is a very good price for 200GB of no fuss data. Is it actually £20 though? That's what their site seems to say, but still a good price anyway.

The big problem (from my perspective) with 1pMobile is that according to Ken's Tech Tips you have to top up £10 every 90 days to keep the SIM active. (I couldn't find anything about this on the 1pMobile site itself - it says you have to top up by your due date to keep the SIM active, but it doesn't seem to say how the due date is determined.)

Their site does say that you have 120 days to activate the SIM, so I could get them to send me a free SIM and only activate it if/when I need it. It feels a bit wasteful to get a SIM knowing it is probably going to expire unused though.
 
Apologies - they've shortened the time window - at least £10 every 90 days - that's still pretty good.

As I carry stock of sim cards for my customers, I have some registered but not-yet-activated 1pMobile sim cards. 1pMobile only supply them in a minimum quantity of 20 - for £1 each - but I'd be happy to send you one - so you'd not have to kick off the 90 days thing until you first needed it - and only at that point would you need to load it up with your first tenner.

1pMobile say that, left unactivated, they should remain valid indefinitely - but when I pushed them on that point, they suggested it would be best to activate them within a year. I received some last week - PM me if you'd like me to send you one.
 
Individual sims from 1pMobile require £10 pre-payment - i'm not sure if the 90 days for re-topup starts on order date or the receipt date. Interesting they mention a 120 day activation limit - but that might be 120 days between you placing the order and paying £10 and then activating it.

The bulk batch of 1p SIM cards that I have were £1 each (min qty 20) and apparently sit dormant until manually activated. Basically, they sent me a package containing 20 ready-to-seal envelopes with 20 welcome letters inside - and 20 sim cards. None of the sim cards have any credit balance on them - so hopefully their 'indefinite but best to first use it inside a year' thing is true. I've got this in writing (e-mail) from them. I'm not too fussed as it's just £20, so £1 each and for my business they've paid for themselves business-wise after the first sim card is used for a customer install. Prior to having the batch of 1pMobile sim cards, I was loaning out my own 'spare' sim cards and then having to wait for the customer to receive their own sim in the post and then visit the customer for a 2nd time and swap the sims over. £20 is a small price to pay for removing that 'faff'.
📶
 
Thanks guys!

Norfolk&Signal - it's fascinating to get the (somewhat) "inside view" here of what 1pMobile themselves told you. I guess they might just be saying 120 days on their website to play it safe, since it would seem odd to me if they have two different types of SIMs (the kind they sell you and the kind they send out themselves) with two different pre-activation expiry dates. Thanks very much for the offer of a card, but it would probably go to waste so I won't take you up on it, it is very kind of you though!

I think I am leaning towards Asda at the moment - their SIM looks ideal for putting in an old phone to have a second mobile number, which means it would naturally be kept alive and ready to top up if I needed it for my broadband router. (But if anyone has any other suggestions please do post, I hope the information in this thread will be generally useful, and I haven't definitely made my mind up yet anyway.)

e6qberu5 - that's a pretty good deal. It feels like the sort of thing (assuming it's available at the time) I'd sign up for if Three becomes regularly unreliable mid-contract. You're only a new customer once, so I wouldn't really want to sign up ahead of things going wrong. 15GB a month would not be too bad - I reckon I use less than 10GB most days, and with a bit of restraint I could get 2-3 days use out of that 15GB.
 
Sponsored Links
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6026)
  2. BT (3639)
  3. Politics (2721)
  4. Business (2439)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2146)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1901)
  10. 4G (1816)
  11. Virgin Media (1764)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1407)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules