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How reliable is Mobile Broadband as a whole???

The only reason I'm on mobile broadband is because I have no land broadband avaialble to me.

You would be crazy to ditch a fiber connection for a mobile one in your scenario.

I'm lucky and signal here is generally speaking, very good with almost no downtime that I remember, I connect to a mast 8 to 10 miles away with full line of sight via sea (mast is on the Isle of Wight) and I'm mainland Portsmouth.

As of last week, 250Mbps down and around 40Mbps up and very good ping (below 20ms) with 0 packet loss with Smart (Three) for £16 per month unlimited no contract.

Before it would be 80/80Mbps but I reckon something was upgraded.

The only downside for me is that I have a Huawei CPE Pro 2 that has no mast locking, only band locking and sometimes the router will connect to a crap mast near me which kills speeds for 5 to 10s which is how long it takes the router to change back.

I would take ADSL speeds (80Mbps and relatively stable) over broadband even if faster, just because of the reliability aspect of it eventhough I've been lucky so far with mobile broadband (1.5 years).
 
I have a smarty 5G service - but only because it’s the fastest connection I can get. Ultimately I’d intended to replace my FTTC connection with it but I’ve ended up keeping both. The reason is that the 5G connection varies somewhat in speed and certain things (my TV for example) don’t seem to like it. It’s been pretty reliable but I had one occasion when the signal just disappeared for a few days. The 5G connection is generally about 3x faster for me than my FTTC connection both up and down so I use it when I need to download or upload large files for work. But I trust the FTTC connection more for stability.
 
I assume on virgin you get a static or dynamic public IP address included in the price, this is very useful for anyone working with networks. The CGNAT Smarty offers is very restrictive and causes problems with lots of stuff, for me this includes VoIP, Santander on-line banking, SSH connections to remote servers and even some features of smart TV's not working. This is the main reason I'm with Three rather than the cheaper Smarty deals.

The main disadvantage with mobile that I have found is that it amplifies any local problems. For example in a power cut, you basically loose all ability to find out what's is going on. In my case my internet, VoIP and mobile calling all stop working and there is no way to find out what is going on (ie going to local power company website to see if there is a problem or contacting them to report the problem).
Another thing I have noticed recently is that on days with high solar winds, my ping rates are very high and speed is slower. I would expect fibre would not be affected by these conditions. With CME's expected to peak in 2025 these events could be more extreme and longer lasting in the coming months.

I guess it's swings or roundabouts, purely based on your needs and personal preferences. I know if I had the option of getting fibre I would probably be on that right now, but Three is currently the best of what is available to me.
 
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