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Smarty home internet

NickyC

Casual Member
Hi everyone,

I know it’s not technically Three, rather a sub brand, but just wanted to see if anyone had any experience of using a Smarty sim in a mobile router?

I’ve been burned in the past by Three’s 5G Home Broadband. The router and connection were stellar to begin with, but then after about 6 weeks, the internet repeatedly “stalled”.

I’d find my router with no internet connection, yet my iPhone on the same network would be blasting out the MBs in triple figures.

A restart would temporarily restore connectivity, and then after a few hours - stall.

I’ll cut the story short in that the problem was never resolved and we ended up getting out of the contract early without penalty.

But my iPhone remains incredible with blistering speeds (for a handset) and I’d love to be able to get those speeds for a fraction of the price Virgin Media charge for broadband.

So, has anyone used Smarty for home broadband? How have you found it and have you encountered any issues? What hardware have you used? Etc

Thanks! ☺️
 
I’m going to be a complete dweeb here and ask what is a CGNAT connection?

What does that mean in real world usage?

Do Three have CGNAT or is it something only Smarty sims have?

☺️
 
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CGNAT you get like an ip like 10.0.0.1 for example, if you had a three data sim it would use 3internet apn which would supply you with a real IP address, shouldn't really effect real world usage, but if you are using it for ip cams etc it may cause issues with connecting with them from an outside source hope this helps, if you are i would advise getting an three data sim to get around that, as using the 3internet apn on smarty makes no difference as it ignores it
 
Thanks for taking the time to explain that! 👍

I’m edging towards Smarty as Three don’t have any sim-only deals which match Smarty and ones that don’t guarantee to increase in price each April.

Smarty seems like a sweet spot of price, performance and reliability (providing it doesn’t have the same issues as Three did around 2 years ago)
 
Have you got anything that would need a "real" IP address NickyC? If you don't then you are fine, if you have you could install tailscale clients on your devices which is very useful.

I've just bought a 500GB Three data SIM which gives 500GB every month until Feb 2027 and that gives me a "real" IP address. It ends up costing £4.68 a month (the card is currently £116.99 on Amazon).
 
That’s a pretty good deal!

I think Three’s current unlimited data (which is what I would need as I work from home) is £20 - and then there’s the yearly price increase.

So after 2 years, I’d be paying £24ish a month, which is quite the bump.

Re: the IP address - I think the fact I stared blankly for a few seconds before replying says it all 🤣
 
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Hi everyone,

I know it’s not technically Three, rather a sub brand, but just wanted to see if anyone had any experience of using a Smarty sim in a mobile router?

I've been using Smarty for my home internet for over four years now, with no problems of late. I'm in an affluent area it seems to most people here probably have EE for their mobile and Fibre for their home internet - so Three's network isn't oversubscribed, so always get at least 40mbps on a speed test, and well over 120mbps at night time.

Only using 4G with a Sercomm LTE2122GR that I got off eBay for about $30, and it's been rock solid.

I pay £15/month for unlimited. Smarty sometimes discount their unlimited plan sims.

 
I am currently using smarty for my backup internet at home.
I recently tested using this over a week, by disconnecting my virgin broadband and connecting the mobile router (NE5103E) to my wifi mesh.
Over wifi i could not tell the difference in speed. Obviously the wired connection was slower, as my virgin connection is 1Gig. But for me it was flawless, until my partner tried to remote play with others on his PS5.
That would not work, thats when i found out it may well being that because Smarty dont issue an IP address, this is the problem. I am going to test this in the next few weeks with a Three sim to see if it rectifies the problem.
My IP security cameras worked fine, and everything else even my works VPN connected as normal.
Luckily I have a three unlimited sim at work for £17 a month, which i use for my smart speaker for radio etc, which work say we can not connect to the works wifi (hence i just use a three router) I am going to swap them over and see the difference.
 
I have been using Smarty now for the past two years with the Huawei B535 Router with no problems
Shares a single mast in my rural village with EE, with an average download speed between 20- 25Mb
No difference in speed between Smarty and EE.
 
Also using Smarty as backup. Had Huawei 4G router since I had Three 4G broadband, but because it been dropping connection I bought NETGEAR 4G LTE Broadband Modem (LM1200) .

As bought modem month ago, difficult to say, but so far working fine in backgrpund.

1727514160356.webp
 
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Although not Smarty, still with a Three MVNO I use an iD Mobile unlimited data SIM in a Huawei 5G CPE Pro 2 h122-373 router and it's very stable indeed. I may get the odd day every second week that it seems to run slow but then perks up soon after. I've been looking at Smarty options but iD are beating them on price at the moment.
 
Thanks for all of your replies - I won't reply to each individual one, but what I'm getting is that Smarty seems like it could be a reliable home internet service, if you aren't in need of specific features. 👍
 
Thanks for all of your replies - I won't reply to each individual one, but what I'm getting is that Smarty seems like it could be a reliable home internet service, if you aren't in need of specific features. 👍
CGNAT would only impact you if you host gaming servers (DnD, tabletop simulator etc) not games like apex, Fortnite, CoD, Minecraft etc.

And then if you needed remote access to computers or servers within your property, you might struggle or need some additional software to route the traffic.

I use EE (a scancom data sim unlimited, £199 for 20 months data), and an NR5103E router from CEX £149 which came brand new unlocked.

Behind CGNAT but never once had a problem, and yet 500-700 download and 100-120 upload all day long.

Gaming, streaming etc no problems.

Your issue could have simply been put down to swapping bands (frequencies within the network), which you can prevent or fix to certain bands with most routers.
 
CGNAT would only impact you if you host gaming servers (DnD, tabletop simulator etc) not games like apex, Fortnite, CoD, Minecraft etc.

And then if you needed remote access to computers or servers within your property, you might struggle or need some additional software to route the traffic.

I use EE (a scancom data sim unlimited, £199 for 20 months data), and an NR5103E router from CEX £149 which came brand new unlocked.

Behind CGNAT but never once had a problem, and yet 500-700 download and 100-120 upload all day long.

Gaming, streaming etc no problems.

Your issue could have simply been put down to swapping bands (frequencies within the network), which you can prevent or fix to certain bands with most routers.
Thanks for that info CarlO.

I do indeed do gaming using GeForce NOW so it's good to know that would be ok.

RE my previous issues with Three. Unfortunately I went through weeks of Tech Support with Three and had it escalated to various departments to no resolution. They had me trying all sorts.

I tried multiple routers and different SIM cards in the routers, and the results were always the same. It was almost like the network detected the device was a router, and then throttled it to zero. Both mine and my partners Three iPhones were and still are blazing fast, when multiple routers from different manufacturers all failed.
 
I’m using Smarty as WAN failover, but speed is dire. I need to check settings as it’s in a 4G area, but prob oversubscribed.

Using pfsense with a Netgear LM1200

Primary connection is Virgin.
 
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