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Vodafone unlimited data

Does anybody know if the Vodafone unlimited package recently announced can be used in a home LTE router or is it for phones only?

Also, I can only get 3G in my house with my mobile phone. 4G is possible just down the road at ~40Mbps. With an LTE router and external antenna, how much more likely am I to be able to get 4G? I can go a bit higher than my current test sire, an upstairs window , to the top of the roof-line but no higher as I am in an AONB. Presumably the external router antennas are more sensitive than what can be packed into a smartphone.

It is a bit of a gamble buying the kit to find out that 4G isn't going to be possible :(
 
I've been trying to find a clear answer to this myself but finding the unlimited plan T&Cs is tedious. At present the unlimited plans are aimed at Smartphone SIMs, which can act as WiFi hotspots and they do at least seem to be happy with hotspot use (if that's the case then mobile broadband dongles / routers shouldn't be an issue).
 
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Signed up to their Unlimited Max and stuck the sim in my 4g modem, been about 8 days and already pulled over 1TB.

Was looking at the AUP but couldn't find anything saying I couldn't or that I would be managed after x amount of TB downloaded.

It does say for not commercial use so I guess that's the only gocha but all I've used it for is personal serving up as a second load balanced along with my fixed line with BT.

I'm averaging about 40-80Mbps at the moment but I know I can get at least 130Mbps as my phone is CAT18 on 4G.

I will probably pay for the 5G Gigacube on 30 day contract to cancel right away and use the £30 pound sim in there instead of the £50 for the same deal.
 
Under OFCOM rules, telcos are no longer allowed to restrict sims to specific types of device. (Which is probably where there is no mention of it in VF's T&Cs) ie If you buy an unlimited sim from Vodafone, EE, Three etc you can use it in a phone, a tablet or a router. You'll find this decision somewhere on OFCOM's site dated towards the end of 2018.

Get an outside antenna - I can only get H+ in the house but get a very good 4G signal with the external antenna mounted on the side of the house. The Fullband MIMORAD omni-directional antenna seems to be a very good bit of kit.
 
I know it is not strictly the same thing but I have used a Voxi sim preloaded with 45gb in a CAT11 LTE router without any issue. Voxi is a Vodafone entity and the sim is supposed to be exactly the same as a vodafone one. It certainly has the same APN anyway.

N/B layman disclaimer ;). I completely agree with Biginuk that you will be able to get a much better connection with a dedicated LTE router. My phone is quite new but not that powerful though (Moto G6 plus). FWIW I have been down this exact same route that you are contemplating and thanks to starting off as an ignoramus, this forum and Amazon's generous returns policy I have established that in my part of Liverpool at least there is a big difference in performance between differing hardware. To give you an idea, I started off a month or two ago not knowing what LTE meant or that LTE routers can have a different CAT rating but now know that a Huawei B618 CAT11 router coupled with a Poynting omni-directional antenna gives by far the best speed at an affordable price. The antenna is meant to go outdoors but I have it stuck on the inside of an upstairs bedroom window where it performed best out of four others I tried allthough unfortunately it was the most expensive.

I have learnt the following;t
There is more variability in performance both in terms of hardware and location than anything else I can think of !
Pay no attention to any preconceptions you may have about brands etc - the best router for me was twice as fast as a more expensive one from a company I have always thought of as having premium products.
Read everything on this forum - there are others but I learnt more on here than anywhere else.
 
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I was on a support call this morning and they confirmed a router is not an issue, plugged a PAYG sim card into my B525 and got 35mb DL 20mb UL. This was on a band 20 10mhz bandwidth approx 3 miles from a mast with direct line of site. So now I can get a Vodafone sim and add the bandwidth to my Three sim card that suffers during snowstorms as its further away behind some trees and Band 3 15mhz so faster but prone to bad weather.
 
I tried a PAYG SIM to test the service. Good strong signal on my TP-Link router, but never more than about 8 Mb/s download speed. Vodafone admitted they throttle PAYG, but only to 24 Mb/s. Is 800 MHz always slow?
 
I tried a PAYG SIM to test the service. Good strong signal on my TP-Link router, but never more than about 8 Mb/s download speed. Vodafone admitted they throttle PAYG, but only to 24 Mb/s. Is 800 MHz always slow?

I get 50-60Mbps on my GiffGaff SIM, 02 also use band20 (800MHz).

Vodaphone are probably over subscribed, or dont have enough capacity on your local mast to reach even their throttled limit.

Voda are the TalkTalk of the mobile ISPs.
 
Hi,

I bought a router and a directional antenna and I can get 4 bars with Vfe 4G. Speed wise about 35 to 40Mbps down. That is probably OK. I am using my current phone SIM. What I have noticed is that port forwarding does not appear to be possible. Do Vfe use carrier grade NAT or is there some other reason? I have tried putting computer into DMZ and explicit port forwarding but no joy. If I had a data only SIM would this port forward? The data only SIMs are too expensive for my needs. I did get VOIP working OK. I also strangely think the suresignal femtocell worked but not 100% sure as my phone SIM was in the router....

C
 
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tried out the vodafone 5G CPE Pro on 4g LTE-A on and getting about 160-180Mbps, avarages around 130Mbps for the most part.

Have to say not bad but the device doesn't allow you to select the network manually, so i do sometimes drop to one of the other masts on LTE and max out around 80Mbps on occasions.

Just need to wait for 5G to roll out!

Have to say, very consistent considering my VDSL only gives me about 40Mbps.

Only advantage of VDSL is the ping, though Vodafone seems to be in the 40-50ms but it not consistent.
 
Lucky you. My mast is 4km away. I can see it because it is on the massive Mendip TV transmitter but the actual mobile antenna is below the hill and treeline. Now, if only that pesky port forwarding would work. To be honest I am not too bothered if the port forwarding does not work. My son has left home now - it would have been a killer for him (as well as the latency) - as he plays games. If I can't access my FTP server and Plex it is not the end of the world.
 
Lucky you. My mast is 4km away. I can see it because it is on the massive Mendip TV transmitter but the actual mobile antenna is below the hill and treeline. Now, if only that pesky port forwarding would work. To be honest I am not too bothered if the port forwarding does not work. My son has left home now - it would have been a killer for him (as well as the latency) - as he plays games. If I can't access my FTP server and Plex it is not the end of the world.
You need to change the APN profile to '3internet' to have control over a full IP4 address.
 
You need to change the APN profile to '3internet' to have control over a full IP4 address.
Really, surely that is a Three APN, not Vodafone? Absolutely zero chance of Three coverage where I live.

I was told that port forwarding on Vfe voice & data sim should work and now have a new SIM but not tried again yet. At the moment I am running dual WAN with Voneus FWA and Vfe LTE. Wanting to ensure LTE reliability before dropping my existing solution completely. In practice I might just continue with both for resilience as I am now working from home quite a lot.
 
Really, surely that is a Three APN, not Vodafone? Absolutely zero chance of Three coverage where I live.

I was told that port forwarding on Vfe voice & data sim should work and now have a new SIM but not tried again yet. At the moment I am running dual WAN with Voneus FWA and Vfe LTE. Wanting to ensure LTE reliability before dropping my existing solution completely. In practice I might just continue with both for resilience as I am now working from home quite a lot.
Ah, Thought you were talking about three.
 
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So for everyone's information, at around 2500gb's your get an sms, basically states that they believe that the amount of data used is not for personal use.

You just need to contact them and verify that it is indeed personal use... was advised that I'm fine to continue using it the way I am.

I'd assume that if there was any change to this the T&C's would get an update and they'd need to tell us.
 
So for everyone's information, at around 2500gb's your get an sms, basically states that they believe that the amount of data used is not for personal use.

You just need to contact them and verify that it is indeed personal use... was advised that I'm fine to continue using it the way I am.

I'd assume that if there was any change to this the T&C's would get an update and they'd need to tell us.
That is good to know. Silly question, 2.5TB in a single given month or aggregated over a longer period? I 'might' hit about 1TB a month tops, probably not much more.

Scratch that, I don't think that particular package has been about for more than a month so I think I have my answer.
 
Last edited:
That is good to know. Silly question, 2.5TB in a single given month or aggregated over a longer period? I 'might' hit about 1TB a month tops, probably not much more.

Scratch that, I don't think that particular package has been about for more than a month so I think I have my answer.

15 days :) im at 18 days now and have just under 3TB.

I spoke with the CEO's office as I got mixed information when speaking to their agents but was all cleared up, being new i suspect training hasn't complete made its way round.

Additionally its worth the extra cost over say Three that soft cap around 1TB and to be totally honest have a crap back-haul, whenever i test Three regardless of location its always slower than the other providers.
 
That's quite a lot of 'UHD Linux distributions' you have been downloading ;) Only, messing with you, I have no idea what you do with your data. Did they ask you or did you just tell them it was for personal use and none of their business?

I did read the acceptable usage policy. It is not clear to me what actually constitutes personal use but I would think I fall foul of it if I use it to connect to work when working from home. In reality home working won't consume much data for me.

I can certainly see why operators would want to limit use of phones for bulk SMS spamming etc.
 
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