Oh look. Vodafone has extended its ultrafast 5G network to deliver... Wi-Fi? Mobile connectivity provider Vodafone has expanded its 5G network to another eight British towns and cities. The amazing wireless tech of the far-flung future is now available in Birkenhead, Bolton, Gatwick, Lancaster, Newbury, Plymouth, Stoke-on-Trent and Wolverhampton – even though there isn't much you can do with a 5G …
How is this different to WiFi points that could take a 3G PCMCIA card back in um, maybe 2006, or the Flash OFDMA 4G PCMCIA card or USB stick in 2008?
There is NO way 5G can work directly on WiFi. Not without a 5G transceiver that can use the WiFi band in the phone AND the airpoint/repeater/base and that is greedy parasitic operation as it reduces capacity of a licence free band and allows a Mobile operator to use spectrum they didn't pay for.
Also how is this fundamentally different from the various MiFi's devices that you can pick up.
I get that (on paper) the WiFi range is better than my Huawei 3G MiFi gismo and will support 64 concurrent clients as against 6. However, both of these are design trade-offs to achieve reasonable battery life etc.
As for business use, from my experience of putting WiFi in transit vans for utilities, the capabilities could be useful, provided the GigaCube can be dashboard mounted and utilise external antenna - however, as integrated batteries aren't so important I suspect there will be better candidates to fulfil this use case.
>Aren't you better off given the driver an iPad...with is own mobile connection.
Depends on the use cases being addressed, expected work locations eg. locations without mobile signal and application software being used (most of which tends to be written for Windows clients).
>Would be cheaper than having a separate MiFi
WiFi only iPad/PC plus van-based MiFi/router has a lower TOC and more readily supports a number of other mobile workforce use cases than a single device solution.
>and probably give you better performance.
Whilst there are occasions where this is will hold true, for most of the time you can utilise the resources of the van and so can use more power hungry equipment ie. drive more 3/4/5G radios, have bigger antennas etc.
There is NO way 5G can work directly on WiFi. Not without a 5G transceiver that can use the WiFi band in the phone AND the airpoint/repeater/base and that is greedy parasitic operation as it reduces capacity of a licence free band and allows a Mobile operator to use spectrum they didn't pay for.
What are you talking about? This article is about a device which has a 5G modem and acts as a wireless access point, same as has existed for 4G and 3G networks in the form of "MiFi" devices. Nowhere does it mention using "5G on Wi-Fi".
Looks like the article is showing prices excluding VAT. Vodafone's prices incl VAT are here https://www.vodafone.co.uk/gigacube/
And it's an 18 month contract not 12. There is a 30 day contract (good) but with £325 upfront. No way is the device worth that. When there's a SIM-only option I might consider it and grab a device off ebay.
Ignoring all the issues with coverage, contention/congestion etc.
Why even offer data cap? if i'm gonna use 1Gbps speed I will blow through the 100GB cap in like 15min. If I'm not gonna use 1Gbps why pay more for 5G, instead of getting cheaper 3/4G MiFi
And I bet their "unlimited" has fine print about throttling after certain amount of data is used up.
There's a reason that I deliberately held off on all the "unlimited" data packages until recently.
I use 4G as my only Internet connection, via a little Huawei box that powers my whole home network.
Up until this year, you could never get to the bottom of their fair-use and they all excluded tethering (for reasons I can't fathom - 1Gb is 1Gb whether it's on a phone or Wifi, no? And all phones offer hotspotting).
This year, Smarty (a Three reseller) and then - ironically later - Three clarified their terms. "Unlimited" now means 1000Gb, tethering absolutely 100% allowed, according to Smarty, for instance. 1000Gb is big enough for the foreseeable future for me, I'd have to do 10 times my normal traffic to hit that. I signed up immediately (again, ironically, moving away from Three themselves who couldn't be bothered to offer me that guarantee at that point!). And it's on a monthly rolling contract so I can always switch again if necessary.
So now I feel "safe" having a 4G running my whole network, letting all my Steam games download, watching stuff on Amazon Prime all day long, etc.
I will move to 5G when and if someone does the same for 5G. Available in my area. Monthly rolling contract. Better speeds than 4G. And at least 1000Gb of untethered data available before they play any games with my speeds or try to charge me.
For reference, 1000Gb (1Tb) a month is a constant 3Mbit per second... it doesn't sound a lot when you say it like that... but if you expect me to move to 5G, then I can easily see that you'd want more than that or that you could burn through that quite quickly. I think I would want an increase proportional to my actual speed - if 5G really is 10 times faster than 4G, in my own real-world testing, then I'm going to want 10Tb of data before I touch it.
Never really had a problem with 'unlimited' broadbands, Until recently the local exchange only allowed 3.5 MB, and never had a complaint no matter how many Linux distros I torrented 24/7; then this year moved to Vodafone Fibre for £20 a month. Still unlimited but at 4GB speed. I prefer Cat 7, but at present have to use WiFi.
This morning I downloaded from Mega [ old stationery catalogues from the 1950s ] as usual and in 6 hours got 51 GB of data down. Generally, I think so long as one doesn't abuse the system, 'unlimited' is usually pretty much what it says, within the constraints of physics.
"This year, Smarty (a Three reseller) and then - ironically later - Three clarified their terms. "Unlimited" now means 1000Gb, tethering absolutely 100% allowed, according to Smarty, for instance. 1000Gb is big enough for the foreseeable future for me, I'd have to do 10 times my normal traffic to hit that. I signed up immediately (again, ironically, moving away from Three themselves who couldn't be bothered to offer me that guarantee at that point!)."
I think you may be confused. "Unlimited" for Three means unlimited, and has done since they started offering it (originally labelled "all you can eat", specifically to distinguish themselves from other providers who called their limited plans unlimited). They state that 1000 GB (not Gb) is the point where they may start suspecting you of commercial use and question whether you should be on a regular consumer contract, but there is no cap and you can happily use more than that if you can somehow manage it. Tethering has also always been allowed in the UK, although they've only recently started allowing it, with data caps, while roaming. I'm also not sure how you managed to think Three couldn't be bothered to guarantee that since, as noted above, it's been one of their big selling points for a long time and they're happy to boast about it at every opportunity.
"Is this any different to just using your phone as a wifi access point?"
Not at the system concept level, the GigaCube is just a phone with the expensive screen and battery replaced by the mains charger.
But in practice it has bigger and better RF components and is optimised for higher bandwidth, so it will perform solidly where your phone has long fizzled out.
I have Huawei's 4G Router, predecessor to the 5G GigaCube. I am far enough away from the nearest fibre cabinet that even this gives me substantially faster broadband than my old BT FTTC copper wire.
Because it gives me WiFi, all my mobile IoT stuff needs no individual SIM or costly mobile contract. I call it WTTW (or WT2 for short) - Wifi To The Windowsill.
The WiFi-to-5G model also appeals because one WiFi box goes where 5G cannot go without an expensive shedload of local repeaters all over the building.
I can only say that this is the future. End of.
"for fixed use FIBRE is the future."
Sorry, you are out of touch with reality. Nobody is ever going to roll out fibre here, the cost will always be prohibitive. But we have 4G and the future will with high probability bring us 5G.
The question is, if fibre is not yet available, which will be cheaper to deliver, fibre or 5G? Sorry, but 5G blows a huge hole in the profitability of new fibre and, long-term, that is going to cripple if not kill it.
Same.
For nearly two years now, and now I have a proper definition of unlimited data on a proper tethering contract, I can't tell the difference, to be honest.
I also pop the little soap-bar-sized box into my laptop bag occasionally and don't have to rely on pub wifi or airport wifi or foreign cafe wifi either. Hell, I don't even inconvenience my friends by needing to jump on their guest Wifi. Even my car can pick up the Wifi from it, if I want. I actually had Internet speeds in Spain last summer that my hosts didn't even have.
I've also used SIP phones over it, VPNs, all kinds... it just works.
I do have an IoT SIM in my car GPS tracker but it literally costs £25 a year and then a fixed price per text (which is rare and means either I've lost the car or someone has stolen it) with a guarantee that they won't terminate the account for low use because of the annual charge. I'll be doing the same for my house alarm too. And they are all different networks, which is my "backup".
But Wifi To The Windowsill is a very apt name. I just happened to put it onto a Draytek to offer it out to the network and get much better 5GHz Wifi coverage, but apart from that, it's the same idea.
>choosing myself between a Huawei LTE Cube B5180 and a draytek vigor 2860ac
Interesting set of choices: personally, I would go for the Huawei for home residential usage where you are replacing ADSL and mobile/portable office usage for small user groups where most users will be WiFi connected.
As for the Draytek, well if your home office needs what it offers and you have reasonable xDSL then...
However, if budget permits, look at the 2862Lac.
Personally, I use a 'real' router at home as have FTTC and use 3G for backup (currently upgrading to a Draytek), a MiFi/phone for personal mobile office and currently a Three Web Cube for my mobile team office (also gets used by the family when camping/caravaning), because it needs mains power and so is less likely to be left behind when packing up...
>Because it gives me WiFi, all my mobile IoT stuff needs no individual SIM or costly mobile contract.
Interesting, one of the "benefits" being touted for 5G IoT is that users won't have to connect their IoT gismos to their home WiFi, instead they will automagically connect to 5G...
My 4G GigaCube does indeed have an RJ45 socket (into which I plug a shameful legacy 100M hub for my other legacy hardware). Moreover it has a web interface which lets me delve into the usual stuff for any vanilla router - diagnostics, logs, etc. I can also set up a VPN and blah blah. The 5G one looks outwardly identical so I trust its Ethernet will still be there.
It also has a phone handset socket, though whether for VoIP or true Mobile I have not bothered to find out.
The headline implies Vodafone offers superfast' 5G, however it doesn't for all its customers. Only one tier of tariffs offer full speed, the others are heavily restricted, with speeds that are comparable to 3G speeds. Vodafone has been a disappointment this time around.
I live in Manchester, 20 minutes walk from the city centre and jumped on one of these. Why? Because despite being this close to the city centre there's nothing greater than ADSL speeds available to me in a 3 year old house. BT have no plans to upgrade the cabinet and Virgin have no plans to cable across the street to me so this is a lifesaver
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