It's been some time now since I last used any Home Broadband. I stopped on 1st September, just before I set off for the West Country in the caravan, where of course I'd have only Mobile Internet via 4G as an option. I didn't use Home Broadband once home again, and it was cut off (following my request) on 30th October. So, whether on holiday or at home, I've been relying on 4G.
How has it gone so far? Especially at home?
The answer is: very well. I haven't experienced any poor-signal problems. Any time I want to connect to the Internet on the laptop, I just tether it to the phone and do what I want to do - be it blogging, uploading a hundred pictures to Flickr, watching a YouTube video clip, or viewing some catch-up TV. It seems just as good as the Home Broadband I used to have.
Of course, it helps that my house gets a decent 4G signal, which is not true of all locations in the village. If I lived a stone's throw to the south-east I'd be struggling with only 4G, and would have to stump up for Home Broadband as a necessary alternative. As it is, I can easily manage without it, and pop the money saved into my piggy bank without feeling that I've made a bad mistake. Mobile Internet is amply good enough for what I want to do.
Mind you, it's not altogether surprising that the 4G in my house stacks up well against Home Broadband. The local broadband has never been particularly good. BT have gradually made improvements, and the two new green roadside cabinets they installed earlier this year definitely worked better than the single cabinet they replaced. Furthermore, these new cabinets have the far more efficient optical fibres running into them.
However, the cabinets are three hundred yards away. That's where the fibre stops. An ordinary underground copper cable links the cabinets to the pavement hatch outside my house. And the thin copper wire from that pavement hatch to the flimsy plastic junction box on my outside wall, and thence to my hall, looks old and worn and dodgy. It might easily be as ancient as the house itself (which was built in 1964). I was always surprised that such old wiring could carry any kind of Broadband signal worth having. Well, none of it is needed now. I get my Internet wirelessly.
Isn't 4G affected by the weather, you might ask? Won't you have outages when it's exceptionally hot, or very sunny, or deluging with rain?
I'm certainly expecting the local 4G to fade a bit now and then when the atmospherics are bad. But the weather hasn't made any difference yet. Bear in mind anyway that a lot of what I do with my phone and my laptop can be accomplished offline, and doesn't require an active Mobile Internet signal. I would in any case be quite happy to wait a few hours for a decent connection, just as I sometimes have to when on holiday. Or if the matter were very urgent, I could get in the car and drive to wherever I can get a good enough signal. But as I say, there have been no problems so far.
Which makes me ponder how much money I wasted over recent years, paying for Home Broadband when I didn't really need it. Did I see it as a belt-and-braces thing, an insurance, to have two ways of connecting to the Internet, so that it was always available? And never mind the expense? Or was I simply lulled or conned into having Home Broadband, at first paying extra for better speed, and then paying even more to have unlimited data? Certainly, there continues to be extraordinary pressure on homeowners to get connected, and then constantly upgrade. I suppose there are lots of people who really do want the best Broadband service possible - they have a family to cater for, they like to watch endless TV sport and drama and so forth - and they are prepared to pay handsomely for all they sign up for.
Hopefully they can afford to. Hopefully they enjoy regular game-playing with Broadband providers, threatening to move to someone else's better deal, and then after all squeezing an acceptable new deal from their existing provider. What hassle!
My needs are quite different, and in no way do I feel deprived of anything by jumping off the Broadband bandwagon. I actually feel empowered, having made a decision that sets me free.
