5G comes to my village

Since its launch some while back, 5G has been making steady progress. I see that 5G coverage with EE (my mobile phone service provider) has now reached the point where every city and most towns in the land can get it. Various country areas can as well, some of them rural tracts of no great population. Presumably this is to fill in the 'not spots' in the 4G network, so that if one's local 4G service is weak or non-existent, there is now the chance of 5G instead.

In my village - my part of it, anyway - I would have described the 4G service as 'quite good, but occasionally fading to poor'. It seems to depend on the weather: rainy conditions have generally meant a problematic 4G service. It also depends on the sensitivity of one's mobile phone. I'm finding that my larger, more powerful (and of course completely up-to-date) Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra can instantly grab a 4G signal in most parts of my house, which wasn't necessarily the case with my previous phone, a Samsung Galaxy S20+.

A good mobile phone service matters. Modern living demands good, reliable communications and, in particular, access to the Internet with one's phone. For the last four years I have relied completely on 4G to connect me to the Internet at home. It was early in 2020 when the broadband service I was subscribing to - then provided by BT - was cut off after heavy rain ruined the wiring and other equipment in a green roadside cabinet. It took a lot longer than a few days to fix. I contacted BT and they gave me a massive temporary increase in my 4G data allowance, so that I could get the Internet on my mobile phone without worrying about running out of paid-for data. 

They gave me 100GB for £25 a month, although I only paid £20 because of a £5 discount for having my broadband from BT. I made good use of that enhanced data allowance, and discovered that most of the time 4G was all I needed. I'd been a light broadband user: I was the only one in the house, and I didn't stream TV much, nor films, nor was I a gamer. The heaviest call on that 4G-based Internet was when -tethering the laptop to the phone - I uploaded photos to Flickr, composed photo-rich blog posts, or downloaded Windows updates. 

Essentially this was how it was when away in the caravan. I could usually do whatever I needed to when pitched in a farmer's field: why not then at home as well? Why pay for expensive broadband, when 4G was good enough for my usage? Suddenly it seemed daft to pay for two Internet services, especially as being away from home so much meant that I couldn't get full value from the broadband. Later in 2020 I cut my broadband contract and had my landline disconnected, intending henceforth to go completely wireless. 

I was conscious that it was something of a gamble. Would the local 4G signal remain adequate? Would my village ever get upgraded to 5G? On the other hand, I'd be saving around £30 a month. And there were things I could do to improve 4G reception in the house, such as buying a powered aerial/router for a window sill (which I could use in the caravan too), or even having an external aerial fixed to the chimney. 

Well, four years later the wireless-only gamble has worked out fine. My next door neighbours have been kind enough to let me tap into their unlimited broadband whenever I need to - there are occasional 4G outages - so I have an emergency Internet source. A privilege I don't abuse. Otherwise, I just use 4G, which has been good enough for watching the odd TV programme on my tethered laptop - even more so since upgrading to my S24 Ultra. 

But to make the experiment a complete success, I needed 5G. 

Well, a week ago EE sent a message to tell me that they wanted to carry out 'maintenance' at the local installation. Uh-oh. That probably meant several days without a 4G service. I was right. Initially they spoke soothingly of only a sixteen-hour outage. But it grew. Then they spoke of 'improvements'. Huh. That meant new equipment, and more delay for installation and testing. Still, EE might be boosting the 4G service. It turned out to be something better. 

Yesterday, early in the evening, and sitting in my lounge at home, I glanced at my phone and saw something I'd only seen when visiting large towns: the 4G symbol had been replaced by the one for 5G! 

Wow. At last. 5G here.

Granted, it was only a moderate 5G signal - I'm near the edge of the village - but this was something I hadn't really expected to see for several years yet. It meant that I would definitely never need to consider reconnecting/upgrading my landline and reinstalling broadband, and I could permanently keep my £30 a month saving (it's probably more now).

So the latest outage was worth enduring.

Is there a downside? I can't see one. If bad weather makes the 5G service wane, it defaults to 4G, which has been - as I said - adequate for most of the time.

I thought about whether it was a possible drawback not to have a modern fibre landline connected to the house. If I ever had to sell the house, the lack of a fibre landline might put off a potential buyer. Or would it? In any case (a) I have no plans to move, unless climate change forces me to (I'm thinking of unbearably hot summers); and (b) I could always pay to have the very latest type of installation as part of a pre-marketing decision. 

Meanwhile, I've got 160GB of data every month for £26.98, the new price after the annual hike. My old SIM-only contract with EE expired a long time ago, but I've let things run forward on a rolling basis. It's a lot of data for a reasonable monthly cost, and (importantly) it's supplied at EE's very best speed. I expect that one day they will ask me to move to a proper new contract with them, or leave. But until they do, I'm going to enjoy what I have.