Looking for good wifi suggestions please!

[Sophie12345]

We’ve currently got the Three 5g WiFi router but it’s been consistently pretty bad for the last year, so we are looking to move to another provider. Does anyone have any recommendations for good WiFi in East Dulwich? 
 

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!

[Sue]

7 hours ago, Sophie12345 said:

We’ve currently got the Three 5g WiFi router but it’s been consistently pretty bad for the last year, so we are looking to move to another provider. Does anyone have any recommendations for good WiFi in East Dulwich? 
 

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Up until a couple of days ago, I would have said Plusnet.

 I've been with them for years and always found them  reliable and very good value (whenever I have looked into changing, they have always matched the price), but my WiFi went a bit glitchy the other day.

It seems to be ok now, but it has shaken my faith!

I had considered changing to Virgin, but it seems to be constantly going down around this area, even after they were supposed to have fixed it?

Edited 14 hours ago by Sue

[Dulwich dweller]

8 hours ago, Sophie12345 said:

We’ve currently got the Three 5g WiFi router but it’s been consistently pretty bad for the last year, so we are looking to move to another provider. Does anyone have any recommendations for good WiFi in East Dulwich? 
 

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Weve used EE for the past 6 years. We're next to Peckham Rye. It's consistent and we've never had any outages or technical issues. We watch live streams for football and suffer no lags or buffering.

 

All the best.

[Kipper_1972]

5G has a shorter range and is worse at penetrating obstacles between you and the cell tower, try logging into the router and knocking it back to 4G (LTE)

You also need to establish if the problem is WiFi or cellular. Change the WiFi from 5GHz to 2.4GHz and you will get better WiFi coverage within your house

If your WiFi is fine and moving to 4G doesn't help then you might be in a dead spot. There's lots of fibre deployed in East Dulwich

[ianr]

Sophie, I have to thank you for bringing me squarely into 2025.  I was aware of 4G/5G USB dongles for single computers, and of being able to use smartphones for tethering 4G/5G, but hadn't realised that the four mobile networks were now providing home hub/routers, effectively mimicking the cabled broadband suppliers.  I'd personally stick to calling the mobile networks 4G/5G rather than wifi, so as not to confuse them with the wifi that we use within home or from external wifi hotspots. 4G/5G is a whole diffferent, wide-area set of  networks, and uses its own distinct wavebands.

So, when you're saying wi-fi, I assume you're actually referring to the  mobile phone networks, and that it's not a matter of just having poor connections within your home local area network, or a router which is deficient.   If any doubt, the best test will be with a computer connected directly to the router by cable; possibly  trying different locations as well.

Which really leaves me with only one maybe useful thing to say.  :) The Which pages at https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/broadband/article/what-is-broadband/what-is-4g-broadband-aUWwk1O9J0cW look pretty useful and informative. They include local area quality of coverage maps for the four providers (including 5G user reports I think) , where they say (and I guess it too is pretty common knowledge):

Our survey of the best and worst UK mobile networks found that the most common issues mobile customers have are constantly poor phone signal and continuous brief network dropouts – and in fact no network in our survey received a five star rating for network reliability. 

Edited 33 minutes ago by ianr

[Penguin68]

I have a warning from EE that they're undertaking work locally to me, I'm assuming the south end of Underhill, over the next 5 days so there may be a temporary reduction in service. Otherwise it's fine. In case you suddenly hear adverse comments, problems may only be short lived. 

[Alec1]

10 hours ago, Sue said:

Up until a couple of days ago, I would have said Plusnet.

 I've been with them for years and always found them  reliable and very good value (whenever I have looked into changing, they have always matched the price), but my WiFi went a bit glitchy the other day.

It seems to be ok now, but it has shaken my faith!

I had considered changing to Virgin, but it seems to be constantly going down around this area, even after they were supposed to have fixed it?

If it's your Wi-Fi that was the problem, that's more likely the router (or the device you were using), not the actual service coming into the router.  I am with plusnet, and whenever mind has been glitchy, I check with a device connected via ethernet cable to the router to see if that is okay.  I've been with them for potentially 15 years now and each time there has been an issue (not many and not plusnets fault, more the infrastructure) I have looked elsewhere, but everyone moans about their providers at some point!  Some more than others.  I often feel it's better the devil you know!   

[Sue]

39 minutes ago, Alec1 said:

If it's your Wi-Fi that was the problem, that's more likely the router (or the device you were using), not the actual service coming into the router.  I am with plusnet, and whenever mind has been glitchy, I check with a device connected via ethernet cable to the router to see if that is okay.  I've been with them for potentially 15 years now and each time there has been an issue (not many and not plusnets fault, more the infrastructure) I have looked elsewhere, but everyone moans about their providers at some point!  Some more than others.  I often feel it's better the devil you know!   

True, though a couple of years back I did have an issue which they had to sort remotely. I can't remember what it was now, some technical thing.

[ed_pete]

I have been using the 5G broadband service from 3 for about 3 years and I've rarely had issues.  I have a separate router for the WiFi around the house so can't comment on the quality of the WiFi from the 3 5G router itself.

It could be worth moving it to a different location in your property.  I also think there is a way to get the router to show you the 5G signal strength to help you find the best location.

[ianr]

For convenience, here are details of which  mobile phone networks some individual ISPs use for 4/5G services.  I've copied it from the Which reference above.

EE: 1p Mobile, BT Mobile, Lycamobile, Spusu, Utility Warehouse

O2: Giffgaff, Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile

Three: Honest Mobile, iD Mobile, Smarty

Vodafone: Asda Mobile, Lebara, Talkmobile, Voxi

I don't know that Plusnet use a mobile network but bear in mind that they're a ?subsidiary of BT.  Virgin I don't see listed either, but I know they have their own dedicated fibre network.

Edited 12 minutes ago by ianr

[Angelina]

we use Virgin - rather expensive but works fine.

[ed_pete]

6 minutes ago, ianr said:

For convenience, here are details of which  mobile phone networks some individual ISPs use for 4/5G services.  I've copied it from the Which reference above.

EE: 1p Mobile, BT Mobile, Lycamobile, Spusu, Utility Warehouse

O2: Giffgaff, Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile

Three: Honest Mobile, iD Mobile, Smarty

Vodafone: Asda Mobile, Lebara, Talkmobile, Voxi

I don't know that Plusnet use a mobile network but bear in mind that they're a ?subsidiary of BT.  Virgin I don't see listed either, but I know they have their own dedicated fibre network.

Vodafone and Three merged this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VodafoneThree

[ianr]

So some out-of-dateness then, thanks.  I was relying on the "30 Sept 2025" date on their webpage. :)

[Sue]

I am totally confused.

How are mobile networks connected with broadband?

Have I missed something somewhere (very likely)?