Even 10 years ago I knew people cancelling their broadband to just use mobile internet. It's smart to cancel broadband if you're not streaming video, or if you are streaming but have a fast mobile network connection and decent plan. It probably sucks for any real-time stuff like gaming, but otherwise it makes sense. I don't doubt many people would rather cancel broadband than turn their boiler off.
Ironically, 8-10 years ago my carrier's cellular network felt so fast that a young, naive version of myself expected to never sign up for broadband internet. I used to actually play video games on this connection because it was way more reliable than my home internet connection. But in the past 4-5 years, this same cellular network has become a high jitter, low bandwidth disaster, despite "upgrades" from 4G LTE (i.e. faux 4G) to what my carrier claims is "5G".
I'm aware this is just an anecdote and n = 1 implies infinite variance and what not, but it's amazing seeing countless people have such a good cellular network they can just ditch broadband subscriptions.
I'd seriously consider it if not for working from home. Other than that, all we really use our home broadband for that I couldn't do with my phone is streaming—and you can buy/rent quite a few discs per month for the cost of broadband plus streaming services.
Not to mention that a lot of connections are still DSL (misrepresented as "fibre" which is apparently perfectly legal) so in practice a cellular connection may very well be an upgrade.
I used to live in a house that was about 1.6km from the nearest FTTC cab and 8km from the exchange, just about 20 minutes drive from Glasgow. I could get very intermittent ADSL (2Mbps on a good day, typically down about 1Mbps if it was windy or rainy because of all the splices in the cable).
I switched to 4G and got 40Mbps symmetric using a Mikrotik SXT-LTE on a pole at about eaves height aiming at a mast about 5km away. It was cheaper than ADSL, too!
I think a lot of people on here are in the US where you get absolutely fucking *rinsed* for mobile data. Here in the UK it's cheap as tap water.
True. But quality metrics differ and no wireless connection that i have seen is an upgrade in terms of jitter and reliability overall a wired one (even dsl)
veltas|2 years ago
koito17|2 years ago
I'm aware this is just an anecdote and n = 1 implies infinite variance and what not, but it's amazing seeing countless people have such a good cellular network they can just ditch broadband subscriptions.
yamtaddle|2 years ago
Nextgrid|2 years ago
Gordonjcp|2 years ago
I switched to 4G and got 40Mbps symmetric using a Mikrotik SXT-LTE on a pole at about eaves height aiming at a mast about 5km away. It was cheaper than ADSL, too!
I think a lot of people on here are in the US where you get absolutely fucking *rinsed* for mobile data. Here in the UK it's cheap as tap water.
meinheld111|2 years ago