Mobile Internet
To allow us the full benefit of staying in the caravan, I had to find options that allowed me to work there. So this page will give you an insight as to what we had to do to make this possible.
What network to use?
UK mobile networks and MVNO’s.
So in the UK, there are four major networks. From these networks, there are many MVNO’s (Mobile Virtual Network Operators). These operators use the infrastructure of one of the four big networks to run on. Giving their users the same signal quality, normally at a lower monthly cost.
Out of these four main networks, only three had a reasonable signal to allow me to use 4G or 3G at a push in the caravan. These were O2 , Three, and Vodafone. Although the other networks had a signal there they were very sporadic and couldn’t guarantee the good strength of signal I needed. For the past year, I have been using O2’s sim and everything has worked well. But O2 is really expensive and probably the dearest of the four main networks.
Who I Tried…..
I did use an MVNO’s network, The network is called SMARTY and runs on Three’s mobile network. As you can see above are two contracts O2 / SMARTY.
O2 is the network I tried first. It was good but the speeds could drop when the network became busy. Also, the price I was paying was around £35.00 a month for unlimited data. As the caravan is not available all year round, four months of the year the site is locked down.
That means with a yearly contract, you are still paying for a service that you can’t use. I thought this was a bit too expensive for a monthly contract, when some other companies are half the price.
SMARTY is £15.00 a month cheaper and seems to have the same coverage as O2. SMARTY runs on Three’s network. From what I can tell are actually owned by Three. They’ve improved the signal down our caravan since I moved away from them, and now (according to their site) they have 4G+ available throughout that area.
This is not the case, as I purchased a PAYG sim and tried that with the same results. One thing that is good with SMARTY is you’re never tied into a yearly contract, you can cancel your contract at any time without any penalties.
After trying Smarty for around a couple of months you couldn’t guarantee the speed or the signal quality. I use a VOIP phone for work and the sound would be crackling and distorted at times when the campsite was full. I also use Amazon Alexa and Phillips Hue bulbs, both of these would not register on the SMARTY network so they both became unusable. After many discussions with the “not-so” technical support team at SMARTY, I decided to cancel the account and look for another supplier.
Vodafone
I have since moved to Vodafone. And what a difference it has made. All my devices connect without issues and the download speed is consistently better than the fastest available speed I have at home. This is a genuine 4G+ speed and I now have a rock-solid connection. The support has been brilliant and I think in the end you DO get what you pay for.
I purchased the Vodafone sim-only deal from a third-party reseller. E2Save. E2Save is part of Carphone Warehouse and with this deal, I had money back so it worked out cheaper than buying directly from Vodafone.
