Lay My Hat

Our cottage is in an area where there is no broadband available on a landline so we have to use mobile broadband to offer wifi to our guests. This is generally ok and works well but i would like to offer unlimited data as they frequently use the max data of 60gb but cant seem to find any company doing this? Any ideas?

These guys seem to offer larger plans - not unlimited though:

https://www.broadbandwherever.net/4g-bduk/

Unlimited fast broadband when too far from a fibre connection is the Holy Grail; I believe that at one time 3 offered an uncapped mobile service of some description, but no longer. AFAIK there is no such service available.
However, the caps have moved on. A year or so ago there was a possibility of a 75GB monthly usage cap, now EE are offering 200GB at around £60 a month.

I looked at 4G but ended up with a microwave service from a local supplier (long story). Usage allowances are similar but with any usage capped service there is very much a need to allocate an allowance to each rental period and manage it. Our guests know there’s a limit and we supply some information on how various activities will use it up, and so far it hasn’t been a problem; however, our typical guest profile doesn’t include a lot of heavy users. It’s absolutely fine for email and browsing, also for downloading movies but one every day would be pushing the limit.
I’ve also noticed from monitoring usage that some guests use nothing; I don’t believe they’re all technophobes, so they must be using their own 4G allowance. Is providing a PAYG dongle the way ahead?? Or a 4G router with an initial allowance, a PAYG SIM and top up details? (expensive option for guests though).

Thankyou, will take a look at the options you both mention. I am finding some guests will only use 2 - 5gb in a week however when children involved it is increasingly difficult to control them. I have to check the usage twice a day and even then they can surpruse me and use 20gb in one night. If i have to mention it or stop the usage they can get quite bristly about it as they dont realise the costs / usage involved.

Explore Microwave, Wireless and Satelite options.

Get a professional router such as a Draytek router and learn how to configure it to share out usage, restrict bandwidths for each device and block updating services such as MS Updates, Apple OS and iOS updates. Restrict or even block most (Not All) iCloud and VPN connections.

Doing this will greatly reduce the data downloaded without restricting access to emails, farcebook, twitter and the various catchup services.

Let them know how they are being connected to the net and what the charges are, maybe even cap the usage yourself. Give them an amount for the week free and charge for any extra used, payment to be taken in advance. If they know in advance then they may respect and limit there own usage a bit.

My guests automatically assume without asking that there access to the internet is "fast Fibre" and unlimited. It may be unlimited subject to fair usage restrictions (I never have understood how a service can be unlimited and yet subjected to restrictions at the ame time) anyway...... my service isn't fibre and it is fast enough for mail etc and catch up but really does struggle if a family get online all at once together.

When i let them know it's not fibre they usually understand and accept it.

Thankyou, looking into it as we speak, will keep fingers crossed there is a better solution that what we currently have.

akwe-xavante wrote:Explore Microwave, Wireless and Satelite options.

Get a professional router such as a Draytek router and learn how to configure it to share out usage, restrict bandwidths for each device and block updating services such as MS Updates, Apple OS and iOS updates. Restrict or even block most (Not All) iCloud and VPN connections.

I'd be very interested in a guide as to how to work out how to do this and not have unintended consequences. I haven't found any guide as how to restrict iOS updates and photo uploads for example but yet allow the downloading of a daily newspaper. Everything now seems to be done using lots of distributed servers that make this very difficult.