Tech
Deciding whether fixed wireless home internet suits you
A genuine alternative in some places and unusable in others, and the difference is mostly about your specific address.
Fixed wireless home internet delivers a connection over a mobile network to a receiver in the house. Where coverage is strong it is competitive on price and simple to install; where it is marginal it is unreliable in a way that a wired connection is not.
Performance depends on the signal at the address and on how loaded the local cell is, which means speeds vary by time of day far more than on a wired service. Neighbours' experiences are informative in a way that published averages are not.
Providers publish coverage maps, which are models rather than measurements and tend to be optimistic at the edges. The reliable test is a trial period, which most providers offer, used during the hours you actually need the connection.
Check what is excluded before switching. Some plans deprioritise traffic after a threshold, and arrangements for static addresses, port forwarding or hosting are often different from a wired service.
What to do next. Take a trial period and test during your real usage hours before cancelling an existing connection.
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