Three is mostly known as a mobile network, but it has dabbled in home broadband too and soon it could become a big name in the space, as 5G is set to offer a surprisingly fast and affordable alternative to fibre broadband and it’s an alternative that Three has now trialled and plans to offer from the second half of 2019.
The trial was carried out with the help of Huawei at the 2018 Huawei Mobile Broadband Forum, where the two companies used the first 5G commercial terminals (built by Huawei) combined with Three’s 100MHz C-Band spectrum to show off the speed of 5G broadband to attendees, through things like 4K video streaming and cloud gaming.
Just how much speed are we talking about here? According to Huawei users could be able to get average download speeds of 1Gbps, with a maximum speed of 2Gbps.
Though that could be optimistic for the early days of 5G home broadband, as Three has also commissioned a report from Ovum, which found that 5G broadband could come in at between 80-100Mbps on average.
However, that’s still far faster than typical 4G or even most current home broadband, the latter of which offers an average speed of 46.2Mbps in the UK, according to the report. So even in 2019, 5G broadband could be twice as fast on average as traditional broadband.
Even those with broadband that’s faster than average are for the most part still getting speeds of under 80Mbps, so they could still benefit.
In fact, even if you’re getting 100Mbps right now it might still make sense to switch to a 5G broadband service, as it could save you a lot of money. That’s because you won’t need to pay for line rental, potentially leading to savings of around £240 per year according to the report.
Actually building the infrastructure for 5G broadband is also predicted to be around 50% cheaper than the cost of laying fibre, and on top of all that you might be able to get shorter-term, more flexible contracts than with fibre broadband, and will more easily be able to set the service up, as rather than an engineer having to come out (and potentially drill holes in walls) you can just plug in a 5G router.
Given Huawei’s speeds estimates it sounds like 5G broadband could be a great alternative to even the fastest of fibre, which isn’t widely available. But certainly for now, or from late 2019 anyway, 5G broadband from Three could be the option to go for if it’s available where you are and if – as with mobile – the network offers unlimited data.
