Huawei AI Cube - anybody got one?

[Armageddon]

Our Sky Broadband has been brutal for a long long time so I'm looking to sack it and go for the AI Cube on a 3 unlimited 4G data package... £13 a month for 6 months then £26 for 18 months.

 

Bar the Chinese listening to everything I moan about, does anybody know if they're any good?

[Nightwing]

Don't know anything about the AI Cube in particular, but 3 are about to launch their 5g service in August. Might be worth holding off getting the 4g box for another month to see what sort of 5g speeds you may get instead? 3 have also confirmed their 5g contracts won't cost any more than the equivalent 4g one.

 

Obviously if you're not scared of the brain melting & rampant cancer from 5g

[jack D and coke]

I’ve heard decent things about the 3 mifi routers. Can connect up to 65 devices and speeds easily comparable with normal fibre BB at around 60-70mbps. 

[Tommy Brown]

You've gotme interseted in 5g, now.

 

On 3 website, they offer 4g routers (no landline requited)

 

I am on Fibre now and getting 52 speed.

 

What speeds are likely with 4g & 5g?

[jack D and coke]

7 minutes ago, Tommy Brown said:

You've gotme interseted in 5g, now.

 

On 3 website, they offer 4g routers (no landline requited)

 

I am on Fibre now and getting 52 speed.

 

What speeds are likely with 4g & 5g?

5G is supposed to have the capability to work at average speeds of 150-200mbps with a possible peak of 1gbps whereas 4G is average 25-50mbps with a peak of 150mbps. The mifi routers are supposed to be good although 5G will take a couple of years to get a good signal in most places I’d imagine. 

[Armageddon]

I enquired about the 5G and they said it's only going to be available in Edinburgh and Glasgow city's first then the surrounding areas will be another year or so.

 

With Sky I'm living with this.

 

 

[jack D and coke]

21 minutes ago, Armageddon said:

I enquired about the 5G and they said it's only going to be available in Edinburgh and Glasgow city's first then the surrounding areas will be another year or so.

 

With Sky I'm living with this.

 

 

Why are you tolerating that mate? You can cancel if your service is that bad btw. That’s utterly hideous but not that uncommon where sky are concerned. 

Cancel the DD for a kick off. 

https://www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/consumer-rights/?feature=hubPageSecondaryCallouts

 

[Tazio]

48 minutes ago, Armageddon said:

I enquired about the 5G and they said it's only going to be available in Edinburgh and Glasgow city's first then the surrounding areas will be another year or so.

 

With Sky I'm living with this.

 

 

That’s shocking. I get a rock solid 100mb from my Virgin. And I’ve just got 120mb sitting in the bus just now with EE 4G. Those kind of speeds must be some sort of breach of contract from Sky. 

[jack D and coke]

2 minutes ago, Tazio said:

That’s shocking. I get a rock solid 100mb from my Virgin. And I’ve just got 120mb sitting in the bus just now with EE 4G. Those kind of speeds must be some sort of breach of contract from Sky. 

It’s not that uncommon. If you use their shitty sky app to check the speeds it lies to you an all and tells you it’s much faster than it is. I’ve seen this a few times with sky tbh. 

But Armageddon mate cancel that today they’re ripping the pish. 

[Ray Gin]

1 hour ago, Armageddon said:

I enquired about the 5G and they said it's only going to be available in Edinburgh and Glasgow city's first then the surrounding areas will be another year or so.

 

With Sky I'm living with this.

 

 

 

Ouch. You must live several miles away from the nearest exchange.

 

 

[Tommy Brown]

2 hours ago, jack D and coke said:

5G is supposed to have the capability to work at average speeds of 150-200mbps with a possible peak of 1gbps whereas 4G is average 25-50mbps with a peak of 150mbps. The mifi routers are supposed to be good although 5G will take a couple of years to get a good signal in most places I’d imagine. 

cheers JD

 

help a dullard here.

1   If my 4g reception is good, I can probably get as good if not even a lot better than my Fibre?

2   I would no longer need a landline?

[Ribble]

1 hour ago, Armageddon said:

I enquired about the 5G and they said it's only going to be available in Edinburgh and Glasgow city's first then the surrounding areas will be another year or so.

 

With Sky I'm living with this.

 

 

 

Something very wrong there, have you had Sky out to check your line?

[jack D and coke]

10 minutes ago, Tommy Brown said:

cheers JD

 

help a dullard here.

1   If my 4g reception is good, I can probably get as good if not even a lot better than my Fibre?

2   I would no longer need a landline?

Yeah defo mate. I’ve heard good things about that MIFI cube thing from 3. Worth looking into👍🏼

[jack D and coke]

5 minutes ago, Lord BJ said:

 

Thats what the issues will be. Sky only piggy back on the back of the open reach infrastructure.

 

Sky are just enable at the cabinets etc and kit installed. However they can only go fast as infrastructure allows. That sort of speed I’m willing to bet it’s old school copper cabling which will have horrendous drop off in speed over distance.

 

The core issue will be open reach not providing a suitable level of infrastructure to the property,  They and the Scottish government have failed miserably in upgrading the infrastructure imho. The whole country is meant to have high speed access by the end of 2020 I think. 

 

Scotland is a pretty rura, when outside any city centre. 

 

I had similar issue. Had a lot of discussions and got a very nice letter from john swinney telling me would be hooked up by a date.  Which didn’t happen, despite high speed fibre line being less than 100m away from my house. Which then resulted in him doing what a politicians do just ****ing lie and insisting it could be done due to ‘technical’ issues. 

 

Anyway a few of of us got together and paid for a private business line and put our own network in. Open reach, who has told us it was a impossibility, personally and via a number of msp’s, after telling us we actually had 

 

When we ponied up some cash it happened, the technical issues miraciusly disappeared, (it wasn’t cheap my share was about £2k to get a line in) granted very slowly as they are shambles of an organisation. 

 

So we now have fibre optic in giving high speed access but it’s a private line and actual network

 

Thankfully there are better options via cellular network, that when I was ****ing about with this. Satellite internet was probably the only real option at the time, whilst perfect 4g signals were available there was far too limiting of downloads volumes etc to make it feasible. 

 

OP maybe be entitled to a subsidy to help with alternate methods. https://www.scotlandsuperfast.com/how-can-i-get-it/alternative-solutions/ 

you could also use site to see if due to be upgraded and when.

 

To OP good luck as that sort of speed will be frustrating to say the least!

Don’t know where Armageddon lives but a couple of mates of mine have had similar problems and they’ve now binned sky and get proper speeds from BT on the same lines. 

Sky, imo, are bad for this. 

[Armageddon]

8 hours ago, Ribble said:

 

Something very wrong there, have you had Sky out to check your line?

 

Not been out but over the last 2 years ive phoned them plenty, it works JUST but gaming on the kids xbox (downloading) is brutal, we can't watch Netflix if the kid is online.

 

8 hours ago, Tommy Brown said:

cheers JD

 

help a dullard here.

1   If my 4g reception is good, I can probably get as good if not even a lot better than my Fibre?

2   I would no longer need a landline?

That's our plan now, sack all broadband and landline and just have this, the Alexa speaker function is a bonus.

 

 

8 hours ago, Ray Gin said:

 

Ouch. You must live several miles away from the nearest exchange.

 

 

 

I'm told that Outreach and the government spent all the money until 2012 so any house built from 2012 to 2018 has pretty shite Broadband, unless they've since upgraded to Fibre, we can't get fibre as our street is still under the builders remit.  Outreach are now doing all the work to sort this but it will take 2 years.

 

I'm going for the 3 AI Cube tomorrow, I'll have 14 days to return so will make sure it's running a dream before telling Sky to GTF, I think it's then time to get rid of the Sky £100+ a month bills and get something along the lines of a dodgy £100 for the year.

[Armageddon]

Well, picked it up today ...... and it’s shite, possibly worse than the Sky, it’ll be an interesting as I’ve checked on the Three website and it says you cannot return anything bought in store! Today I signed a 2 year contract under the promise of excellent Three coverage in my area...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[¼½¾]

6 hours ago, Armageddon said:

Well, picked it up today ...... and it’s shite, possibly worse than the Sky, it’ll be an interesting as I’ve checked on the Three website and it says you cannot return anything bought in store! Today I signed a 2 year contract under the promise of excellent Three coverage in my area...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks like you're still connected to the Sky wifi.  

[Armageddon]

4 hours ago, Lemongrab said:

 

It looks like you're still connected to the Sky wifi.  

 

Woops, wrong screenshot!

 

 

[Tommy Brown]

19 minutes ago, Armageddon said:

 

Woops, wrong screenshot!

 

 

 

 

Try several devices, Laptop, tablet  etc

Are they all reading similar?

 

your other screenshots show 4G. your last didn't.

maybe 4g signal to the router is dropping in and out

Edited August 4, 2019 by Tommy Brown

[jack D and coke]

8 hours ago, Armageddon said:

 

Woops, wrong screenshot!

 

 

That’s unreal...what area is this mate?

The ping and jitter are incredible😳

Edited August 4, 2019 by jack D and coke

[Armageddon]

18 minutes ago, jack D and coke said:

That’s unreal...what area is this mate?

The ping and jitter are incredible😳

 

So returned the AI Cube, sacked Sky and Vodafone is being installed in 2 weeks, £23 pm with a free Amazon Echo.

 

I'm only 6 miles out of town on the West side.  I'll give you a shout once it's all up and running 👍🏼

[jack D and coke]

11 minutes ago, Armageddon said:

 

So returned the AI Cube, sacked Sky and Vodafone is being installed in 2 weeks, £23 pm with a free Amazon Echo.

 

I'm only 6 miles out of town on the West side.  I'll give you a shout once it's all up and running 👍🏼

I’m getting Vodafone myself in a couple of weeks. 

Yeah give me a shout anytime man👍🏼

[The Old Tolbooth]

On 04/08/2019 at 17:41, Armageddon said:

 

So returned the AI Cube, sacked Sky and Vodafone is being installed in 2 weeks, £23 pm with a free Amazon Echo.

 

I'm only 6 miles out of town on the West side.  I'll give you a shout once it's all up and running 👍🏼

 

Oh jeez, I went from BT to Vodafone and they're absolutely awful, they claim their routers are award winning, but they're utter shite! I had to get a replacement one as it kept dropping out after about 6 months, but getting it out of them was a right chore, the new one does the same but not as bad, and their customer is pretty much non existent. 

 

I've been with Vodafone for 21 years through phone contracts and paid them a lot of money, they know I've had major issues as it's all on file, and they're not prepared to waive the £41 exit fee for all the hassle I've had, utter arseholes. 

 

I'm going back to BT on August 12th and can't wait, I had zero issues with them before and only changed because of false promises and to save a few quid per month, but I'd rather pay more for a good service now. 

[jack D and coke]

6 hours ago, The Old Tolbooth said:

 

Oh jeez, I went from BT to Vodafone and they're absolutely awful, they claim their routers are award winning, but they're utter shite! I had to get a replacement one as it kept dropping out after about 6 months, but getting it out of them was a right chore, the new one does the same but not as bad, and their customer is pretty much non existent. 

 

I've been with Vodafone for 21 years through phone contracts and paid them a lot of money, they know I've had major issues as it's all on file, and they're not prepared to waive the £41 exit fee for all the hassle I've had, utter arseholes. 

 

I'm going back to BT on August 12th and can't wait, I had zero issues with them before and only changed because of false promises and to save a few quid per month, but I'd rather pay more for a good service now. 

I’ve just agreed to move to Vodafone from BT myself 😬

[The Old Tolbooth]

4 hours ago, jack D and coke said:

I’ve just agreed to move to Vodafone from BT myself 😬

 

That's the route I took as well and deeply regret it now mate, I would seriously not recommend Vodafone broadband. 

[jack D and coke]

22 minutes ago, The Old Tolbooth said:

 

That's the route I took as well and deeply regret it now mate, I would seriously not recommend Vodafone broadband. 

Don’t you have a two week period where you can cancel?

[The Old Tolbooth]

3 minutes ago, jack D and coke said:

Don’t you have a two week period where you can cancel?

 

Yeah you have a cooling off period, but it'll work fine during that period, I'm very suss about that like. It's not just that, it's the customer service too (or lack of it) that really hacked me off, I checked their Facebook page and it's full of complaints. 

[doctor jambo]

5 hours ago, jack D and coke said:

I’ve just agreed to move to Vodafone from BT myself 😬

Moved to BT superfast fibre optic with an extender disc thing in the hall- its magic, all the kids can now stream and game no probs ( couldn't before)  60mbps throughout the house

[jack D and coke]

26 minutes ago, The Old Tolbooth said:

 

Yeah you have a cooling off period, but it'll work fine during that period, I'm very suss about that like. It's not just that, it's the customer service too (or lack of it) that really hacked me off, I checked their Facebook page and it's full of complaints. 

Hmm maybe just stay put with BT then. 

20 minutes ago, doctor jambo said:

Moved to BT superfast fibre optic with an extender disc thing in the hall- its magic, all the kids can now stream and game no probs ( couldn't before)  60mbps throughout the house

I get great speeds atm with BT and haven’t had any problems just Vodafone offered a proper cheap deal with a new amazon speaker chucked in. £23 a month and saying same speeds I’m getting atm, about 65-70mbps. 

Bit dodgy now though if it’s gonna drive me daft. 

Edited August 6, 2019 by jack D and coke

[Armageddon]

7 hours ago, jack D and coke said:

Hmm maybe just stay put with BT then. 

I get great speeds atm with BT and haven’t had any problems just Vodafone offered a proper cheap deal with a new amazon speaker chucked in. £23 a month and saying same speeds I’m getting atm, about 65-70mbps. 

Bit dodgy now though if it’s gonna drive me daft. 

 

FFS!! Just what I wanted to hear   They claim to discount your bill until their guaranteed speeds are achieved...

[The Old Tolbooth]

18 hours ago, jack D and coke said:

Hmm maybe just stay put with BT then. 

I get great speeds atm with BT and haven’t had any problems just Vodafone offered a proper cheap deal with a new amazon speaker chucked in. £23 a month and saying same speeds I’m getting atm, about 65-70mbps. 

Bit dodgy now though if it’s gonna drive me daft. 

 

It's not just driven me daft mate, it's made an angry wife and daughter too, the amount of times they'll be streaming something and it just shuts off is incredible, and they claim there's been no drop outs on the service, I know their lying because I switched to wifi phone calls to make sure it was their wifi that was dropping out, and I get cut off mid conversation a lot when using that (I disable the phone and use pure wifi for the simple reason I wanted to prove a point to them), they had no answer when I told them this, itter shysters mate. 

 

11 hours ago, Armageddon said:

 

FFS!! Just what I wanted to hear   They claim to discount your bill until their guaranteed speeds are achieved...

 

Good luck with that one too bud, they guarantee the speeds from the exchange to your house, what happens after that isn't their problem apparently, their routers are garbage. Plenty folk with them have went out and bought their own routers because it's cheaper to do that than pay the cancellation fees. 

[jack D and coke]

15 minutes ago, The Old Tolbooth said:

 

It's not just driven me daft mate, it's made an angry wife and daughter too, the amount of times they'll be streaming something and it just shuts off is incredible, and they claim there's been no drop outs on the service, I know their lying because I switched to wifi phone calls to make sure it was their wifi that was dropping out, and I get cut off mid conversation a lot when using that (I disable the phone and use pure wifi for the simple reason I wanted to prove a point to them), they had no answer when I told them this, itter shysters mate. 

 

 

Good luck with that one too bud, they guarantee the speeds from the exchange to your house, what happens after that isn't their problem apparently, their routers are garbage. Plenty folk with them have went out and bought their own routers because it's cheaper to do that than pay the cancellation fees. 

Cancelling today. 

Bugger that

Not even taking the chance tbh. 

[The Old Tolbooth]

3 minutes ago, jack D and coke said:

Cancelling today. 

Bugger that

Not even taking the chance tbh. 

 

Phone BT and tell them that you've just signed up for Vodafone, they night offer you something  

[jack D and coke]

Just now, The Old Tolbooth said:

 

Phone BT and tell them that you've just signed up for Vodafone, they night offer you something  

Yeah I’ll do that. They actually offered me a decent deal to stay but Vodafone were a good bit cheaper. It’s not worth the grief though all my tv is internet based I’d be demented lol👍🏼

[The Old Tolbooth]

5 minutes ago, jack D and coke said:

Yeah I’ll do that. They actually offered me a decent deal to stay but Vodafone were a good bit cheaper. It’s not worth the grief though all my tv is internet based I’d be demented lol👍🏼

 

Interested to know how you get on mate but I need to run for a hospital appointment 👍

[mrmarkus1981]

Cant fault these guys (https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband). I had a line fault and no one could find it, these guys had it fixed and me online in a few days.

 

Granted its the same Openreach engineers but these guys know what to tell them!!

 

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3914-aaisp-promises-to-fix-your-faulty-broadband-line

 

[jack D and coke]

2 hours ago, The Old Tolbooth said:

 

Interested to know how you get on mate but I need to run for a hospital appointment 👍

Cancelled with Vodafone. Got on to BT and they initially offered me my same contract again for £29.99 which wasn’t bad but I’ve taken this new WiFi everywhere with the new Homehub 2 and the discs that guarantees it all over the house, £44.99. 

Not that cheap I suppose but all my tv and stuff requires solid BB I couldn’t be doing with iffy connections and all that carry on. BT has been solid for me. 

[The Old Tolbooth]

3 hours ago, jack D and coke said:

Cancelled with Vodafone. Got on to BT and they initially offered me my same contract again for £29.99 which wasn’t bad but I’ve taken this new WiFi everywhere with the new Homehub 2 and the discs that guarantees it all over the house, £44.99. 

Not that cheap I suppose but all my tv and stuff requires solid BB I couldn’t be doing with iffy connections and all that carry on. BT has been solid for me. 

 

I've signed up for the discs as well mate, looking forward to using them  

[Rodge]

On 02/08/2019 at 08:38, Armageddon said:

I enquired about the 5G and they said it's only going to be available in Edinburgh and Glasgow city's first then the surrounding areas will be another year or so.

 

With Sky I'm living with this.

 

 

 

Download slower than upload?

I reckon you might have a fault with your line with those numbers or it's possibly your internal wiring.

Ping's not the worst I've ever seen. 

Difficult to check without a postcode! 

 

Edited August 7, 2019 by Rodge

[Stoddyhmfc]

This thread made me start looking into why the Broadband (Sky ADSL) was so rubbish in our house.

 

Started out running tests and getting between 2/3 Mbps had a wee look and noticed that the Mrs had the router running through a phone extension cable and then splitting down to the ADSL line, jumped onto Amazon bought a 10m ADSL 2+ extension cable and now running decent speeds of 17/19 Mbps. 

 

So maybe worth checking if you have any phone extensions as they seem to have been my problem!  

[jack D and coke]

Just now, Stoddyhmfc said:

This thread made me start looking into why the Broadband (Sky ADSL) was so rubbish in our house.

 

Started out running tests and getting between 2/3 Mbps had a wee look and noticed that the Mrs had the router running through a phone extension cable and then splitting down to the ADSL line, jumped onto Amazon bought a 10m ADSL 2+ extension cable and now running decent speeds of 17/19 Mbps. 

 

So maybe worth checking if you have any phone extensions as they seem to have been my problem!  

Always make sure router is plugged into main box yeah. Running off extensions always gonna give you issues. TP links/extenders are a good help too. 

Good advice👍🏼

[Armageddon]

Halla-****ing-looooooyaaaaa

 

 

[jack D and coke]

[JaffaCake78]

I've had mine 5 month now brilliant speeds are between 60-70mbps faster than any of my friends home broadband seriously quick & sound quality is best from any home speaker ( ie Google home,Alexa ) no brainer

[Pixie1970]

I would just like to say about this item and thats this.. the signal is not the greatest and if you like Spotify then forget it cos it doesn't work.

Good idea but not great.