Time to ditch normal internet? How to know if mobile broadband is enough
Ten years ago, the answer to the question of whether you should get fixed broadband or settle for mobile was simple: Yes, you should, as long as it is technically possible and not outrageously expensive. Mobile broadband was an emergency solution for summer cottages and houses in rural areas where the fiber network did not reach, and a backup system for those who needed constant connectivity even if the regular connection was down.
Today, both 4G and 5G networks have been rolled out and cover large parts of the country. Operators selling mobile broadband promise speeds of up to 1Gbit/s — more than many fixed connections. Does this mean that you can just as easily choose mobile broadband and ignore fiber?
We all know that mobile networks have different coverage in different places, and that speeds can vary widely. Sometimes you can barely download emails on your mobile phone, other times you can stream films and play fast online games like Fortnite. How can you decide for yourself if mobile broadband can meet your needs?
To answer this question, I’ve enlisted the help of researchers Anna Brunström, professor at Karlstad University, and Mikael Gidlund, professor at Mid Sweden University.
How it works
Apart from the fact that both fixed fiber broadband and mobile broadband can achieve bandwidths of hundreds of megabits per second — and thus qualify as broadband — they are two fundamentally different technologies.
The differences are fundamentally about the way the technologies are built: Fiber carries light through a physical cable, while 5G uses radio and has to compete for space in the air. “A practical but often underestimated difference is that fiber is delivered directly into the house, while mobile broadband first has to get through the outer walls before the router even makes contact,” says Mikael Gidlund.
Karlstads universitet
Anna Brunström says that fiber normally provides more stable speeds and more even latency (delay), as each customer has their own physical connection. With mobile broadband, all users share the total capacity of the mobile network. Therefore, mobile broadband is more affected by location, time, and load.
Another difference is that mobile broadband often uses something called Carrier-Grade NAT, a feature that allows many subscribers to share a few public IPv4 addresses. Instead of your router getting a unique public address, it is often given a private address, while fiber packages often provide public addressing directly. This is important if you want to set up a server at home, for example. Mobile broadband, on the other hand, is more flexible and portable. It’s easy to get started and you can often take the subscription with you to different locations.
Mikael Gidlund summarizes the differences between fixed and mobile broadband as follows:
| Parameter | Fixed fiber connection | Mobile broadband (4G/5G) |
| Stability | Very high and predictable. Capacity is in practice dedicated. | Variable as capacity is shared by all users in the same cell. Walls, load and distance affect. |
| Downloading | Stable high speeds even in heavy local use. | Can be very high in good coverage, but drops when many people use the cell at the same time. |
| Charging | Often symmetric or close to symmetric — important for work, AI generation, cloud services, backup. | Significantly lower than the download and heavily affected by load. |
| Latency | Consistently low and smooth. For games and real-time services. | Higher and more variable. Affected by signal strength, load and distance. |
| Flexibility | Fixed solution tied to the address. | Very flexible — can be taken, moved, and used in multiple locations. |
Could mobile broadband be better?
At addresses where fiber is not already deployed, the simplicity of mobile broadband may trump the technical advantages of fixed connection. The cost can also be significantly lower in situations where you would have to bear the cost of digging and laying the fiber cable to the house yourself.
Mobile broadband is also easy to take with you or activate at a new address, which makes it convenient and can be cost-effective if you want to use one subscription in several locations, such as your home and your vacation home or camper van. For many users, mobile broadband is fully capable of meeting their needs, although speeds and latency can vary more than fiber. In places where fiber is not available, mobile broadband can also provide a significantly better user experience than fixed broadband based on older technologies such as ADSL,” says Anna Brunström.
Tina Stafrén/Mittuniversitetet
Mikael Gidlund also points to flexibility as a major advantage of mobile broadband, saying that users who mainly download (for example, surfing and streaming films) will not notice the mobile network’s more limited upload speed as much as those who, for example, play games or are on video calls.
How can you decide what’s right for your situation?
With fiber, it’s really only the price and the internet operator’s customer service that affect how well the connection works. When you choose a subscription, you can basically count on getting the promised speed, and it will normally not vary significantly.
With mobile broadband, it’s much trickier and the situation can be completely different even for two neighbors.
Always start by thinking about your household needs. How dependent are you on a stable connection at all times? What kind of services do you use and how many simultaneous users can you expect? Is it mostly downloads or do you also need to upload large amounts of data? If you need a public IP address, check that it is possible to get one for the subscription you are considering,” says Anna Brunström.
Mikael Gidlund says that the performance you will get with mobile broadband depends on factors such as the environment, load, the operator’s network you choose, and the type of construction the house is built with. He recommends that anyone thinking of choosing mobile broadband should look at four things:
1. How well the network works where you live
It is rarely possible to test a subscription in advance, but you can still get a relatively reliable idea of how the connection will behave. The most practical way is to use a mobile phone from the same operator you plan to use and carry out tests where the router will be placed. It is important to measure at different times of the day, especially in the evening when the load is normally highest,” says Mikael Gidlund.
Speed tests such as Fast.com work well for this purpose, while coverage maps should only be seen as a rough guide and are often over-optimistic.
2. How the house is constructed
Mikael Gidlund says the material of the outer walls has a big impact on the speed of the mobile network inside the house. Many new houses have windows with energy glass covered by a metal film, which greatly attenuates the signal strength.
This is a technical problem that does not depend on the operator, but on the laws of physics: The higher the frequency, the more difficult it is for the signal to penetrate materials. The fastest 5G networks use these higher frequencies.
One way to get round the house design is to get an external antenna. In addition to being placed outdoors where the signal is stronger, it can be directional and have signal boosters. In some cases, this may be the only way to get a satisfactory mobile broadband speed.
3. Choice of operator
The rollout of 4G and 5G is far from evenly distributed. Larger cities often have good 5G coverage. But in smaller communities and sparsely populated areas, 4G still provides the most practical coverage, and 5G may not be available at all or may only reach certain parts of the locality. Differences between operators are significant. It is not uncommon for one operator to perform excellently in a particular location, while another performs significantly worse despite similar coverage maps. Therefore, the choice of operator should be considered at least as important as the choice between fiber and mobile broadband,” says Mikael Gidlund.
All users connected to a given cell (i.e. a mobile mast) must share its total capacity. The more users and the more they try to do, the less capacity there is for each user. This is particularly noticeable in the evenings when many people are streaming films, if there is an event going on in the area so that more people than usual are present, in places where unusually many people are using mobile broadband instead of fixed, and in large apartment blocks.
In other words, if you’re alone in a country house that happens to be close to a mobile tower, have few neighbors, and mainly use the internet during the day, you’re likely to get a much better experience than if you mainly want to watch Netflix in the evenings and live in a large apartment block.
Are ‘unlimited’ mobile broadband plans really unlimited?
Anna Brunström says that most unlimited plans will be perceived as unlimited in normal use. But there are limits you can hit. For example, mobile broadband does not normally include roaming the country.
There are also often clauses in the contract that limit abnormal use. If you “hit the cap” on your subscription, you typically get a reduced speed until the period is reset or the opportunity to top up. Always read the small print.
Mikael Gidlund says that operators often have rules for so-called “fair use.” Those who use a lot of data in a short time may have their speed reduced, either temporarily during peak periods or until the end of the payment period.
A third option
Anna Brunström points out that fiber and mobile networks are not the only technologies available to get an internet connection. Another option that has become viable in recent years is satellite internet.
The most common consumer solutions, such as Starlink, rely on satellites orbiting close to the Earth with typical speeds around 50-200Mbit/s and latency around 20-50ms, which is sufficient for streaming, video conferencing, and everyday browsing. On the positive side, mobile broadband and satellite are also complementary, as satellite can work less well in densely populated areas where there is usually good mobile coverage. Areas with poorer mobile coverage often work well with satellite.
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This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC för Alla and was translated and localized from Swedish.
Author: Anders Lundberg, Contributor, PCWorld
Anders writes news, reviews and buying guides that touch most categories of consumer tech. After many years as a Macworld writer, he has recently written more and more for our sister site, PC for Alla. He schools in various subject areas such as security, networking and creative tools.
