As I finally got a phone that can do 4G/LTE... odd to think that now the internet connection through my phone is usually far faster than my fixed line cable modem connection. My cable modem is 10 Mbit/s; with the phone the best I've gotten here at home is maybe around 40-50 Mbit/s, and when I checked it somewhere else, it went up to around 100-120 Mbit/s IIRC (I check the speed with the Speedtest application). I don't have any monthly data limit either with the mobile, at least in theory (maybe they start to throttle it if I try to redownload my whole GOG game collection with it...).

What this means is that I now use my cable modem for basic web surfing and such... but when I want to do something very demanding, I connect my phone with USB and use its internet connection for my PC.

This is what I nowadays do when I start playing e.g. Team Fortress 2 online. My cable modem connection, using wifi, occasionally gets nasty lag spikes while playing TF2, while with the 4G mobile it is smooth sailing all the time. Plus, if my wife decides to watch some Youtube video on her phone using the cable modem wlan, it won't affect my gaming either.

Dang it. If my mere phone internet speed can be up to over 100Mbit/s now, it would only make sense that my fixed line internet would be at least 1 gigabit/sec or something. 5-10 years ago I would have laughed to the idea that one day my mobile internet connection speed would far exceed my fixed line internet speed. That's like claiming that one day my bicycle will be 10 times faster than my car, or something.


EDIT: Still, even now my speed is still considerably lower than that of the OP. As I mentioned earlier, it would be nice to test now whether I can combine these two internet connections together to get maximum download speed... not really that there is any real need, but just for shits and giggles. So something like 50 Mbit/s from my phone + extra 10 Mbit/s from my cable modem.

There is one thing where my (slower) cable modem connection is still superior: peer-to-peer networks (like emule or bittorrent), or setting up any kind of server.

Obviously the phone doesn't accept connection attemps from outside and I don't think there is any way for me to forward any ports etc., like I can do with my cable modem router (or even change it to bridged mode in order to get five public IP addresses, with no need for any port forwarding).

So if I start toying with the idea that I would rely completely to the 3G mobile connection for all my online needs, I just need to remember that.


It is also clear not all phone operators are quite equal. My wife also has a 4G SIM but from a different operator (DNA, while mine is from Sonera). We apparently live right at the edge of some 4G cell for DNA because at home normally my wife only gets a 3G mobile connection (which yields something like 1-4 Mbit/s), only if she brings the phone close to the kitchen window, she might barely get a 4G connection. That's why she chooses to use the cable modem wlan for her phone when she is at home. When she is outside, her phone may get 4G connection fine.

I get a 4G connection everywhere at home. Not full bars, but good enough (that up to 40-50 Mbit/s speed).

Do you not get a data cap on the phone? Because back when I was trying to get a mobile internet connection I could work with last year, the caps were ridiculous. Somewhere around 10GB/month, and the most expensive available contract was around 30GB/month.