My home internet is terrible... but I (may) have a solution.
CONTENT NOTICE:Ranting about the fact that my home internet is bad and going over my plans to remedy that issue.
I live in a big French city. I also happen to be living in literally the only building in my entire neighborhood that doesn't have access to fiber for some god forsaken reason. I'm tired of waiting around for the building's owner to do something about it, because I've been doing so for years now. I also don't want to nudge them too much out of fear that if they finally decide to do something else than collecting passive income and being fucking societal parasites, it could give them the idea to raise the price of my rent.
But it is a problem. Because it's not just that I don't have access to fiber internet, it's that whatever I have access to is also absolute trash by its own standard. We're talking "struggling to load up a YouTube video" type of bad internet here. I've been thinking about a potential solution for a while. Not to mention that my 'puter is in another room and depends on Wi-Fi as I can't cable it up. I can't even play Minecraft with my girlfriend without lag, so I always end up having to tether my phone and use its 5g. But that's an annoying experience in its own rights.
So I've been looking around for internet providers to give me a better solution and 5g boxes are tempting but I've also encountered another issue that I will summarize as: Fuck internet providers. They're all horrible. First off, every option is eye wateringly expensive. And second, the price doesn't even include all of the bullshit that's going to come last minute. Because even for a 5g box that is literally: "Ya plug it and it works", they're of course going to want to send a fucking technician to do it.
And listen, I'm a simple trans bunny girl (< so not simple, but still). These factors make it so that I don't like the idea of a random dude coming into my home. I'm also suffering from a pretty severe and chronic generalized anxiety disorder. So yeah, I really don't like the idea of a random dude coming into my home. However, even more relevant is: I'm broke. And said random dude comes with a fee. I have at least functioning girlpaw, I can plug something in a wall myself, thank you.
So not only would I have to pay a really high price every month, I would also have to pay to get hardware installed even though I could do it myself, but that would also come with having to set an appointment to get said hardware installed and activated, some hardware delivery fees, and if I ever decide to move out, it's yet another fucking process that is going to cost me a lot of money. And all of that is why despite the fact that I've been yapping about this for years, I still haven't done anything because all of this is too much for this bunny.
But I think I have a solution!
Cut out the middle person.
Kinda...
...one of them at least.
I've been looking at this for a while now and I keep coming back to the same conclusion, that is: Get a 4g router and slap a SIM card in it. It may sounds like a convoluted solution but for real, and yes, it's a bit hacky, but I genuinely think it's the best solution I have and it even comes with some cool bonuses.
It turns out that 4g is old tech, it's been around for a long time now, longer than I realized. But it's still everywhere and really reliable, so not only connectivity won't be an issue for a long time, it also makes it so that hardware related to 4G is really cheap compared to 5G. As of course, I considered the same solution but with a 5G router, however, the difference is spending ~40€ and spending ~350€. 4G isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and it's plenty fast. For what I'm looking for, the 5G router is just not a good solution financially.
Here is where the little asterisk about cutting the middle person comes in, because, well, I still need to pay for a 4G plan with someone. However, good, unlimited plans like these are really inexpensive and are "random dude coming into my home" free, which also means no fee for that. Paying for my own router and a cheap unlimited 4G plan is just a much better deal.
It also comes with some cool bonuses. I get a lot more control around the hardware I use, which is a nice bit of freedom. I don't have to worry about my ISP yelling at me if I mess with the firmware or whatever because again, it's mine. And sure, that is a nice little bonus for nerds, it's nice to think about but realistically, I will setup with the default software and not think about it. It's a cool bonus but it's not that nice.
What is a really nice bonus though is: A 4G plan means a 4G sim card. Which means, a dedicated phone number. And that's an amazing bonus because with the amount of crap asking me for way too much information such as phone number, which keep on leaking on the internet and flooding me with spam calls, well, I'll now be able to give them this phone number. It allows me to do some call and SMS directly from the router software, that kind of thing. If you think about it, i'm sure you can figure out some really cool uses for a second number in your daily life.
I think this is what I'm going to do and I'll keep you posted as to how it goes if I end up actually doing it.
There was another solution that I considered, which was slapping a dedicated 4G PCIe thingy into my PC, allowing me to put a SIM card into my PC directly. From what I understand about modern Linux and GNOME, it's pretty much good to go for this type of Network usage. It would've allowed me to have skip the dedicated router and even have access to a dedicated Phone call and SMS app onto my PC. But in the end, it's just not as convinient for my use. I also have a laptop that I like to use on my bed and it wouldn't be able to access that network without me having to setup some sort of hotspot and so on... messy. Sure, it would be neat but it wouldn't be as convenient.
In general, this is following in the footsteps I'm laying for my life when it comes to tech. Which is being crafty and a bit more self-reliant. Sure it's not as plug and play and neat as going through a dedicated ISP giving me a 5G router. But it's cheaper, gives me a bigger sense of actual ownership and control over the thing, which I really need nowadays. Because another big advantage I didn't mention is that: If I'm, for some reason, not satisfied with the service provided by my provider, well, I can just change, no need to send any hardware back, nothing, it's as easy as just resigning my line and that's it.
So yeah, I still need to do some searching for the hardware and talk to my roommate about it, but I've considered tons of options and this just feels right.