![]() If I could get that speed, I’d be sold on Skinny Broadband today. At first I thought this might be part of the company’s marketing spiel, yet Geekzone owner Mauricio Freitas says he also got 40/17 Mbps. Skinny Broadband’s support engineer, who lives in the next suburb to me, told me he regularly sees 40 Mbps. This lead to an hour hunting for the optimal, non-taped spot, which, luck would have it, was my first choice. When out cat jumped on the window sill and moved the modem about 100 mm, the speed dropped 5 Mbps. Performance is far more sensitive to the modem position that you might imagine. I could get a better speed if I cheated and taped the modem to the top of my office window, but that is not a good look when visitors come to the house. By moving the modem unit around I managed to get this to 21 down and 7.5 up. When I first connected I saw a speed of around 18 Mbps down and 7 Mbps up. If I choose to keep the Skinny Broadband account I’ll start hunting for the antennae. My home has only moderate Spark 4G coverage. The instruction leaflet that came with the modem mentions optional extension antennae, there were none in my box. Skinny’s technician told me to put the router on a window sill - luckily there’s a suitable one - we’ll come back to that point in a moment - within a metre of my distribution board. It comes with a cable that’s about a metre long. You can’t use your own device, the Huawei kit is locked to the network. It supports the 802.11 n version of Wi-Fi. It doesn’t say how well it will handle that many. ![]() The documentation says it will handle 32 devices. The router has Wi-Fi so you can connect all your devices: computers, phones, tablets, TVs and so on without the need for cables. It needs to be as many modern devices don’t include Ethernet ports. You’ll get the best broadband performance if you plug your PC into one of the Ethernet ports. There is one bright yellow Ethernet cable in the box. It is not as pretty as my Netgear modem and the Wi-Fi isn’t as fast, but it comes with four gigabit Ethernet ports so you can plug in your network devices. Some rural wireless broadband customers get the same device. ![]() No hanging around for remote provisioning. There is no waiting for engineers to install anything. I was connected within 20 minutes of the delivery. Immediately after the courier dropped off a fixed wireless modem, I was on the phone to organise a review account. Skinny Broadband also happens to be one of the simplest ways of getting online. Once you’ve paid for the modem, you only need to pay for the months you are using the service. Skinny Broadband is a great option for users who feel they don’t need a fibre firehose blasting vast amounts of data into their homes.Īnother advantage is that Skinny allows casual contracts - that makes Skinny Broadband an ideal back-up or an option for a bach or second home. It also means Spark has spare capacity to support Skinny Broadband.Īt NZ$55 a month plus a one-off $200 for the modem Skinny Broadband is one of the cheapest and fastest ways of getting online. So it out-performs its direct competitor. This is important, Spark owns more 700 Mhz spectrum than any other carrier. Which explains why Skinny Broadband uses Spark’s 4G network. A low-cost no-frills brand that hits important competitive markets without harming the corporate mothership’s upmarket reputation. Skinny is Pak N Save to Spark’s New World. It even uses the same fixed wireless broadband modem. In many ways, Skinny Broadband is a nationwide version of the service Vodafone and Spark use to connect remote customers to their fixed wireless rural broadband initiative networks. A Skinny Broadband connection only works from the address where you register the account. You get the same basic data service as a Spark mobile phone user on the 4G network, but to a fixed position. Sometimes this approach is known as BoLTE: broadband over LTE. It is fixed wireless broadband, piggybacking off Spark’s 4G mobile data network. Skinny Broadband is a low-cost alternative to fibre internet.
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