Will 4G on a pad device acting as a home router be good enough to replace my existing Virgin land cable to wireless Virgin hub?

Most of my surfing now is not on a desktop PC compared to a year ago, so I envisage that the home PC will only need online updating capability.

"I get a much better signal in my home 30 miles outside of London than I do at my desk in the centre."

That's not an unusual experience - I can't get a signal on my T-Mobile/Orange phone in an office in Covent Garden. At home, nine miles from central London as the coughing crow flies I have to stand in my hallway to make a call because my house is on the wrong side of an incline, yet I get a strong signal at my son's house, deep in the Hertfordshire countryside.

There's a summit conference taking place today between the major network operators and the regulators. It's to discuss the auctioning of the 4G spectrum, and it has been brought forward because of unhappiness about the way that 'Everything Everywhere' (T-Mobile/Orange) was given permission to launch 4G before anyone else, using its existing bandwidth. The government wants to avoid appeals being launched against Ofcom's decision, so today's meeting is likely to end with a promise that the 4G auction date will be brought forward.

It's all good,as the saying goes, and should result in a big chunk of cash for the government to spend,and 4G being available to more people sooner than anticipated.

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I live right next to the M6, with an O2 3G mast within eyesight, but no 3G on my O2 phone as it's blocked by a tree.

If a single tree can stop the 3G signal dead, I doubt 4G will make much headway into the countryside, it'll stick to metropolitan areas just like 3G.

Thanks FE.

I may be interested one day. I currently have my first properly smart phone, which I use now and then for a brit of internet reading and the odd youtube video; very short things. If I use it for a few of those things in a day, my battery really suffers.

I have a tablet (nexus 7) but that is mostly a toy for me that sees little use at the moment (I spent a while setting up a couple of email addresses on it a few weeks ago and stuffed it up and that annoyed me so I've been sulking until I get round to sorting the issue).

I may have a small laptop soon (someting with laptop spec and netbook-ish size hopefully) too.

My contract on my phone is up next summer so I've given my next move very little thought. Mind you, I gave my last purchase no thought really, it was almost an impulse buy as that's just what they had when I took my basic text and phone only handset in with a vague notion of modernising.

FE - Regrettably 3G isn't currently available in all "depths of the countryside" and it is doubtful that 4G will be either. The coverage in the South Hams of Devon is fairly poor.

But 4G is such a step up that I will move when it is available,

No,I did plan on upgrading until I saw the UK version of 4G isn't all that wonderful.I expect pricing of 4G to be high & the available bandwidth caps to be meagre.

no just renewed phone thats another 18 months lockin

Where's the option for a plain simple No. Dpn't have any sort ofmobile and never will

As they cant get a decent coverage in this area and I don't want a smart phone it's a resounding NO.

I'll echo bremner there...