Guest Wi-Fi or Mobile data, which is best?

So I find myself sitting here needing to get some work done remotely at a site I’m not normally at.  So the first thing I do is connect to the guest Wi-Fi, because that’s the best way to get on the internet, right?

Not necessarily, As soon as I joined the guest wifi I checked and ran a speed test using https://www.speedtest.net and found I was only getting a measly 4Mbps download speed.

The reason is simple, although I was in a big corporate building with really good fibre leased line, the guest Wi-Fi has been set up to be very limited per device connecting to it so that no one person  can hog all the speed for themselves.  This is quite normal.

The other issues to bare in mind is that on a guest wifi your device is potentially more at risk.

So what did I do instead? 

Thankfully, I got really good strong 5G signal on my phone, so I ran the same speedtest app, and this time got a download speed of 127MBps, so a quick enabling of mobile hotspot on my phone and whoosh, I was working at full speed.

So the moral of the story is its not always best to use the guest wifi somewhere, when you have your very own wifi in your pocket

Remember though if you do need to use a public Wi-Fi, try not to sign into anything confidential or financial, and try to use a VPN.  It’s also worth noting if your mobile data isn’t very good where you are you be better using the guest Wi-Fi.