Leaving EE but keeping the SIM WiFi router (and using an alternative SIM)

[Wwal]

I've been on the 4GEE Home Router plan (100GB) for the past year or so, paying just over £40/month.

Now that I'm out of contract I'm thinking of switching to Smarty - unlimited data for half the price.

My question is - rather than return the EE Wi-Fi router, can I keep it and use it with a Smarty SIM?

A quick search appears to suggest that I'll need to unlock the router, which involves paying £8 or so to EE for them to facilitate said unlocking - is this information correct?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

[XRaySpeX]

It's yours. You bought the router to keep.

As long as you bought it after Dec 2021 it should be unlocked.

[Wwal]

Thanks XRay,

Sounds promising.  Hey, I was on the phone to EE earlier to see what deals they could offer and I asked 'em the same question (as above) and was told that the router would be wholly incompatible with any other service provider's SIM - is this simply plain old obfuscation to discourage me leaving?

[XRaySpeX]

Can't see why it should be. You could try it out with another's network's PAYG SIM for a few £s.

[Woods84]

Hey Mate,

I'm in the same situation as above and therefore was wondering if you managed to use the Smarty SIM in your existing router and if so could you detail the process involved please?

Cheers 

[Wwal]

Hi Woods,

Yep - I took a punt on the Smarty SIM.  You'll need to activate the SIM via the Smarty dashboard (accessed by logging into your Smarty account) and then simply pop the SIM into the router and away you go.  You won't even need to change log-ins on any of your devices as they'll still be looking for the exact same router (ie. it'll still be called 4GEE-router-blah-blah) and will retain the exact same log-in requirements.

Just for clarity, I joined EE around July 2022 and the router I was issued with is the one in the attached pic.  No unlocking required with this, as Xray mentioned above.

[aadhi_07]

Hey Mate,

Thanks for this topic, I am on the same page and now facing an issue. I switched to Smarty and was using it all good and fine. For some reason, I updated the router to the latest version and now it doesn't show my Wifi anymore. Have anyone got an idea on this, did i bricked my router by doing the update. 

Any help on this is highly appreciated.

Regards 

Aadhi

[jockwav1]

That sounds great i am in exact same boat moving my O2 & number to smarty.

I want to do the same with my 4GEE router with a new data sim,sounds good thanks for your post.