4G broadband

[brisel]

Any tips? EE and O2 have fairly good coverage around here. I will need an external antenna as Mrs B needs good broadband for working from home. It’s an old farmhouse with thick stone walls so signal drops off pretty quickly.

FTTP is prohibitively expensive as we are far from the exchange and have no near neighbours. I have one quote for microwave but the provider does not have good reviews from a couple of local customers I know.

[S6PNJ]

brisel said:

Any tips?

Start here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
But probably towards the end of the thread, not the beginning!

[barryrs]

I’ve been with 3 for a good 18 months now.

I have upgraded the router to a Netgear Orbi which is currently showing 92mb download speeds.

[brisel]

S6PNJ said:

Start here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
But probably towards the end of the thread, not the beginning!

Thank you. It was a very long thread! The main conclusions I’ve come to so far are to avoid 3 and get a professional to set it up!

[Troubleatmill]

brisel said:

S6PNJ said:

Start here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
But probably towards the end of the thread, not the beginning!

Thank you. It was a very long thread! The main conclusions I’ve come to so far are to avoid 3 and get a professional to set it up!

If you want an external antenna - Poynting. They do directional and non-directional.
In the last abode I used a directional antenna - and it made a huge difference.

If you look at the thread there is a map of where the masts are - so should be able to narrow down pointing the direction of the antenna.

[parabolica]

I was in the same situation as you OP - rural location in a converted farm building. Went with EE but no external antenna. Router had to be up high to get a signal (poor reception area but solid 4g once you did get a connection). Router was in the loft getting minimal 1 bar; all connections to it were wireless.

Credit where it’s due it worked well for the year I had it (just got FTTP installed). Even though it only had 1 bar and wireless connections it was strong enough for streaming in up to 4K and audio calls for work were ok. VidCon is where it let me down, but that was likely due to my set up.

You just need to budget your data correctly. Roughly speaking 1 hour of 1080p streaming = 1GB of data; 4K is 4x that obv. Amazing how fast you’ll chew through data, esp if all your entertainment watching is done online like me.