Who can supply and install 4G internet?

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Some routers have seperate SMA sockets to take external antennas. The TP link one does look like the little ones are replaced by the cable.
Note, external antennas usually only have 5 m cable with them so the router needs to be close to the antenna.
It`s to do with the "gain" from the antenna being offset by the " loss " on the cable. I asked about a longer cable & not advised because of the above
 
@Brisel Saw this the other day, no idea if it’s available in Yorkshire, or if I’d be happy dealing with Ellon Musk:
Starlink is charging U.K. customers £439 for the satellite dish and other communications equipment, as well as an £89 monthly fee and a £54 shipping fee.

Those that test the service can expect data speeds of between 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and 150 Mbps, according to reports.

o_O
 

goodevans

Member
Just before xmas I managed to cut the bt wires with hedgecutter ,because they bring cable down poles and back up now on many poles and so wire was at hedge level,didnt tell them it was me though.we are 2.5 miles from exchange on copper,they sent me out a 4g router free of charge immediately but it wasn't as good as copper line as cut in and out all the time but kept us going,they also sent me £16 as repair took 4 days(result).My neighbours have been looking at getting fibre optic to our hamlet of 5 houses,the quote being just either side of £100000,from exchange to us there are 27 connections on our line and the line stops here,if we all register for the community broadband vouchers which the government has pledged £4000 residential or£7000 business there will be enough money in the pot to get fibre optic installed FOC,I dont know whether that may be of interest
 

moretimeforgolf

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
North Kent, UK
Just before xmas I managed to cut the bt wires with hedgecutter ,because they bring cable down poles and back up now on many poles and so wire was at hedge level,didnt tell them it was me though.we are 2.5 miles from exchange on copper,they sent me out a 4g router free of charge immediately but it wasn't as good as copper line as cut in and out all the time but kept us going,they also sent me £16 as repair took 4 days(result).My neighbours have been looking at getting fibre optic to our hamlet of 5 houses,the quote being just either side of £100000,from exchange to us there are 27 connections on our line and the line stops here,if we all register for the community broadband vouchers which the government has pledged £4000 residential or£7000 business there will be enough money in the pot to get fibre optic installed FOC,I dont know whether that may be of interest
We’ve tried that in our hamlet and a few nearby houses(c.50 properties). Unfortunately we only got 2/3 to pledge the vouchers so Openreach won’t go ahead. Worth a try though.
 

Adeptandy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
PE15
Well, I have to disagree with you. After every OpenReach expert over about two years had visited they concluded that the max we could get was 2.5 Mbps, so we moved to Airband who are often great and occasionally rubbish!
Same here, 2.5km of copper to the nearest cabinet and 3mb is a good day, had 2 years of Openreach engineer visits and only getting worse as the village grows
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
We’ve tried that in our hamlet and a few nearby houses(c.50 properties). Unfortunately we only got 2/3 to pledge the vouchers so Openreach won’t go ahead. Worth a try though.
30 properties & businesses down our road. Parish council, to their credit, pushed & pushed. After over 2 years openreach agreed , with the help of the voucher scheme to do a full fttp install. Now have rock solid 300 Mbps speed. Brilliant.
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Starlink is charging U.K. customers £439 for the satellite dish and other communications equipment, as well as an £89 monthly fee and a £54 shipping fee.

Those that test the service can expect data speeds of between 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and 150 Mbps, according to reports.

o_O
Not a cheap service . Hope it's better quality than a friend's brand new Tesla. In for a respray cos the paint is peeling off
 
If you have a good 4G signal on Voda and O2 just buy an old nokia lumia for less than £100. Use it as your router, it can service up to 8 devices. My phone is my router and have 120 gigs for £20/month plus unlimited calls and texts.
I watch football etc on a pad through the phone
I think Voda do unlimited. The dongles are ok but problem is that unlike the phone you can't put it on the windowsill with the best signal when like me you have thick stone walls. Only problem I have is if it is foggy, slows down the signal but only a minor indiscretion and if I cut a couple of trees down in line of sight to the aerial 2 miles away it would probably solve that.
Costs very little to try it and then you can cut BT back to basic phone only and save a fortune.
 

moretimeforgolf

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
North Kent, UK
Wow! Just effing wow!
TP-Link router arrived today (next day Prime delivery), as did EE sim only card.
I put the sim card in the router, powered it up and connected to my computer and Wow!
54 mbs Download and 42 mbs Upload.
Usually get 5 mbs Download and 0.8 mbs Upload with landline.
But due to dodgy connections in the copper wire, when it rains! We were down to 0.35 mbs Download and 0.25 mbs Upload.
Just done the same .... different result :(
I managed to get 1 bar of signal! Managed to plug in the laptop with the Ethernet cable, that enabled me to activate the ee SIM card. Very slow connection. Looks like I’m going to have to get an external ariel or pay someone to do the job properly :scratchhead:
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Just done the same .... different result :(
I managed to get 1 bar of signal! Managed to plug in the laptop with the Ethernet cable, that enabled me to activate the ee SIM card. Very slow connection. Looks like I’m going to have to get an external ariel or pay someone to do the job properly :scratchhead:
Have you tried moving the router round the house. an upstairs bedroom window looking towards the local mast might be better ? or in the loft.
How far away is the local mast ? Has it clear line of site to your house.
An extermal antenna will only help if there is a signal to be grabbed.
Do you have phones on EE ? Do they get a decent signal ?
 

Bloders

Member
Location
Ruabon
We currently have satellite (i may have mentioned this before)
I got a guy out to look at 4G and that was not great (relatively OK signal at best)
What other solutions are there. I believe there are various grants, but I dont understand what you can get with them.
thank you
 

Ukjay

Member
Location
Wales!
Just done the same .... different result :(
I managed to get 1 bar of signal! Managed to plug in the laptop with the Ethernet cable, that enabled me to activate the ee SIM card. Very slow connection. Looks like I’m going to have to get an external ariel or pay someone to do the job properly :scratchhead:


Use this to see where your Towers are (you can check most providers on it), check the distance and then see if you are pointing the correct dorection:

 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
We currently have satellite (i may have mentioned this before)
I got a guy out to look at 4G and that was not great (relatively OK signal at best)
What other solutions are there. I believe there are various grants, but I dont understand what you can get with them.
thank you

From my own investigations;

  • FTTC then the last bit via the BT copper wire. Very slow and can be unstable unless you're close to the exchange. There's usually a big dead zone close to towns where there are longer runs of copper wire from the urban exchange.
  • FTTP is expensive but more of an option when there is a group of you or you life in an urban area. The quickest BB speeds from this. Plenty of private providers of this now as well as BT Openreach.
  • Microwave - works on line of sight only but if the lie of the end works for you then this can be very effective. Lots of this in rural areas, especially with landowners with power to hilltops for the repeaters. The range is around 22km before needing to be picked up and sent on again. A tree branch in front of the beam is enough to foul it up.
  • 4G or 5G. See above! May require an external antenna in thick walled buildings. Needs proximity to a phone mast.
  • Satellite - you're better placed to comment. Long latency times & bandwidth can be limited if demand is high but all you need is sky above you...
In a previous life, I had microwave - the parent company of my employer had spare bandwidth on a fibre connection and the estate owned all the land around 2 villages, so we set up a network of repeaters to give good coverage. Very fast connection throttled down to what we paid for & gradually replaced by fibre when we sold the business to a much bigger regional provider who used Gigabit scheme subsidies to fund miles of fibre across our land to connect up the microwave nodes & provide FTTP where possible.
 

moretimeforgolf

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
North Kent, UK
Have you tried moving the router round the house. an upstairs bedroom window looking towards the local mast might be better ? or in the loft.
How far away is the local mast ? Has it clear line of site to your house.
An extermal antenna will only help if there is a signal to be grabbed.
Do you have phones on EE ? Do they get a decent signal ?
Yes, I have tried it in several locations but not the loft. I have my phone on ee (best of a bad bunch), I checked my 4g signal around the house before ordering the router and SIM card. I can get 2 bar of phone signal at the back of the house so I thought the router would be at least as good if not better. The nearest mast is only a mile away but my neighbours’ house is directly in the way!
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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