Who can supply and install 4G internet?

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
My telephone line broadband isn't good enough to serve my wife who works from home. It's just not stable enough & we are 2 miles of copper from the exchange with no hope of FTTP without doing the work ourselves. It's a farmhouse a mile from the nearest neighbour. No microwave BB providers locally either.

We do have good 4G coverage on Vodafone & O2 (haven't tried the others yet) though the thick walls of the house soon block it. I would need an external antenna and someone to install it. Can you get good enough signal in the loft space? Less masonry up there & weatherproof.

Any suggestions please? I'm not techie enough to do it myself & I'd want the backup in case it failed.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
https://www.solwise.co.uk/ are really good, and used to be helpful on the phones. ;) It's noit that techie, justy needs a morning.

You will probably need a new 4G Router, some cable and an antenna. All that stuff is pretty well plug in and go. Outside is easy, as you casn poke an antenna wire through a window and up the side of the house.

Internally, you might find a handy window upstairs to put an aerial in, and experiment and maybe, just maybe, pop the the router there and use wifi using main plugs internally around the house. The loft idea is much teh same, and even better if there ius power up there already.

Good article here too. https://www.solwise.co.uk/3g-intro.htm
 
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Ukjay

Member
Location
Wales!
My telephone line broadband isn't good enough to serve my wife who works from home. It's just not stable enough & we are 2 miles of copper from the exchange with no hope of FTTP without doing the work ourselves. It's a farmhouse a mile from the nearest neighbour. No microwave BB providers locally either.

We do have good 4G coverage on Vodafone & O2 (haven't tried the others yet) though the thick walls of the house soon block it. I would need an external antenna and someone to install it. Can you get good enough signal in the loft space? Less masonry up there & weatherproof.

Any suggestions please? I'm not techie enough to do it myself & I'd want the backup in case it failed.

You can easily do it yourself. It is basically plug and play.. Personally with thick walls I would also fit external aerial.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
My telephone line broadband isn't good enough to serve my wife who works from home. It's just not stable enough & we are 2 miles of copper from the exchange with no hope of FTTP without doing the work ourselves. It's a farmhouse a mile from the nearest neighbour. No microwave BB providers locally either.

We do have good 4G coverage on Vodafone & O2 (haven't tried the others yet) though the thick walls of the house soon block it. I would need an external antenna and someone to install it. Can you get good enough signal in the loft space? Less masonry up there & weatherproof.

Any suggestions please? I'm not techie enough to do it myself & I'd want the backup in case it failed.

new BT broadband routers come with a fall back to a 4g sim dongle thingy I think
 

farmerm

Member
Location
Shropshire
I hear from someone who works in the mobile communications sector that he was recently shocked to learn the full impact removing Huawei kit is going to have on some of the network providers... he fears there are going to be some very upset EE and 02 customers because of the expected network issues it is going to cause.....

Aside from that...... If you have good coverage you shouldn't need a fancy aerial. I don't have any 3 or 4G coverage inside the house but as long as it is stable 4mbs on copper is good enough 95% of the time... when copper fails us I have been found sitting in the Dutch barn using my phones 3G as a hotspot so that I can connect to the internet to report to my provider that I can not connect to the internet... communication companies are the worst when it comes to communicating! :rolleyes: Last time it failed the engineer found and repaired 3 separate faults and since then the connection has been much more stable and my thoughts to switch to a mobile solution have gone for now. (y)
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
new BT broadband routers come with a fall back to a 4g sim dongle thingy I think

I used to be with BT at my last house. When the phone line played up they sent me a 4G dongle - useless as I had no phone signal at all. I had a Vodafone Sure Signal for my own femtocell but that needed an ethernet connection into the main router so loss of BT meant loss of all comms!
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Another vote for Solwise, Have a chat with the support boys, they will suggest options.if you need an antenna

If a numb fingured peasant like me can install this stuff, anyone can
If you take out a contract with voda or o2 they will provide a router, though they tend to be basic, but will get you going
As suggested above , do a bit of experimenting. Your phone signal bars will give you a rough idea of the best place for your router.
Even if the router is in an upstairs bedroom window its a simple job to run a cat cable to where you need the service with a wifi access point on the end.
 

Timbo1080

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Somerset
Literally just done this for myself and our neighbour. Helping the next neighbour after the weekend. Little hamlet the wrong side of the A303 from the nearest village. Wife does a lot of video calls all day, couple of smart TV's, iPads and mobiles on Wifi in the house. BT was useless at around 5Mb...Couldn't support the video calls etc. FTTC is about 2 miles away. Wessex Internet are hoping to get FTTP at the beginning of summer, but I think my wife would be sacked by then as the line is so bad. So far so good with this:

Mikrotik LHG LTE Kit (RBLHGR&R11e-LTE) - Which is an external dish with built in router, and comes with the PoE injector.

I had already set up my own network in the house with Unifi products a couple of years ago, but got my neighbour this:

Ubiquiti Unifi AC LR - Which is the Wireless access point for the house (If you have thick walls you may need more than one, but they are very powerful. They come with PoE injectors too.

All you then need is a decent length ethernet cable (Patch cables) to go from the dish to PoE injector, and another from the PoE to the Unifi Access Point, a SIM of your choice. and a couple of available regular 3 pint 13 Amp plug sockets to power them.

All the software needed to tune the dish is built in and is painfully simple.

All the advice I was given ref. network providers was to ONLY go with EE, as they don't tend to kick you off data if the voice calls at that mast gets overwhelmed.....I.e. The connection is much less likely to be interrupted than it is with other providers (I'm on the side of the A303, and Bank Holiday gridlock often used to bugger our NTRIP RTK on 3, for example, as the local mast was overwhelmed with bored teenagers stuck in traffic, calling and texting their friends).....At least, that is how it has been explained to me......We have not had the same issues at all with the NTRIP on EE.
As a result, I have an EE sim in mine, and my neighbour is trying 3. EE is much more expensive, and is generally a 24 month contract, but we need the robustness for my wife. The neighbour only uses it for browsing, so doesn't mind an occasional interruption.

You really want line of sight to a nearby mast, but its not essential. Also to note, is that 'Reception' in the area is not particularly significant when it comes to speed of broadband.

A useful website for transmitters is :


Just set the criteria in the left hand side boxes for the provider you want, and whether you want 2G, 3G, 4G etc....

A good website to get a bit of understanding is :

Mastdigital.co.uk

It really is all very easy to DIY.

We're up at between 30-40Mb Download, and 20-40Mb Upload now, and its rock solid in terms of dropouts.

Think i've remembered everything!

Good luck!

Edited to say that the dish was about £110, the Unifi AP about £90, and the EE Sim is expensive at £25/month for 200Gb.
 

Timbo1080

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Somerset
Couple of updates/others:

1: My neighbour has already binned 3, as he could only get 5mbps, whereas others are available between 10-25mbps, and is looking at Vodaphone (similarly cheap and probably fraught with dropouts, but as mentioned, only uses for browsing), or EE which is the fastest for him at around 29mbps.

2: Forgot to mention, that the dish I linked is directional-It has to be lined up to one mast. If that mast goes down for repairs or otherwise, you will be without internet. You can go for an omnidirectional antenna, but as with most things....Jack of all trades, master of none....
Our mast is pretty much line of sight (100ft bump in the way), and is 1.5 miles away, with a very narrow coverage window-This means that there aren’t very many people using it (it’s set up to cover that bank holiday road traffic situation). The next nearest is 5 miles away, full line of sight, but has a huge coverage window, capturing about 6 villages. The former gives me the best speed and reliability (but I’ll probably get buggered by bank holidays), despite no line of sight.
 

rollestonpark

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Burton on trent
My telephone line broadband isn't good enough to serve my wife who works from home. It's just not stable enough & we are 2 miles of copper from the exchange with no hope of FTTP without doing the work ourselves. It's a farmhouse a mile from the nearest neighbour. No microwave BB providers locally either.

We do have good 4G coverage on Vodafone & O2 (haven't tried the others yet) though the thick walls of the house soon block it. I would need an external antenna and someone to install it. Can you get good enough signal in the loft space? Less masonry up there & weatherproof.

Any suggestions please? I'm not techie enough to do it myself & I'd want the backup in case it failed.
2 miles of copper doesn't sound that far to me.
How fast broadband are you looking for?
15mb (approx+/-) download should be achievable on the 2 mile copper line.
Just thinking maybe you have a line fault, bad cabling in house, bad router or something....
But if you want faster then yes 4G maybe the way to go.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
2 miles of copper doesn't sound that far to me.
How fast broadband are you looking for?
15mb (approx+/-) download should be achievable on the 2 mile copper line.
Just thinking maybe you have a line fault, bad cabling in house, bad router or something....
But if you want faster then yes 4G maybe the way to go.

The speed is enough for Zoom/Teams calls but it’s just not stable enough. Fibre to the house is prohibitive and I’m only a tenant anyway
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Here is the predicted speed drop relating to distance from the cabinet on ADSL bb
1608196989764.png
 

Netherfield

Member
Location
West Yorkshire
2 miles of copper doesn't sound that far to me.
How fast broadband are you looking for?
15mb (approx+/-) download should be achievable on the 2 mile copper line.
Just thinking maybe you have a line fault, bad cabling in house, bad router or something....
But if you want faster then yes 4G maybe the way to go.

Bad cabling in the house is many times a good cop out for BT, after keeping loosing connection 3 different engineers blamed internal wiring, funnily enough they went away when I recently got connected Fibre to the Cabinet, which is 200 metres away at most.

As the crow flies maybe 2 and a half miles from the exchange, engineers guess 3 to 4 times that in cable length with goodness knows how many different joints involved.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
Bad cabling in the house is many times a good cop out for BT, after keeping loosing connection 3 different engineers blamed internal wiring, funnily enough they went away when I recently got connected Fibre to the Cabinet, which is 200 metres away at most.

As the crow flies maybe 2 and a half miles from the exchange, engineers guess 3 to 4 times that in cable length with goodness knows how many different joints involved.

And if overhead, then sure to have been hit by the odd shotgun pellet over the years...
 

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