Good morning, this is my first post here having lurked with great interest for a few months.
Living in the very rural Suffolk/Norfolk borders, we were excited when we discovered that BT were starting to offer a FTTC service as opposed to the standard full copper service we were receiving. We were getting 4-5Mbps on copper and thinking that the extra £10 per month would be worth it given the stated 8 Mbps for FTTC, we jumped in. I am sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that we are, ahem, underwhelmed by the "upgrade", which is really no different, only more expensive.
Experimenting with with 3 SIM in a cheap fleBay sourced 3/4g dongle attached to my Draytek 2860 router, I was initially surprised to find that the up- and download speeds were significantly faster than ADSL and that with the dongle inside a cabinet downstairs in an old house with 1ft thick walls! Supported by the views on this forum I am now about to jump in with both feet and use mobile broadband as a complement to the BT service, if not a total replacement.
I notice that, when upstairs in the house, I can sometimes get a 4g service and it is pretty clear that an external antenna is the way to go. I almost jumped in and bought this one - https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/15383-solwise-4g-xpol-a0001/ - but before I do I thought I would ask a couple of questions...
1. The dongle (a rebranded Huawei 3372) has two antenna ports. Is it therefore better to get an antenna that has two cables to take advantage of the two ports, or doesn't it make any difference?
2. Is a directional antenna better than an omni-directional one, ie is the omni-directional option a "cop-out" compromise if I don't know or can't be bothered doing the research into where the best mast is located?
3. How significant is the "gain" figure in the antenna specifications? My default assumption is that more has to be better (an amp that goes to 11 is better than 10, right?) but I suspect there is more to the topic.
On my phone, Mastdata (thanks again to this site) tells me there is a 3 mast in a field about 600m away and the OpenSignal app also points in that direction although I can't for the life of me see the antenna! I am not wedded to 3, but have been relatively happy with them for phones and iPads for a few years now so my default assumption is that I will stay with them.
If anyone can help me with the above it would be very much appreciated.
Living in the very rural Suffolk/Norfolk borders, we were excited when we discovered that BT were starting to offer a FTTC service as opposed to the standard full copper service we were receiving. We were getting 4-5Mbps on copper and thinking that the extra £10 per month would be worth it given the stated 8 Mbps for FTTC, we jumped in. I am sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that we are, ahem, underwhelmed by the "upgrade", which is really no different, only more expensive.
Experimenting with with 3 SIM in a cheap fleBay sourced 3/4g dongle attached to my Draytek 2860 router, I was initially surprised to find that the up- and download speeds were significantly faster than ADSL and that with the dongle inside a cabinet downstairs in an old house with 1ft thick walls! Supported by the views on this forum I am now about to jump in with both feet and use mobile broadband as a complement to the BT service, if not a total replacement.
I notice that, when upstairs in the house, I can sometimes get a 4g service and it is pretty clear that an external antenna is the way to go. I almost jumped in and bought this one - https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/15383-solwise-4g-xpol-a0001/ - but before I do I thought I would ask a couple of questions...
1. The dongle (a rebranded Huawei 3372) has two antenna ports. Is it therefore better to get an antenna that has two cables to take advantage of the two ports, or doesn't it make any difference?
2. Is a directional antenna better than an omni-directional one, ie is the omni-directional option a "cop-out" compromise if I don't know or can't be bothered doing the research into where the best mast is located?
3. How significant is the "gain" figure in the antenna specifications? My default assumption is that more has to be better (an amp that goes to 11 is better than 10, right?) but I suspect there is more to the topic.
On my phone, Mastdata (thanks again to this site) tells me there is a 3 mast in a field about 600m away and the OpenSignal app also points in that direction although I can't for the life of me see the antenna! I am not wedded to 3, but have been relatively happy with them for phones and iPads for a few years now so my default assumption is that I will stay with them.
If anyone can help me with the above it would be very much appreciated.