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Antenna Type and Location Recommendation

Silver Dinky

Casual Member
Hi All,

We've just moved house and it's likely that we won't be staying here for more than 6-9 months so I didn't want to sign up for a fibre ISP contract. Instead I thought I would go down the mobile broadband route and I've acquired a Teltonika RUTXR1 router and a Talk Mobile unlimited data sim. I'm pretty tech savvy but this is my first time using mobile data as the household broadband so I'm still learning.

I am located about 1.5 kilometres from my nearest tower, I have clear LoS to it and get a reasonable strength signal just using the supplied antennas but my speeds are a mediocre 12mbps down and 1.5mbps up.

My router is a cat 6 4G that should be capable of up to 300mbps and while I don't know if I can get anywhere near that speed I do think that I can do better.

I've been looking at different types of antennas to try and help increase my speeds. We will likely be moving again soon so I don't want to mount an antenna somewhere hard to reach or difficult to install/remove as I'll likely want to take it with me when we move again. I also don't want a large unsightly antenna mounted on the front of the house.

I've looked at the Poynting XPOL and BlueSpot antennas which I could probably mount outdoors and run a 5m cable to the router. Alternatively I thought that I could mount something like this Nedis antenna in the loft (the router is in the loft anyway) and use much shorter cables to the router minimising signal loss in the cable. I could probably get away with 0.5m or 1m cable. Which approach would likely give the best results?

Are there any alternative approaches that I could try to improve my speeds? I don't need super fast speeds but at the moment I get buffering if 2 or 3 people in the house are streaming TV etc.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
My gut feeling is that the router is not good enough basically, cat6 is quite limited.
Also it's possible your Vodafone signal is not too good.

1. Can I ask that you share your signal stats from the router? At that range you shouldn't need an external antenna.
Look for rsrp and snr primarily, if you can share bands in use that'd be even better.

2. If you take that SIM and put it in your smartphone (assuming relatively new one), what speeds are you getting in the same location?

3. Can you share a nearby post code so we can check what's available in your area? Perhaps there's even 5G.
 
My gut feeling is that the router is not good enough basically, cat6 is quite limited.
Also it's possible your Vodafone signal is not too good.
OK, that's interesting. I hadn't considered that.
1. Can I ask that you share your signal stats from the router? At that range you shouldn't need an external antenna.
Look for rsrp and snr primarily, if you can share bands in use that'd be even better.
RX1.webp

2. If you take that SIM and put it in your smartphone (assuming relatively new one), what speeds are you getting in the same location?
My phone is an iPhone 13 and the sim is also on the Vodafone network. Speedtest.net gives me 7.8mbps down. I'll try the Talk Mobile sim out of the router just to confirm but it looks like you are correct about the quality of the Vodafone network.
3. Can you share a nearby post code so we can check what's available in your area? Perhaps there's even 5G.
Absolutely, HR9 7WW. I believe that EE is the only 5G here but their unlimited sim is £35 p/m versus the TM at £16 p/m. Three have here 4G but I don't know if their offering would be any better than Vodafone.
 
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OK, that's interesting. I hadn't considered that.

View attachment 13351

My phone is an iPhone 13 and the sim is also on the Vodafone network. Speedtest.net gives me 7.8mbps down. I'll try the Talk Mobile sim out of the router just to confirm but it looks like you are correct about the quality of the Vodafone network.

Absolutely, HR9 7WW. I believe that EE is the only 5G here but their unlimited sim is £35 p/m versus the TM at £16 p/m. Three have here 4G but I don't know if their offering would be any better than Vodafone.
You could try a Lyca sim. Cheaper than EE and runs on EE network. Also 1pmobile if you use less than 200GB a month is only £20. Obviously your router is only 4G but EE often outperforms the others anyway.
 
@Silver Dinky ok, at those stats you should be getting much better speeds, so there's either contention on the mast or poor backhaul.

I just checked the post code in bidb.uk and it shows there should be 5G from EE and some from Vodafone, but given the above I'd go straight with EE.

Get a 1pMobile (EE mvno) payg sim to test, maybe you could even get away with your Teltonika on 4G only, but do test in the iphone as well. If you are getting good 5G on iphone explore the idea of getting a proper 5G router.

If you are happy with speeds you could get an EE prepaid SIM from Scancom. The following costs about £200 for 1 year, comes down to £16-17/m.

 
You could try a Lyca sim. Cheaper than EE and runs on EE network. Also 1pmobile if you use less than 200GB a month is only £20. Obviously your router is only 4G but EE often outperforms the others anyway.
Good call. I've just looked and Lyca have an unlimited sim for £20 p/m on a rolling 1 month contract. That might be worth a try.
 
You could try a Lyca sim. Cheaper than EE and runs on EE network. Also 1pmobile if you use less than 200GB a month is only £20. Obviously your router is only 4G but EE often outperforms the others anyway.
I'd advise against that, Lyca is not a good measuring tool for EE as they run their own network behind the EE radios and is often rubbish. 1pmobile is a better choice.
For longer term check the Scancom offer above.

cc @Silver Dinky
 
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@Silver Dinky ok, at those stats you should be getting much better speeds, so there's either contention on the mast or poor backhaul.

I just checked the post code in bidb.uk and it shows there should be 5G from EE and some from Vodafone, but given the above I'd go straight with EE.

Get a 1pMobile (EE mvno) payg sim to test, maybe you could even get away with your Teltonika on 4G only, but do test in the iphone as well. If you are getting good 5G on iphone explore the idea of getting a proper 5G router.

If you are happy with speeds you could get an EE prepaid SIM from Scancom. The following costs about £200 for 1 year, comes down to £16-17/m.

Some great advice there, thank you. I have to shoot off to work now but I'll digest it this evening. 👍
 
I'd advise against that, Lyca is not a good measuring tool for EE as they run their own network behind the EE radios and is often rubbish. 1pmobile is a better choice.
For longer term check the Scancom offer above.

cc @Silver Dinky
Agreed on Lyca but for £1.50 for a sim a cheap indicator. 1p or Scancom definately the way to go for long term if EE is a good network in the area. Cellmapper shows not a lot around on any network.

Three: O2: Vodafone: EE: https://imgur.com/a/OkG8Bfl
 
Agreed on Lyca but for £1.50 for a sim a cheap indicator. 1p or Scancom definately the way to go for long term if EE is a good network in the area. Cellmapper shows not a lot around on any network.
It can be an indicator, if you are getting good speeds, then most likely you'll be getting them on EE proper as well.
But if you are getting rubbish speeds.. then you still have to go 1pmobile to double check these findings, cause it could just be Lyca being Lyca.

I was not suggesting 1pmobile for long term use, just for testing, they are expensive and do not have unlimited data offers.
 
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I would additionally recommend a check of the OpenSignal app just to confirm the current thinking. Usually, both EE and Three UK are good when available. I've also found Vodafone to be pretty solid in my area.
 
Wow, some fantastic advice there, thanks everyone.

I've just tried OpenSignal as recommended by @mikeliuk and interestingly it shows 30.5mbps down and 31.1mbps up using TalkMobile/router/wifi but if I turn off the wifi on my phone and run the same test using my Lebara sim I get 2.3mbps down and 8.1mbps up! I wonder if the increased speed is due to less contention at this time of day?

On my phone I've been with Lebara for a few years and it has been fine but in the last few months it's really gone downhill. I don't know if that's Lebara in general or if it's local to where I was living and where I live now. It's reached a point now where it's so bad I have to change to another network. I'm looking at whether it might be worthwhile to go to EE on my phone and then get the discount on an unlimited sim for the router.

I think the starting point is to order a 1p sim and see how that performs.
 
@Silver Dinky Vodafone (lebara) recently shut down 3G nationally, you may be feeling the effects of that.
👍
It's probably cheaper to go to 1pmobile for your phone and Amazon/scancom (data only!) for router. Weigh your options.
That makes sense, thank you.

Is the NR5103EV2 the way to go for a 5G router? There seem to be lots of new ones (unlocked) for sale on Ebay for about £130 which seems pretty reasonable.
 
👍

That makes sense, thank you.

Is the NR5103EV2 the way to go for a 5G router? There seem to be lots of new ones (unlocked) for sale on Ebay for about £130 which seems pretty reasonable.
Go for the V1 if you're planning to use antennas (it supports 4 compared to the V2s 2) or want faster Ethernet, otherwise definitely go for V2
 
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The OpenSignal map stats (4G LTE as insufficient for 5G NR) for the area suggest

EE 26.79 Mbps down/6.30 Mbps up/57 ms latency
Vodafone 22.94 Mbps down/4.75 Mbps up/60 ms latency

There doesn't seem to be sufficient crowd-sourced data to show other providers.

The way I use this data is that if I'm sufficiently worse, I can expect to make changes to improve. I would expect to be about the indicated values. If I'm better than the indicated value, I would reduce my expectation of being able to improve and avoid disappointment.
 
The OpenSignal map stats (4G LTE as insufficient for 5G NR) for the area suggest

EE 26.79 Mbps down/6.30 Mbps up/57 ms latency
Vodafone 22.94 Mbps down/4.75 Mbps up/60 ms latency

There doesn't seem to be sufficient crowd-sourced data to show other providers.

The way I use this data is that if I'm sufficiently worse, I can expect to make changes to improve. I would expect to be about the indicated values. If I'm better than the indicated value, I would reduce my expectation of being able to improve and avoid disappointment.
OpenSignals map isn't accurate for cell towers etc, don't bother looking at it
 
The OpenSignal map stats (4G LTE as insufficient for 5G NR) for the area suggest

EE 26.79 Mbps down/6.30 Mbps up/57 ms latency
Vodafone 22.94 Mbps down/4.75 Mbps up/60 ms latency

There doesn't seem to be sufficient crowd-sourced data to show other providers.
EE's Coverage Checker shows that 4G and 5G are "Excellent" indoors and out, but then so does Vodafone's!
 
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