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Help from Ireland

Hi Guys,

I hope you are all well and i am hoping you might be able to help me with a huge headache. My girlfriend and me moved from London to Co. Galway in Ireland, we found a fantastic cottage in a place called Porridgetown West (silly name , lovely place). Anyways we tried getting the local ISP to install a phone line and internet but they were unable to do so as the local exchange had run out of connection points. We then looked at getting a company called Light net to install "line of sight" fixed broadband but unfortunately between their masts and ours was a load of trees and so they could not do anything for us.

We have looked at "Mobile" broadband with the little dongles and the little modem things but inside the house there is little to no signal, we have a very thick stone walled cottage. Our one saving grace and i am hoping something you guys might be able to expand upon and save us with is that if we put our Mobile Phones next to the window in our house we get a "H" connection , which i believe is between 3G and 4G? On top of this if we go outside the house we can get some "4G" signal as well and so i am hoping someone might be able to make a suggestion to how we can get something working to allow us to have internet on our desktops and also some decent connection, we dont download huge amounts but we would like to be able to watch YouTube Videos and maybe play World of Warcraft, a big ask i know but if anyone has some suggestions it would be really appreciated.

Thanks.
 
H is 3.75G, so high speed 3G really. If you could PM me a postcode, I could look into providers and frequencies a bit more for you.
How much data do you typically use/need?
 
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A long time ago you use to be able to buy these clever Mobile Broadband extenders, which would automatically choose the best antenna and strongest signal and ended up being able to deliver a stable connection in areas where a simple Smartphone or USB Dongle / Modem couldn't even get a working service:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/articles/11_WiBE_Mobile_Broadband_Booster_Review/

http://deltenna.com/products/wibe/

But sadly they are hugely expensive and I can't seem to find them for sale anymore, although the company is still going. The closest alternative is this, but it's still way overpriced and I don't know if it's as good as a WiBE.

http://www.4gon.co.uk/cradlepoint-3g-wifi-m2m-router-cor-ibr600p-p-5737.html

The other alternative is to setup your own external antenna and buy a 3G/4G WiFi router modem. On that front you might find this thread useful as it covers many of the same questions.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/showthread.php/33695-3G-4G-mobile-broadband-with-an-antenna
 
3 IE has outdoors 3G at that Location. 3 have amazing value data sim plans too; 60GB for €19.99 a month. Here
Vodafone IE looks to have good 3G and 4G with quite cheap plans too: Here
You can either buy a 4G router on contract with the SIMs or buy a SIM and use your own router.
 
I get one or two bars of 4G at a window here but one of those magical Huewai boxes in my loft gives me a steady 15Mbit/s down 7Mbits/up. What you can achieve with dedicated hardware is very different to what you can with a phone which is designed primarily for small size.
 
Your scenario is similar to ours particular with regard to reception.

Around 850m from the BT VDSL cabinet, so predicted speeds are only about 12 to 30 Meg down and 3 up.
Around 2.5km from the Three cell - only around 15 down 3 up (3G or 4G)
Around 2.5km from the EE cell - around 30 to 50 down, 30 to 50 up (4G)

Albeit if I put an EE SIM in my phone, it will only just manage a call in one room of the house upstairs, sometimes.

With a B593 modem on the window sill in that room - 3 bars, 20 Meg each way.

With that connected to a roof antenna - 5 bars, top speeds.

First identify the network and the sweet spot in the house.

See if you can get a B593 second hand? Then get a PAYG data SIM on the proposed network and a power extension cable and walk around the upstairs of the house seeing what signal and speeds you get.
 
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Hi Guys,

Firstly thank you for all your help so far it is really appreciated @DTMark you mentioned distances from Cabinets for the main providers, how do you find out this infomration is there anyway you find out their location in relation to our position? I believe our GPS is

53.413202, -9.257795

According to Google Maps that is , if anyone has further information on which we should try that would be fantastic.

Thanks
Mark
 
There used to be a detailed online database you could search to find out where providers' transmitters were, but I don't think it's up to date any more.

The best thing to do is to visit each of the providers' websites and "Check Network Coverage".

When I worked on an app that used location information in Ireland many years ago one of the issues was that Ireland doesn't use postcodes - you'll know better than I if that has changed (the app had to draw a map and the customer had to move an arrow to indicate the location), but I'm not sure how you could use the checkers without them.
 
ok so a quick update we have a TP Link Archer MR200 router, its the only one we could find in the local area , although will consider getting one shipped in from the UK if it is unsuccesful. Anyways we had some success and some failure, the success we have had is we have managed to get one or two high speeds on our tests the problem is they drop off massively automatically, we get an initial burst ranging from 10-15 mbs then it just drops to 1mb or even below, any ideas why this might be happening?

Ok quick update we did a speed test on the mobile phone, connected to the router and we get close to 20mb download but on the laptop and the computer we get between 0.8 and 2mb , there is something very wrong here any ideas why this is happening?
 
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This is 3/4G, does your mobile provider allow you to use the SIM for "Tethering"; it may be they are detecting it isnt a phone making use of the connection and heavily throttling you.

You need a SIM and data package suitable for tablets and laptops, not mobile phones

(I fell into this trap myself a few years back - ordered a "3" SIM, loaded with 5GB of data then couldnt use it because they didnt allow tethering).

Do you mean the TPL Archer VR200 ?? I have one of those; I find it very good for my fibre connection, but I havent tried it with 3/4G; every device we connect to it gets a solid download speed of over 70Mbps via Wifi or ethernet.
 
Hi Ian, thanks for getting back to me i had a quick look and ID is on the same network as 3 and also does not allow SIM tethering so i am confident that will be the issue, i will have a look tonight but fingers crossed as they say.
 
If it consistently bursts then drops then I suspect it does have to do with deliberate throttling. You could order a free PAYG SIM from Three directly and try it with that loaded with e.g. £10 to try it out.
 
@DT, that is what I tried, you need to order a SIM that is meant for DATA ONLY, a normal SIM is/was blocked if used for a tablet or other "not-a-mobile" situation.
This was about 3 years ago, so I dont know if the situation has changed.
 
Ok guys bit of an update i got a mobile sim from ID (Three) and the signal is good and on the mobile phones connected to the modem its fine but still on the laptop and the PCs absolutly no download speed, ping is awesome and the upload is speed is great but download speed is shot.

Any ideas?
 
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Sounds like the situation hasnt changed with 3, you need a DATA SIM, not a mobile phone SIM. When I asked, they said they couldnt convert a SIM from one to the other.

But as I said, this was a number of years ago, perhaps they can now; you will have to contact them and ask.
 
I thought i had a Data sim? I went to the store and asked them for the same sim that goes in a Dongle or Modem and they gave me one with a Data Plan that is 60GB for 30 Euros, is this the same as a phone sim or am i missing something?
 
Is this the provider?

http://www.idmobile.co.uk/shop/plans/data-only

I'm not seeing a 60GB plan.

60GB for 30EUR seems suspiciously cheap.

Also, comparing this with, say Giffgaff who resell O2's network - I've read, anecdotally, that while it might well be the same network, an O2 SIM latched to the same cell as a Giffgaff one will outperform it by a huge margin perhaps because of the amount of bandwidth O2 provide to their reseller. If the reseller is cheaper than the underlying provider then perhaps something "has to give".
 
That's Northern Ireland, Mark. For the Republic you need...
http://www.idmobile.ie/shop/accessories/meet-mobile-broadband
...which does indeed have a 60GB for 30 euros offering.

The online version, rather than buying it in a shop, is decidedly confusing, because it's in with a dongle, so total price appears to be 99 euros. In the blurb it does say "Choose the SIM only option and use the SIM in your tablet, iPad or other device", so I guess there's some way of saying "No thanks, stuff your dongle, just give me the ruddy SIM card". However, as might be expected with a mobile outfit (they all like to make life impossible) God knows how you'd actually order it, if I do a pretend order it doesn't give me any choice!

"Do it online, it's easier!"
Err... no... the website's the usual shambles so it's easier to get it over the counter.
:rolleyes:
 
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