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Looking for 4g / 5g Antenna Installer NE Hampshire

sa399

Casual Member
Hi All

Hope everyone is well and safe.

I am looking to install a 4g / 5g external antenna on the house and wanted to get some advice from this forum about who to hire to do the install. Looking to use a mobile data SIM as the fail-over option for my existing hardwired broadband service.

I'm assuming it is better to hire a specialist installer for these rather than, say, someone who does TV aerial installs..?

I live in NE Hampshire and ideally I want someone who will have done this kind of install before and knows what to look-out for.

Anyone able to suggest an installer who I could approach?

Many thanks - SA
 
@sa399

Sorry, don't know anyone, but are you sure you want to go down this route?
Do you have signal issues inside the house?
 
@sa399

Sorry, don't know anyone, but are you sure you want to go down this route?
Do you have signal issues inside the house?
+1

If it's for fail-over then as long the mobile network gives some throughput during an outage (which hopefully should be a rare occurrence itself!) then I wouldn't see trying to eek out the maximum RF conditions as a high priority worth the expense/effort.
 
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@Lucian & Gavin - thank you for your replies

Yes - the signal is very weak inside the house.

As to your question about whether I want to go down this route - I would like to investigate further. I've done some research and I think the next step is, effectively, to have an "expert" perform a site-survey. I don't have the head for heights or necessary instrumentation to perform a site-survey myself. Hence my questions about 4g / 5g antenna installers.

Going down the 4g / 5g antenna route serves two purposes:
  1. It provides me with a fail-over internet connection. Which would be a useful thing to have as the amount I work from home increases
  2. It puts in place a potential solution to reduce the costs of my internet connection overall. £16/mth for unlimited data is a fraction of what I am paying for fixed-line broadband. Although I do realise that the upfront investment needed for 4g / 5g antennae, installation, router etc outweighs some of the savings (at least initially).
It would be nice to have an "expert" actually spell out what a potential 4g / 5g solution would provide before taking what appears to be a gamble based on the research I have done.

Thank you for your input

Rgds - SA
 
@sa399 have u done any sort of tests with your smartphone, try by the various windows, in the loft etc?
Judging by that price, I assume you're referring to Three, but other operators could have a better presence in the area. Have a tried any other?
Can you share a postcode so we can check?
 
A post code might help others to check and possibly give you a bit of guidance

I know I've learned a lot from this forum
 
@Lucian and johnro

Thank you for your follow-ups.

Post code is GU51 1EJ

I've done some initial testing with my smartphone with Virgin (Vodafone) and Three SIMs.

Virgin - provides 1-2 bars of signal which occasionally and temporarily will go to three bars if I take it upstairs on the side of the house facing the strongest nearby base-station. It's not quite as good as the Vodafone coverage checker would indicate for 4g but then the coverage tracker can't account for the micro-environment (i.e. surrounded by houses and trees)

Three SIM barely registers one bar.

In theory, I can get a clear line-of-sight to a couple of base-stations if I mounted an antenna(e) on the roof but I really would like someone suitably qualified and equipped to perform a site-survey.


Rgds - SA
 
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Hi sa399

For what it's worth, on both my tablet and mobile I only get 2 bars anywhere in the house, sometimes it even drops to 1 bar.

Screenshot_20211019-161710.jpg


The above is what I get with my 5G CPE Pro 2 without any external antennas.

It always pulls in a fantastic signal.

It never varies, may be worth trying a router on its own first, before going the external antenna route, you might not even need an external.

Just saying. 😊
 
@Lucian and johnro

Thank you for your follow-ups.

Post code is GU51 1EJ

I've done some initial testing with my smartphone with Virgin (Vodafone) and Three SIMs.

Virgin - provides 1-2 bars of signal which occasionally and temporarily will go to three bars if I take it upstairs on the side of the house facing the strongest nearby base-station. It's not quite as good as the Vodafone coverage checker would indicate for 4g but then the coverage tracker can't account for the micro-environment (i.e. surrounded by houses and trees)

Three SIM barely registers one bar.

In theory, I can get a clear line-of-sight to a couple of base-stations if I mounted an antenna(e) on the roof but I really would like someone suitably qualified and equipped to perform a site-survey.


Rgds - SA
Have you done any actual speed tests, though?
 
@sa399 BTW EE say the signal is good in your area. Definitely worth testing.
 
@The Wee Bear and Lucian - Thank you for your responses

@The Wee Bear:

Interesting that your router seems to lock on the 4g (?) signal better than your phone / tablets...would that indicate that the router has superior antenna design than the phones / tablets?

Thank you for your advice about getting a router. As coincidence would have it, I just got hold of a Nighthawk M1 mobile router :). This has already yielded some interesting results:
  1. I get better DL speeds on the opposite side of the house than I expected....
  2. With the M1, I have just recorded (with Virgin SIM):
    1. DL speed of 40Mbs - not bad at all "straight out of the box". The M1 was indicating a 4g+ connection - which was pleasing to see as I wasn't convinced I would be able to achieve this
    2. UL speed of barely 2Mbs - not great
I'm now pondering "borrowing" a Poynting Omni-directional antenna from somewhere like Amazon to see if this makes any difference to the M1

@Lucian - EE: although their coverage tracker indicates good reception in my post code, the reality is very different. In fact, I've just moved away from EE to Virgin. The EE coverage within the house was/is very poor and I needed an EE Femtocell to be able to use the EE service in the house. EE (as with most of the mobile operators), are abandoning their Femtocell infrastructure in favour of WiFi calling. I've noticed that my EE Femtocell is now increasingly unreliable in terms of connectivity

I think an external antenna is probably going to be the logical outcome but I may end end up waiting for a number of reasons:
  1. More affordable 4g/5g modems becoming available
  2. Ideally, I would like to put the 4g/5g modem in the same enclosure as the antenna to avoid signal losses due to long cable runs. But i if the antenna is on the roof and the router is in the same enclosure then how does one easily change the SIM (assuming you need the flexibility to be able to change your mobile operator, periodically)...
All "nice-to-have" first-world type questions.... :)

Rgds - SA
 
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@sa399

Understood re EE. BTW, Virgin has just changed operator from EE to Vodafone, so if it helps, you should be able to use any other Vodafone operator and get the same performance, if the price is better (Lebara, Voxi).

I would advise against putting the nighthawk outside, unless you don't really care about shortening its lifespan.
Outdoor routers have specific features such as heating up (in winter) and protection against electric phaenomena etc.
An outdoor router would have also avoided the cable loss problem.

That said, before going on Amazon and buying antennas, it's worth doing a simple empirical test; find a long pole/stick, attach the nighthawk to it, lift it up outside your windows as high as you can and do some speed tests and observe radio signal values (rsrp, snr). If there is no significant improvement, then I reckon there's no point trying to get an external antenna installed.
 
Yes the router has always pulled in a much stronger signal than my phone and tablet sa399, and it's not even near a window.
 
@Lucian and johnro

Thank you for your follow-ups.

Post code is GU51 1EJ

I've done some initial testing with my smartphone with Virgin (Vodafone) and Three SIMs.

Virgin - provides 1-2 bars of signal which occasionally and temporarily will go to three bars if I take it upstairs on the side of the house facing the strongest nearby base-station. It's not quite as good as the Vodafone coverage checker would indicate for 4g but then the coverage tracker can't account for the micro-environment (i.e. surrounded by houses and trees)

Three SIM barely registers one bar.

In theory, I can get a clear line-of-sight to a couple of base-stations if I mounted an antenna(e) on the roof but I really would like someone suitably qualified and equipped to perform a site-survey.


Rgds - SA
As Lucian says above, what speeds do you get - the bars are just a representation of the radio signal, not necessarily throughput speeds, and in addition, all devices/device manufacturers use different algorithms to convert the radio signal metrics to 'bars'. However, saying that, low radio signal will usually limit the available throughput.

Looking where you are, you're not particularly close to any mast from any provider. Vodafone/O2 looking like the closest (900m South-East), with the EE/Three sites being further away 1.2km-ish West and East.

I'm not surprised that EE doesn't provide coverage for you indoors, they don't appear to have deployed Band 20 on the masts around you, and given the distance of their sites B3 will be pretty degraded.

I happen to live not too far away and I know that the EE/Three site to the West (Fleet Road(A323) / M3 bridge) has a current planning application to upgrade it, which should bring more 4G bands to both providers as well as 5G (though it might be too far from you for 5G at 3500Mhz). That might have an impact on the radio landscape for you in the somewhat near future (in that EE/Three might become better/faster).

Edit: given your distance from the sites, I'd suggest trying/comparing a directional antenna vs an omni. You may find that by going directional you can lock onto a site that sees lower load and could give you higher throughput (because you'll be able to get a larger share of the capacity).
 
@GavinAshford

Many thanks for your in-depth reply.

Yes, you are right, I appear to be roughly in the middle of the mast sites that are West, East & South-East of me. As you say, the nearest one to me is the one to the South-East of me but this mast is one of the shorter, single-pole masts.

I did some driving around the area at lunch-time today with the Nighthawk M1 to see what kind of speeds I get in close proximity to the masts in question - i.e. I was no more than 100 yards away and had clear line of sight. Some interesting results from which I can perhaps draw some (dangerous) conclusions :

  1. Mast located West of me:
    1. Download appx 25mbs
    2. Upload appx 40Mbs
    3. Possibly this mast is heavily used (Its next to a Motorway Services area) and hence the download speed reflects congestion
    4. BTW - The planning permission you refer to appears to have been refused
  2. Mast East of me:
    1. Download appx 70Mbs
    2. Upload appx 40Mbs
  3. Mast South-East of me
    1. Download appx 130Mbs
    2. Upload appx 30Mbs
I'll do some more "surveying" tomorrow

I also think you are right that a directional antenna may be better in my case but I will do what Lucian has suggested and put the M1 on the end of a long pole and stick it out of the window to see what kind of connection quality I get.

Thanks all - SA
 
The planning application I was referring to is 21/02458/FUL (registered), which is a resubmission of 19/00924/FUL (granted), which had a non-material amendment 19/00924/NMMA try to be applied (refused).

But yes, if you've only tested with Vodafone, those are obviously only valid for that provider. Also, for your testing you should ensure that you are along the line from your house to the mast - each cell (usually 3 cells to a mast) can be subject to different load (you'd expect a cell covering fields to be subject to less load than a cell covering a housing estate) - being along the line between your house and mast try ensure that you're testing the cell you'd be connected to from home.
 
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