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Three 5G external antenna position

Jamran

Member
Hello all,

New here. I am in East London and get good 5G coverage around my area from all networks. I recently got a cheap mobile data deal with three so decided to move my home broadband to them as Virgin were charging extortionate prices.

I purchased a ZTE MC801A and stuck the sim in. Without an external antenna I’m getting decent speeds averaging 200-300mbps. However, when I’ve tested the sim outside in my iPhone speeds go to 1gbps+!

In the hope of achieving those speeds I also purchased a Poynting XPOL-1 V2 5G. However, the results haven’t been great. I was hoping you lovely people could tell me if I’m doing something wrong and how best I can get the most out of the antenna. I’ve tried in a few positions in my house (balcony, outside window, on top of roof) but not much of a speed increase. The uploads speeds have definitely improved with it but not download.

I’ve attached some screenshots of my area. My post code is E2 0QF. My property is marked with a red ❌ on the images

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

Screenshots: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0529s5_MQuE21lHCIVe_dNzCw
 

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Your doing nothing "wrong". Different devices.
Read plenty about it on this and other forums.
 
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The three branded model of the router does not work when antenna s. The software has been blocked and I believe internally the hardware is disabled although the ports are still present
 
You'd need to use an external router, like below, to get the best possible speeds. As soon as you introduce external antenna with internal routers you lose a large percentage of signal, depending on the length of cable used.


Keep in mind you'd need additional kit like a POE capable switch and a wireless access point if you plan to use wireless devices.

The three branded model of the router does not work when antenna s. The software has been blocked and I believe internally the hardware is disabled although the ports are still present

This channel seems to suggest otherwise?

 
Try the router in an Ip67 enclosure outside and test performance of your device.

Thats what I’ve done with my Ubiquiti WAP at bottom of garden
 
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There's loads of BS spouted about antennas and cable loss. Part of the problem is that budget external antennas (especially those from China) almost always have the cheapest and crappiest coax fitted. The pair of crossed log periodics that came with the second hand router I bought recently are a good example. Believe it or not they were connected to two 10m runs of RG58 (not even sure it was genuine RG58, either).

That cable is total crap at anything higher than about B20. Even at B20 frequencies the loss per cable over 10m is around 6dB (assuming the cable is kosher). I replaced both cables with LMR240 which brought the loss down over 10m to about 2.2dB, small enough to not worry about.

Sadly the antennas were also crap. When I found that the performance was poor, even with the new cable, I did what I should have done in the first place and put one of them on the VNA to see what it's performance was like. It was dire, an appalling mismatch across the whole band it was supposed to cover (roughly 700MHz to 1900MHz). Turns out that the idiot manufacturer hadn't bothered to fit the matching balun.

The internal antennas on indoor routers are pretty poor, barely better than the really poor antennas inside phones. At least with phones there's a good reason for this, the manufacturers just don't have room to fit a decent antenna. With antennas, as a general rule, there's no substitute for having a large physical aperture (relative to the wavelength of the desired signal). Sadly the scammers know this and often put tiny bits of crap inside large plastic cases.

In terms of numbers (bearing in mind that 3dB loss is half the signal) internal router antennas may have a gain of around -1dBi to +1dBi, which is pretty good compared to a phone antenna that may well struggle to be better than about -3dBi. A decent outdoor omni will have a gain of around +2dBi, but more importantly will be in a much stronger RF field, probably worth another 3dB to 6dB. Even allowing for a couple of dB of cable loss a decent outdoor omni antenna is likely to give around 2 to 4 times the signal strength of an indoor antenna. More importantly, it may also pick up less noise and interferference (being further away from all the stuff transmitting inside a house), so the SINR will probably improve. SINR is probably the most important parameter to look at when making comparisons.
 
This channel seems to suggest otherwise?


Those mc801a's have been modified to allow antenna connections.

[Edit] I've read the comments and he mentions the ts9's work too - this isn't always the case, I've opened an mc801a where the ts9's were physically not linked to any circuit on the pcb.
 
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