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ZTE 5G Locking etc.

sja0001

Pro Member
Apologies as I'm sure this has been asked already but I cannot find the answer. Just switched to the above router and found the band locking sub menu but
1) not sure which bands I should select and
2) how do I "unselect" 4g to avoid any drops (not that I've had any so far)
I'm on a Three Broadband SIM (and APN) and also one Three phone SIM on Three.co.uk.
Thanks
S
 
The bands to lock to depends on your area really, I've found nice performance on b1 + b3 + n78 but in most cases n78 does all the work anyway.

As for disabling 4G you can't do that, the 5G networks in current use in the UK are non-standalone 5G which means that instead of getting a pure 5G connection with 5G signalling it relies on 4G signalling and 5G just gets added ontop in a similar fashion to 4G+ with at least one 4G band required to connect.

You'll have to wait until Three deploy standalone 5G in order to turn off 4G, in my area I can see some SA testing from EE, Vodafone and O2 but haven't seen any SA tests on Three as of yet.
 
That's excellent - thank you. 'll report back on performance once completed. is there a way to check what bands are being broadcast from the mast?
 
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You could always check cellmapper but that's crowdsourced data so it might not be up to date, from my experience a Three 5G mast will tend to carry b1, b3, b32, n78 and maybe b20 and b28 though.
 
I recently played around with the Band Locking on a 5G ZTE Router works well, but your probably better off using the Cell Locking Feature thats available on the ZTE that way you wont lose some of the Carrier Aggregation that you would through Band Locking and hence better DL Speeds.
 
I recently played around with the Band Locking on a 5G ZTE Router works well, but your probably better off using the Cell Locking Feature thats available on the ZTE that way you wont lose some of the Carrier Aggregation that you would through Band Locking and hence better DL Speeds.
Do you have instructions - assume I know nothing! Thanks
 
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OK. I'll talk you through my own situation.
I assume you have the Miononno script that allows access to band and cell locking.
I can receive seven different masts of varying signal strength, but for all practical purposes this can be reduced to just two.
Tower 1 has b1 and b3 - this is 4g+ only
Tower 2 has b20 b3 b32 and N78 (5G)
Simply allowing auto everything it will either go to T2 and hook up to b20 or to T1 and hook up to b1 or b3. Connecting to B20, it goes to T2 and and I get 5G
But connecting to tower 1 allows cross-tower connection to T2's N78 and the NSA 1+3 gives better uploads. Even better for uploads would be if the primary band is b3.
So it is better to either band lock or cell lock to T1.

If I band connect to 1+3 there is no guarantee it will always connect to the better band of the two as the primary. Sometime it will connect to b1 first. By selecting each band in turn I can note down the cell info. Then I can use that info and key in cell lock for T1's b3 and that will force the router to always select that band first. It will then seek out any 5g aggregation. which in my case will be b1 and then N78.

Another scenario might be if I lost 5G. In that case T2 would give the better 4G+ performance with slightly slower maximum speeds but much better consistency because T1 can get overloaded. If I just did band selection of b20+3+32 the router would just jump to the strongest signal on b3 on T1 and lock out the desired b32. Doing a cell lock to T2's b20 will mean that the other bands on the same tower, b3 +b32 will get selected. (Unfortunately b32 doesn't get selected when 5G is operating.)

So in short, get that Miononno script, find out what bands are available and what their PCI and EARFCN numbers are and then play around with different combinations.
You might also get the Cellmapper app for your phone and note down the various sgnals you can find while wandering around the house.

Note, PCI numbers are different on different towers, EARFCN numbers are always the same for the same bands, e,g for Three, b20 = 6175, B3 = 1392 etc.

Hope that helps a little.
 
OK. I'll talk you through my own situation.
I assume you have the Miononno script that allows access to band and cell locking.
I can receive seven different masts of varying signal strength, but for all practical purposes this can be reduced to just two.
Tower 1 has b1 and b3 - this is 4g+ only
Tower 2 has b20 b3 b32 and N78 (5G)
Simply allowing auto everything it will either go to T2 and hook up to b20 or to T1 and hook up to b1 or b3. Connecting to B20, it goes to T2 and and I get 5G
But connecting to tower 1 allows cross-tower connection to T2's N78 and the NSA 1+3 gives better uploads. Even better for uploads would be if the primary band is b3.
So it is better to either band lock or cell lock to T1.

If I band connect to 1+3 there is no guarantee it will always connect to the better band of the two as the primary. Sometime it will connect to b1 first. By selecting each band in turn I can note down the cell info. Then I can use that info and key in cell lock for T1's b3 and that will force the router to always select that band first. It will then seek out any 5g aggregation. which in my case will be b1 and then N78.

Another scenario might be if I lost 5G. In that case T2 would give the better 4G+ performance with slightly slower maximum speeds but much better consistency because T1 can get overloaded. If I just did band selection of b20+3+32 the router would just jump to the strongest signal on b3 on T1 and lock out the desired b32. Doing a cell lock to T2's b20 will mean that the other bands on the same tower, b3 +b32 will get selected. (Unfortunately b32 doesn't get selected when 5G is operating.)

So in short, get that Miononno script, find out what bands are available and what their PCI and EARFCN numbers are and then play around with different combinations.
You might also get the Cellmapper app for your phone and note down the various sgnals you can find while wandering around the house.

Note, PCI numbers are different on different towers, EARFCN numbers are always the same for the same bands, e,g for Three, b20 = 6175, B3 = 1392 etc.

Hope that helps a little.
Thanks, I'll have a play later!
 
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