Is a good 4G setup capable of competing with Starlink in rural locations?

[Disco_P]

It's somewhat anecdotal but I've done a fair amount of wild camping and also a few work trips to the highlands and have been surprised with the coverage I get on EE on my phone.

Just as an example, we drove down the A897 and I had strong 4G all the way despite there being pretty much nothing there.

 

[justgottaclimb]

Just a phone, but we were on some pretty high places which should have had line of sight to any tower in the vicinity.

With regards to Starlink, you might want to check that they actually cover north Scotland at all. I'm looking at a map of their satellites and right now there are precious few north of Hadrian's Wall.

It seems to be at full strength, as far as I can see? I don't plan on heading to Shetland, so as far as this (admittedly rather basic) map displays, it appears to be spot on.

Even Shetland has a pop-up stating that they're improving it in Q1 2023 (before I'll be venturing there), so I can only assume they're improving that region even more?

 

[RetiredGreyFox]

users just don’t realise that their VDSL on Orkney or Shetland is being bounced through a satellite

Nothing to do with the thread but back in the mid 90s my first proper paid internet was with Zetnet who were based in Shetland.

Zetnet - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Rroff]

Rather than start a new thread

EE 4G basically maxing out the 100Mbit port on the router - haven't tried over WiFi which will do 150 IIRC... upload a bit on the low side as it usually manages 30. Pretty crazy speeds for this rural location given the distance to the masts and how much clutter there is hills and trees wise in the way. Dunno why it has suddenly increased so much as the connection stats are basically the same as ever.

EDIT: The only differences I'm aware of is that people have gone mad recently building in the village - there are several large new structures nearby which might be having an impact on signal.

 

[Caged]

Is this still with the MR6400 that you mentioned earlier? If you know where your mast is and can put up a directional antenna then the logical upgrade from there would be something like a MikroTik ATL LTE18 kit

 

[Rroff]

Is this still with the MR6400 that you mentioned earlier? If you know where your mast is and can put up a directional antenna then the logical upgrade from there would be something like a MikroTik ATL LTE18 kit

Yeah still MR6400, would be better to upgrade to something with carrier aggregation probably as EE have added new bands/masts, etc. I dunno about the ATL but we have an LHG in the loft which was professionally installed and for some reason the MR6400 always matches or beats it.

 

[4Qman]

I have a modded Huawei h122 373 5g CPE pro 2 router to accept external antennas

I have this setup using 3 poynthing antennas.

I'm really happy with it. Used 30w at 12v.

Wouldn't this be something to consider.?

 

[Rroff]

Changed the router for the MR600:

Upload like before seems to be down a bit compared to normal whenever I do a test with intention of posting results generally around 30 overnight dropping to ~20 during the day. Daytime downstream speeds can be anywhere from 50-100mbps though, generally hold up pretty well but get some days it struggles especially if there is something on a lot of people are streaming, etc.

Unbelievable speeds really considering the setup of the area and that we are lucky to get 35mbps on FTTC and many neighbours are still stuck on ADSL and even with fancy setups only getting downstream speeds sub 20mbps on 4G.

From talking to a couple of people around here on Starlink they are similarly seeing about 120-130mbps overnight but the same 50-100mbps daytime speeds and sub 10mbps upload so a bit hit and miss what is better - probably the latency on Starlink is more consistent as while the 4G around here seems to fairly steadily hit ~30ms increasingly there are spikes into the 100s or even 1000s (when we first moved here it was actually really consistent latency with spikes above 100ms very rare) - carrier aggregation seems to make that worse rather than better as well.

 

[WJA96]

Yeah still MR6400, would be better to upgrade to something with carrier aggregation probably as EE have added new bands/masts, etc. I dunno about the ATL but we have an LHG in the loft which was professionally installed and for some reason the MR6400 always matches or beats it.

When you say the LHG is “in the loft” do you mean outside or literally “inside the loft”? Because it’s not meant to be indoors. There are “professional” installers and professional installers.

 

[Rroff]

When you say the LHG is “in the loft” do you mean outside or literally “inside the loft”? Because it’s not meant to be indoors. There are “professional” installers and professional installers.

Originally was on one of the chimneys but the chimney was removed, so it got remounted inside the loft - the difference was marginal (EDIT: it is a backup connection for people working from home anyhow so no one using it really cares about maximising performance).

TBH I'm finding it hard to beat the MR6400 for overall results in this area - even this MR600 is only marginally better for downstream while IMO less consistent for responsiveness even if I lock bands and/or lock out band 20 (which generally produces not great results) it doesn't seem as good for the overall quality of the connection. I'm sticking with it though as if I need low latency I can always switch over to the FTTC connection and downstream speeds generally hold up a little better than the MR6400.

 

[WJA96]

That’s the thing about wireless, one solution doesn’t necessarily work best for everyone. And if all the kit can extract the same performance from the same signal then the good thing is you’re probably maxed out.

 

[hillbilly2]

We went Starlink at the start of the year after the cyclone we had. Really fast after what we have, but 50% more expensive ($150 now $99 before). Would not go back in a heart beat.

 

[Troop]

Have the Teltonika TRB500 and Starlink now fitted to the van, Starlink has been gutted, motors and shaft removed, Starlink now down to a total height of 25mm.
Works really well, even with it just permanently flat mounted to the roof of the van, had to modify the Starlink cable to work with a POE injector to use my own router over the Starlink one.
Power in use is down to 30-35W for the dish and the Gl.Inet router.

Been a good project.

 

[Rroff]

That’s the thing about wireless, one solution doesn’t necessarily work best for everyone. And if all the kit can extract the same performance from the same signal then the good thing is you’re probably maxed out.

Well this is a weird one - I had to change phones recently as my old one was becoming unreliable. If I have my phone sim (Vodafone) in the new phone (Sony Xperia 10 V) I see an immediate ~30% performance uplift on the EE 4G using the TP-Link MR600 router:

If I turn the phone off, or put the sim back in my old phone it drops to ~107Mbit/s. Can't get my head around that one but the signal has always been weird as **** around here.

Even if it is early hours of the morning I'm amazed at getting those speeds - the area is not good for internet of any kind at all.

EDIT: From a bit more testing seems possibly my old phone is the problem though not sure why - it doesn't have much actively running on it other than WhatsApp so network/radio use is fairly low.