Question about mobile masts do they all transmit 4G?

roccles · 9 Jul 2019 at 22:12

I am considering testing out 4G as a replacement to my very poor home broadband and thinking of trying Three due to the price of their unlimited service. There is a Three mast approximately 750 metres as the crow flys with very few building between me and the mast. The description on mastdata says this is a 3G generation mast. Does this mean that my 4G would be coming from a different mast or do all masts transmit in 4G? Sorry if this a dumb question I am just thinking where is the best place to position my router and potential external antenna to get the best possible speeds.

Is there any way I can identify which mast I am connecting to?

Link to my local Three mast HERE

PapaLazaru · 9 Jul 2019 at 22:52

If it is a 3G mast, you will only get 3G from it, unless you can pick up 4G from another Three mast.

My mother lives in Aldermaston and gets a very fast 4G signal from Vodafone. Check what it says here - https://www.vodafone.co.uk/network/status-checker

Also now offering unlimited - https://www.vodafone.co.uk/unlimited-data-plans/

roccles · 9 Jul 2019 at 23:33

PapaLazaru said:
If it is a 3G mast, you will only get 3G from it, unless you can pick up 4G from another Three mast.

My mother lives in Aldermaston and gets a very fast 4G signal from Vodafone. Check what it says here - https://www.vodafone.co.uk/network/status-checker

Also now offering unlimited - https://www.vodafone.co.uk/unlimited-data-plans/

Thanks, didn't know the Vodafone was offering unlimited packages, prices look pretty competitive too. Is Vodafone generally faster than Three? The wife is on Vodafone so will be able to do a speed test tomorrow, going to pick up a Three sim as well to test the speed on that also.

blueacid · 9 Jul 2019 at 23:36

Take a look on cellmapper.net - this might provide a bit more information about the masts in your area

Steveocee · 10 Jul 2019 at 06:42

FWIW the big carriers are showing the intention of turning off a lot of their 3G equipment in an effort to repurpose it into either the 4G or 5G spaces. 4G will be the more commonly used in lesser built up areas so there is a chance that in time your 3G mast will likely turn into 4G but I will caveat that's speculation based on reading.

roccles · 10 Jul 2019 at 08:50

blueacid said:
Take a look on cellmapper.net - this might provide a bit more information about the masts in your area

Thats brilliant thanks, the mastdata site I was using is not the easiest to navigate although does seem to contain a lot of info

roccles · 10 Jul 2019 at 08:51

Steveocee said:
FWIW the big carriers are showing the intention of turning off a lot of their 3G equipment in an effort to repurpose it into either the 4G or 5G spaces. 4G will be the more commonly used in lesser built up areas so there is a chance that in time your 3G mast will likely turn into 4G but I will caveat that's speculation based on reading.

Interesting thank you hopefully the will repurpose this one as 5G mast. Looking forward to the day i can get more the 10 meg.

Steveocee · 10 Jul 2019 at 09:00

roccles said:
Interesting thank you hopefully the will re-purpose this one as 5G mast. Looking forward to the day i can get more the 10 meg.

You have to bear in mind that 5G doesn't give range hence why it's primary use so far has been big clustered cities with strong infrastructure. The likelihood and going by history is that the spectrum will be re-used into 4G in the rural areas. So you'd likely have a 4G equivalent of the 3G you get now (very roughly ish).
2G as far as I have read is going to be left alone as it has range and requires little spectrum and is a great backup.

ChrisD. · 10 Jul 2019 at 09:03

I always found Aldermasten pretty poor for reception. Vodafone and EE seemed the best.

roccles · 10 Jul 2019 at 12:28

PapaLazaru said:
Also now offering unlimited - https://www.vodafone.co.uk/unlimited-data-plans/

I have just enquired about this and they have said that it has to be used in a phone and can not be used in a router of any sort. This is a shame, I assume they will be able to track it I used it in sometime other than a phone?

Avalon · 10 Jul 2019 at 16:33

PapaLazaru said:
If it is a 3G mast, you will only get 3G from it, unless you can pick up 4G from another Three mast.

My mother lives in Aldermaston and gets a very fast 4G signal from Vodafone. Check what it says here - https://www.vodafone.co.uk/network/status-checker

Also now offering unlimited - https://www.vodafone.co.uk/unlimited-data-plans/

Unlimited Lite is 2mbit max, Unlimited is 10mbit max... they may not have a data cap, but rate limiting is just another form of limiting the data usage.

roccles said:
I have just enquired about this and they have said that it has to be used in a phone and can not be used in a router of any sort. This is a shame, I assume they will be able to track it I used it in sometime other than a phone?

Obvious workarounds have existed for years, but it's a breach of ToS.

PapaLazaru · 10 Jul 2019 at 23:20

roccles said:
I have just enquired about this and they have said that it has to be used in a phone and can not be used in a router of any sort. This is a shame, I assume they will be able to track it I used it in sometime other than a phone?

They're wrong - https://www.vodafone.co.uk/gigacube/

bremen1874 · 10 Jul 2019 at 23:33

They aren't really wrong. You can only use the unlimited data plan sims in a phone.

The GigaCube you've linked is a different product with different pricing.

Not sure why they wouldn't have mentioned it as an alternate when the OP enquired. It could be just what he's looking for.

roccles · 11 Jul 2019 at 09:20

I picked up a Three SIM yesterday to do some tests around my house using my old Moto G5. It varied massively depending on location but have found a spot that seemed to get consistently good speed test results.

So i think i am going to try a rolling 1 month contract of Three's unlimited internet to see how it is over a period of time and keep my existing broadband package running, it might be slow but at least I know its reliable. As I have read about people getting great results in the first few days and then the speeds dropping dramatically.

Have ordered a Huawei B525 router and external antenna to run it on which should hopefully give me a better connection than my Moto5, so not a cheap experiment at 200 quid but I have my fingers crossed, if not I will sell the gear and maybe get back half my outlay.

roccles · 11 Jul 2019 at 09:28

Avalon said:
Unlimited Lite is 2mbit max, Unlimited is 10mbit max... they may not have a data cap, but rate limiting is just another form of limiting the data usage.

From what I can see is it has three tiers

Unlimited Lite - 2mbit max
Unlimited - 10mbit max
Unlimited Max - Fastest available

So it would seem the top package does not have any rate limiting

Avalon · 11 Jul 2019 at 13:00

roccles said:
From what I can see is it has three tiers

Unlimited Lite - 2mbit max
Unlimited - 10mbit max
Unlimited Max - Fastest available

So it would seem the top package does not have any rate limiting

It also offers access to 5G... best of luck with that. It’s a somewhat moot point, you need to do a coverage check where you live for each provider, if Three is still running 3G now, I suspect you aren’t going to see 5G from anyone any time soon. If Vodafone have 4G and if you are happy to pay for the top tier, and if you can get away with an internal router or if you are prepared to install an external antennae, then you might get some reasonable 4G speeds, but i’d want to test it first (friends/family on Vodafone?). Either way Vodafone’s claim of unlimited is somewhat misleading when two out of three plans are rate limited.

roccles · 11 Jul 2019 at 13:26

Avalon said:
It also offers access to 5G... best of luck with that. It’s a somewhat moot point, you need to do a coverage check where you live for each provider, if Three is still running 3G now, I suspect you aren’t going to see 5G from anyone any time soon. If Vodafone have 4G and if you are happy to pay for the top tier, and if you can get away with an internal router or if you are prepared to install an external antennae, then you might get some reasonable 4G speeds, but i’d want to test it first (friends/family on Vodafone?). Either way Vodafone’s claim of unlimited is somewhat misleading when two out of three plans are rate limited.

Fair point and I am not willing to pay for the top tier at the moment without testing thoroughly as you say. I did test Three yesterday all over the house and garden and after the results from this (see above) I decided to take out a 1 month rolling unlimited data with Three so at most I will be out of pocket 226 quid if it fails miserably but I think I would be able to sell the antenna and router so should be able to recoup some costs.

Me and and neighbour did start a BT Gigabit scheme in our area which we would have managed to raise £18,500 in vouchers from residents and SMEs but this fell well short of the £31,300 need by BT to install a new cabinet. Which was a shame so willing to try anything.

Steveocee · 11 Jul 2019 at 17:21

https://mikrotik.com/product/sxt_4g_kit

May have been an option.

Rroff · 11 Jul 2019 at 17:27

A lot of the mast mapping sites BTW are using out of date information - some will still say 3G because the information hasn't been updated since 2012, etc.

Chief Wiggum · 12 Jul 2019 at 07:05

I have pretty much the same setup, but haven’t connected the external antenna yet - I should really get around to it as the speed varies considerably. Ironically, when it’s on 4g the speed is better than 4g+, so I think it depends on what mast it’s picked up.
Typically I see anywhere between 6mb - 20mb down and around 20mb to 50mb up, which is better than sub 6mb down and 768k (yes really - k) up I was getting on ADSL. I live on the outskirts of a small town, so hardly in the middle of nowhere - though odds are if I was in the middle of nowhere I’d have access to a fibre connection. BT just aren’t interested in deploying to a housing estate with over 300 houses!
My mobile provider is my employer so I managed to wangle a cheap as chips unlimited sim deal.