Is there an easy way to check if I can receive 4G+ (LTE-Advanced) or 5G in my area?

g67575

g67575

g67575

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I don't have any equipment capable of receiving 4G+ (LTE-A) or 5G signals yet. Is there any way of checking the 4g+ or 5G speeds available in my street?

All I know so far, is that EE's 5G coverage in my street is 'weak' (according to their signal checker), and there is no indoor coverage.
 
My phone's signal icon displays '4G', no indication of 4G+ /LTE-A.

I checked my phone's (Nokia 2.2) chipset spec, here:
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/mediatek/helio/mt6762m

It says 'Cat-7, 300 Mbps' for the downlink, with support for Carrier Aggregation.

In theory my phone should support LTE-Advanced, since LTE-A was just another name for Category 6 (3GPP Release 10 to be precise).
 
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Have you set your preferred network type accordingly to what you want/need?

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Lol, maybe I should pop in a EE sim, not sure Three (the network I'm currently on) would even support LTE-A where I live, especially since there's no 5G signal on their network.

Could only get 30mbps max on Three.

Anyone care to comment on the download speeds on EE, with LTE-Advanced / 4G+ ?
 
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Does anyone know if I can still check my signal (4G/ 4G+) with a new EE Pay As You Go sim without any credit on it?

I tried some old EE sims and I think they weren't activated anymore.
 
Looks like there's only a 4G signal where live, not LTE-A. Still managed to get 80mbps on 4G though (my phone reported an ASU of 59-60), with an EE PAYG sim. Might try it outside my house a bit, to satisfy my curiosity.

I'm guessing that the main mobile networks are mostly skipping LTE-A upgrades and just upgrading some areas to 5G?

EDIT - Confusingly, according to EE 'Your phone screen will still display 4G - even when you're on 4G+ but you will notice download speeds become more consistent and reliable'.
Source:
https://business.ee.co.uk/large-business/why-ee/4gee/4gplus/

So, my area might actually already have LTE-Advanced upgrades.
 
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I did some more investigation and found out that most of the area where I live is covered by an EE cell tower with LTE-A (+ Carrier Aggregation), on band 3. Apparently, this is quite a new cell tower, only added to cellmapper.net about 6 months ago.

It looks like only the EE cells are equipped with LTE-A upgrades, near where I live.

To find this out (on a LTE-A capable phone), you can use a phone app like 'LTE discovery' to find your 'Cell Identifier' number.

Once you know what this is, go to Cellmapper.net, put in your phone network and find your local area. Check the local cell towers for a matching 'Cell Identifier' number, this should tell you which one you are connecting to. Each cell tower has one or more 'cells' which each cover an area, you need to select it on the map to show the cell ID.
 
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So, I can get around 80mbps on EE's 4g+. Is it likely/possible that I could get more than this with an external antenna?

If I could get consistent speeds of ~100mbps, I think it might be worth switching my home Internet connection from FTTC (maxes out at 55mbps throughput) to 4G+.

My house is about half a mile from the LTE-A cell (where there is a Cell tower).
 
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