Question about mobile masts do they all transmit 4G?

[marc2003]

I'm with Three at the moment and my speeds are pretty feeble (10-15Mbps). Still with 100GB a month, it's far better than my old deal from EE where I was getting 32GB. I was with EE for 3 years and the first 2 years were great - mostly 30-60MBps but at the start of this year it went downhill rapidly and this coincided with me getting fed up with the measly allowance. Since I switched, my speeds aren't much better than the slower speeds from EE but obviously more data is good and I just have to be patient with larger downloads.

I might have to take a punt on one of these external antennas but I'm not sure it it'll help since I can only place it just outside my window which is where my router is anyway. Pretty sure I can't fix anything externally except maybe have a temporary pole poking out.

 

[roccles]

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.

It sounds like you have very similar speeds to me my upload speed is never more than a Meg

Spoiler: BT Speeds

I connected the 4G router up last night and have placed the antenna on a window at the moment and was getting the following.

Spoiler: 4G Speeds

The speed to upload these images to Imgur using my 4G connection was incredible in comparison to what I am use to.

The biggest difference so far is the latency 18ms on my BT connection and 47ms, I don't play online games often which I guess is where this would become the most noticeable.

 

[roccles]

I was with EE for 3 years and the first 2 years were great - mostly 30-60MBps but at the start of this year it went downhill rapidly ....

This is my biggest concern at the moment and one of the reasons I am keeping my BT connection for a while. As its great seeing the current speeds from 4G but these could change dramatically at any time and have even read about people experiencing great initial speeds in the first week then dropping very low after that.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

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

Some of the 5G frequencies proposed won’t propagate 750 metres.

It’s worth noting that a lot of early 5G offerings are just LAA, where the network can use one or more empty 5GHz WiFi channel to send DL data to mobile users instead or in addition to data sent over 4G frequencies.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

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.

Does your G5 support 4G/LTE? I ask as your screenshot shows your data service as HSPA which is a 3G/WCDMA technology.

 

[roccles]

Does your G5 support 4G/LTE? I ask as your screenshot shows your data service as HSPA which is a 3G/WCDMA technology.

Hi, I took the screen shot in my office which doesnt get a 4G signal, all the reading were taken in locations of the house where I was getting a 4G signal and this is one of the reasons I went for an external antenna as the coverage it pretty patchy inside my house.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Hi, I took the screen shot in my office which doesnt get a 4G signal, all the reading were taken in locations of the house where I was getting a 4G signal and this is one of the reasons I went for an external antenna as the coverage it pretty patchy inside my house.

Phew, I was worried that you’d wasted your money...

One thing to watch for is that the SMA connectors used on routers often have a different centre contact “gender” to standard SMA connectors, so check that the cable from your antenna connects to your router before you go and install all the kit.

 

[roccles]

I got my brand new Three sim today for the unlimited 4G only problem is it does not want to connect to the internet! So I am left with my test pay as you go sim which has about 200mbs left on it, so it would seem I have used about 2.8gbs solely on speed tests in two days!!

Apparently I have to wait 24 hours before I can discuss my new sim!

 

[Terminal_Boy]

I got my brand new Three sim today for the unlimited 4G only problem is it does not want to connect to the internet! So I am left with my test pay as you go sim which has about 200mbs left on it, so it would seem I have used about 2.8gbs solely on speed tests in two days!!

That’s why most phone data performance testing is done on simulators these days with a greatly reduced sanity check being done live in the field.

When you have a 5 CA environment (phone can receive data over 5 different radio links) with a high throughput modulation scheme such as 256 QAM, you can blow through 50GB of data in an hour just running a short series of tests.