UKH

With reference to this archived thread which may contain all the advice I need already:

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/4g_wifi-735515?v=1#x9473030

My office building (single level i.e. ground floor) is in a rural location with pretty slow broadband; I can't remember the speed and we have cut the service now but it was probably around 12Mb/s download. If a few colleagues were in the building also trying to connect, it would become very slow. 

4G on my phone is very dependent on position within the building; a quick test walking to different locations including 2.5 metres above ground, showed a peak of 28Mb/s (realistically this was more like 22Mb/s). I imagine there will be a better signal if I mount it at the highest point (3.0m above ground, at the front of the building).

At least one comment on the above linked thread suggested that this could be higher with the proper kit i.e. an antenna and router. Is that generally the case? Don't worry, I won't hold anyone to their word on this!

I'll nip to Carphone Warehouse and see if they can advise, but it doesn't hurt to ask on here too. 

Thread (well jdh90's comprehensive post, mostly) seemed to point toward a DIY solution i.e. get your own 4G router and antenna and pop a SIM in for proof of concept then find a suitable contract. 

All the discussion seemed to be about domestic use; would there be an actual difference (in terms of pricing and T&C) given that this will be for business use? (I know Dax H uses his for work but I think that as it's actually mobile and he is the boss, that might count as small enterprise whereas I am "corporate"....and frankly there should be colleagues dealing with all this for me but they just don't )

Any advice appreciated. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Will you need a static/fixed IP address?  Might not be available on mobile BB.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

https://www.solwise.co.uk/3g-intro.htm

In reply to Toerag:

Not sure really. To be honest I don't quite understand things at the level of "fixed IP". We have the option to use a VPN on our work laptops. 

In reply to rka:

Thanks

In reply to Blue Straggler:

In simple terms installing outside will improve performance as you won't suffer the penetration loss of a wall/window and additional height will also be beneficial in the 3m - 10m range.....however its likely to involve complex install as you can't simply plug an antenna into the standard stuff a MNO will send to you (i.e. you will need to get your own 3rd party router, configure it etc.) the simplest thing I have seen is a MIFI device with a weather proof USB extension stuck on the outside but not sure how robust this will be (i.e. its not really designed for outdoor usage).

That said a product such as the below installed on the optimal window sill may yield just as good a result.....noting they sometimes come with capped amount of usage per month & you need to check the specific networks performance (use a PAYG sim in a unlocked phone) before you commit (the performance from below routers should be better than a phone due to larger/more powerful internal antenna)

https://shop.ee.co.uk/dongles/pay-monthly-mobile-broadband/huawei-5g-cpe-pr...

https://shop.ee.co.uk/upgrade/dongles/upg-pay-monthly-mobile-broadband/4gee...

http://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband

Depending how rural you are (guess very) then 5G probably not worth paying for at this time as unlikely to get to you for a number of years (unless you rural just outside a major town/city)

Noting mobile network performance will be more variable at peak periods compared to fixed/

In reply to Blue Straggler:

We had a router and antenna in our house and the signal / strength was impressive, Netflix/ iPlayer etc . Internet was spot on . Recommend it highly. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Thanks all. I have managed to arrange a meeting (on Wednesday) with the people whose job it actually is to sort out the telecoms in my building, so I’ll see what comes out of that. Probably nothing useful, knowing how things work in my business ! 

In reply to jonfun21:

The EE 4G router has 2 SMA sockets in the rear, which means you can plug it straight into the simple MIMO antennae sold by various suppliers. However you're limited to 5m of cable. For longer runs you're looking at a modem built into (or close to) the antenna with power via an ethernet cable, which starts to add to cost and complexity.

I've binned the BT landline and broadband as, per the previous thread, they couldn't fix the issue and suggested I either pay them for a new modem or take out another contract with a new 'free' modem, that might or might not work. 2 weeks later they still haven't managed to cut me off...

4G seems to work fine,(better than the landline broadband ever did), and I'm in a fairly marginal area. (Modem usually shows two or three out of four lights for signal strength) in the bedroom, which has the best reception in the house. 

There is a bit of an issue with network saturation leading to reduced speed at peak times in the evening, but I'm still getting about 10 mbps at peak times, which beats the 3 (and eventually zero) I got from BT. Plus it's £15 a month cheaper.

Still debating putting up an omnidirectional antenna to see if that improves things some more, but research suggests it's a bit of a black art. Some people report worse speeds if there are a number of masts in the area, and the wall attenuation of competing masts actually gives faster speeds. I might take a punt as it's about a hundred quid for a cheap Poynting antenna.

In reply to Ridge:

Thanks - I stand corrected & useful to know!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Mine is a little WiFi / 4g box from EE. It's about the size of a bar of soap but half as thick.

I have an EE business account with all our company phones on it and the 4g box costs me £15.99 a month plus vat for 100 gig of data.

Nominally it lives in my van so I can use my chrome book on site without phone tethering (tethering stops when someone rings me) but last Thursday my office broadband went down 15 minutes before an important teams meeting so I grabbed the box (has its own battery) and connected my main laptop to it.

Cracking bit of kit. 

In reply to Ridge:

what the EE model of router ?  I noted that the current ones do not mention external antenna sockets.

In reply to Ridge:

There is merit in this - you don't want to be on the border between two or more base site's signals and handing over between them all the time. I don't know if you'd be able to find this out though.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

We are both working from home on it.

Whether we are supposed to or not in the nitty gritty of the T&Cs might be a different matter, but nobody has booted the door in yet!

Thanks for the shout out, glad someone got value out of that essay.

We are on the Huawei B535, it has ports for antenna but haven't needed to try it as signal has been fine, indoors, upstairs on a windowsill in our barn conversion. Both doing lots of teams calls, netflix, not tried it with the xbox yet. The contract we got was for one of the bar of soap ones mentioned up there and we got the 535 second hand, was the cheapest way for us to do it.

Edit: I'll add that she had some concerns prior due to needing to terminal into a university supercomputer. That might be a static IP requirement? I dont know and she's not here to ask. I also VPN into the corporate network daily. Both had zero problems.

In reply to jdh90:

Thanks again. I'll see what comes out of my meeting and (ahem) "go forward" from that. What you describe sounds pretty straightforward. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I’ve moved to the sticks and work entirely from home (as a software developer) at the moment. I use an EE 4g sim with an unlimited data plan in a tp link 4g router as I couldn’t get fibre above 1.5Mb/s down here  

Have a look at the network maps of all the different networks to see who covers you.

EE are the only company I can get reception with annoyingly but I’ve never seen speeds below 80down and 20 up. Which is faster (and cheaper) and more reliable than I had with BT fibre in London. 
 

works great for Netflix, my wife and me working at the same time and the little bit of gaming I do. 

In reply to BattyMilk:

Cheers. 80 down, I can but dream  

In reply to Blue Straggler:

It's a pricey option, but there's also Starlink: https://www.starlink.com

Current prices are £439 for the hardware and then £89 a month. That's a steep monthly charge, unless it's your only option

In reply to two_tapirs:

Thanks, this was also linked on the other thread, and elsewhere a friend claimed it was the "no brainer" option. I will mention it to my colleagues. We unfortunately have a painfully laborious procedure for "setting up" new suppliers and given that Starlink's website is, frankly, a bit "aggressive", this might prove problematic. We have contracts with Vodafone and may be tied to them. 

In reply to Blue Straggler: try motorhomewifi - they also have a rural broadband setup. Vodafone have uncapped data, fastest available speed for £ 30/mth if they’re in the area. 

In reply to Phill_Away:

It's one of these:

https://shop.ee.co.uk/dongles/pay-monthly-mobile-broadband/4gee-home-router...

There are 3 photos on the page. If you look at the last photo that shows the rear (with the ethernet sockets) there's a rectangular panel above the ethernet sockets. That pops off to reveal the external antenna sockets.

They don't seem to advertise this, (presumably to sell you antenna installation). I ended up prying the back off one in the EE shop just to check.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Once again, thanks all.

I’ve had my company meeting about this and to my great astonishment someone else is going to take care of the whole thing! However this thread remains useful as my parents are in a similar position so I might apply the lessons from here, to their home 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Bit of an update on the antenna front. I went down the route of a unidirectional antenna rather than omnidirectional.

Bit of a faff setting up (me balancing on ladder and rotating antenna and Mrs Ridge running speed tests). The best direction in our case was about 20 degrees off of where the actual mast is located (the mast is behind a hill).

The mast is in a popular coastal town, and at the weekend after setting up the antenna I was getting around 6Mbps download and 27Mbps upload, which looks to me like mast saturation (lots of people streaming in their caravans?)

Tried at 8 am this morning and was getting 28Mbps download and 15Mbps upload, so a huge improvement on using the modem/router internal antenna.

I'm also dubious about speed checkers. You can get widely different results on two consecutive tests, which could be traffic on the server used for the test or possibly the Mast switching channels.

Practically there seems no difference between the speed check showing 6 or 27 down in terms of streaming or video calls (which were periodically buffering/freezing over the BT broadband). Both are much better on the LTE (4G) connection with no issues at all. The external antenna has improved stability and reduced latency.

Worth doing in my case (marginal signal) but possibly not if you already have a good signal on your internal modem/router antenna.