EE's 4G broadband via external antenna

It's been nine days since EE launched its extension to its 4G broadband by having an external antenna fitted to the side of rural houses and a cable run to its 4GEE Home router. Introductory packages are from £35 to £60 which include the router, and EE mobile phone customers (not PAYG) get an extra 5GB a month. This technology isn't new as some companies such as 4G Internet have been doing this for a few years, but I find it surprising that it's the first time that one of the big mobile operators has a packaged product (of antenna, antenna installation, router and data plan) to sell.

I am interested in peoples' view of this offering.

Yes it is surprising that this has not been done years ago. There must be many Notspots with a weak phone signal.

I am in a small village three miles from the transmitter, the download speed with 4G was around 5Mbs but an inexpensive omnidirectional aerial on the outside of the window increased this to 12Mbps and a directional aerial to 17Mbps.

Last year Ofcom asked Operators to come up with plans for a low powered signal booster, it will be interesting to see if this also has an outside aerial.

It also surprises me they are not going with an outdoor IAD, the losses and connection issues associated with an external aerial make it a PITA in my experience.

We have not looked back since moving to device like the Zyxel LTE7400

https://www.zyxel.com/uk/en/products_services/LTE-Ou...

John

The IAD has an internal antenna. How is this better than an external aerial?

As for EE using an external aerial: I read it as a cheap way to be able to connect with their 4GEE Home router, but I am not at all familiar with this means of delivering broadband and am happy to be corrected.

The IAD put the router and the aerial outside, we just run a network cable to it (with PoE which powers it). So you get away from the issues with running an aerial cable - we found that 5m was pretty much the longest we could use before the losses made the benefit negligible. We now have sites with 50m + network cables.

John

In reply to a post by gunner:

The IAD has an internal antenna. How is this better than an external aerial?

I install these all the time (we use a different brand, but the principle is the same)

If you have the radio in the house and the antenna outside you will suffer at lease some loss on the RF cable between the antenna and radio. Plus, the SMA connections for connecting the antenna to the radio are a pain to make, so easier getting pre terminated leads

Also, as it's a MIMO service, you need 2 cables from the antenna to the radio, which is more hassle.

If you have the radio and antenna in one unit outside, you don't have those issues to deal with, just one Cat5e/Cat6 cable with POE running from the router inside to the radio/antenna - no line loss.

The hardware we use is from MikroTik - https://mikrotik.com/product/wap_lte_kit

In reply to a post by connormill:

In reply to a post by gunner:

The IAD has an internal antenna. How is this better than an external aerial?

I install these all the time (we use a different brand, but the principle is the same)

If you have the radio in the house and the antenna outside you will suffer at lease some loss on the RF cable between the antenna and radio. Plus, the SMA connections for connecting the antenna to the radio are a pain to make, so easier getting pre terminated leads

Also, as it's a MIMO service, you need 2 cables from the antenna to the radio, which is more hassle.

If you have the radio and antenna in one unit outside, you don't have those issues to deal with, just one Cat5e/Cat6 cable with POE running from the router inside to the radio/antenna - no line loss.

The hardware we use is from MikroTik - https://mikrotik.com/product/wap_lte_kit

Hello all.

First post.

Yes we install the Mikrotik all the time too. However, we also install a small Higher Gain antenna to it, that only has 0.5m of low loss cable. Quite a neat solution.

We also install these on the EE network too. Doesn't have outdoor wifi but the priciple is just the same.

https://mikrotik.com/product/RBSXTLTE3-7

Russ

I'd be interested to know how you find the reception of the SXT compared with the signal strength of a phone. I can only get 2 bars of 4G outside (iPhone 6) so I'm wondering whether I would be wasting my time buying the Mikrotik SXT.

BTW, I notice that the SXT is only LTE cat 3 whereas the wap_lte_kit is cat 4. Anyone done a head to head comparison of the antenna gain?

In reply to a post by Cammy:

I'd be interested to know how you find the reception of the SXT compared with the signal strength of a phone. I can only get 2 bars of 4G outside (iPhone 6) so I'm wondering whether I would be wasting my time buying the Mikrotik SXT.

BTW, I notice that the SXT is only LTE cat 3 whereas the wap_lte_kit is cat 4. Anyone done a head to head comparison of the antenna gain?

The SXT LTE has a 9dBi gain where you phone doesn't have any. thats the big difference.

Cat 3 means the max d/l speed is 100Mb/s. Cat 4 is 150Mb/s. So unless you have an LTE Advanced mast it is not really an issue,

The WAP LTE Kit only has a 2-4.5dBi Gain which is much lower. Thats why we put an external antenna on it, to give it a boost (the unit has small ipax connector inside it). With an antenna gain internally as that would unlikely get good speeds in the first place, without an extra external antenna, unless you live very close to the mast, and it is a double speed mast.

We install 4G Broadband in rural areas across the south-west anyway, so I rarely get involved in urban areas.

In reply to a post by SWMB:

So unless you have an LTE Advanced mast it is not really an issue

On EE rural many masts will be LTE Advanced, with Carrier Aggregation - in rural areas with band 3 (1800) and band 20 (800)mhz.

However I note that hardly any fixed installation technology is above Cat 4, whereas phones are up to Cat 12 or higher. (Cat 18 for Samsung S9 ??)