Whats a good level of signal for 4g LTE?

Looking around I'm struggling to find much information on what signal strength/quality is good or bad for 4g broadband services.

Heres mine on Three with a B535 router (with 2 antenna in the back). I constantly get 5/5 bars of signal strength on the front of the router. As the crow flies I'm 300 yards from 2 masts.

RSRQ -10.0dB
RSRP -94dBm
RSSI -63dBm
SINR 9dB
Wireless transmit power
PPusch:2dBm PPucch:-13dBm PSrs:0dBm PPrach:-1dBm
Uplink mod/demod of MCS
mcsUpCarrier 1:29
Downlink mod/demod of MCS
mcsDownCarrier1Code0:0 mcsDownCarrier1Code1:0
PLMN 23420

I'm averaging 25-30Mb/s for most of the day, it drops to around 10Mb/s at peak times and can top out at up to 90Mb/s in the dead of night.

I'm fairly certain the download speeds I get are more down to bandwidth availability than signal, but if someone could explain what it all means it'd be much appreciated!

In reply to a post by buggerlugs:

Looking around I'm struggling to find much information on what signal strength/quality is good or bad for 4g broadband services.

Heres mine on Three with a B535 router (with 2 antenna in the back). I constantly get 5/5 bars of signal strength on the front of the router. As the crow flies I'm 300 yards from 2 masts.

RSRQ -10.0dB
RSRP -94dBm
RSSI -63dBm
SINR 9dB
Wireless transmit power
PPusch:2dBm PPucch:-13dBm PSrs:0dBm PPrach:-1dBm
Uplink mod/demod of MCS
mcsUpCarrier 1:29
Downlink mod/demod of MCS
mcsDownCarrier1Code0:0 mcsDownCarrier1Code1:0
PLMN 23420

I'm averaging 25-30Mb/s for most of the day, it drops to around 10Mb/s at peak times and can top out at up to 90Mb/s in the dead of night.

I'm fairly certain the download speeds I get are more down to bandwidth availability than signal, but if someone could explain what it all means it'd be much appreciated!

I was waiting to see if the more experienced members of the forum would reply so apologises if my response is limited.

I don't believe its just about the quality and strength of the signal as I get better figures on my mobile phone than you but worse speeds than you. I believe its more about how much bandwidth (e.g. 5, 10, 15 or 20 Mhz) and if Carrier Aggregation is available.

Edit: Maybe you can say what band and provider as that may help others with their responses

Edited by deleted (Fri 01-Nov-19 17:45:05)

In reply to a post by buggerlugs:

Looking around I'm struggling to find much information on what signal strength/quality is good or bad for 4g broadband services. RSSI -63dBm

I'm about 30m from a very tall EE & Three mast, and indoors I get around RSSI of -100dBm which is a much weaker signal than yours. Yours is a very good signal, from my basic understanding. (I think the signal from my mast is going literally over my head).

My iPhone XS on EE shows the following at my desk, and achieves around 45 Mbps. Elsewhere at home I have seen upto 100 Mbps when the network is quiet (e.g. 2am).
RSRP = -97
RSRQ = -15
SINR = 5.0

I have a rooted old Motorola android with Qualcomm LTE chip, which runs an app called Network Signal Guru, and shows a lot more diagnostics about signal. I have a Vodafone PAYG SIM in the device, and it shows this:
https://i.imgur.com/pjiTy6O.png


What I have learned is LTE is incredibly complicated, and not remotely comparable to ADSL / VDSL. There are a lot of parameters that change all the time, and the mast and the device adapt the signal based on the path to the user, and the path away from the user.


There are more people whom understand cellular radio signals on the Digital Spy mobile phones forum.

This is an interesting YouTube channel too.
https://www.youtube.com/user/scivids1999

Edited by jchamier (Fri 01-Nov-19 18:27:58)

In reply to a post by dect:

I don't believe its just about the quality and strength of the signal as I get better figures on my mobile phone than you but worse speeds than you. I believe its more about how much bandwidth (e.g. 5, 10, 15 or 20 Mhz) and if Carrier Aggregation is available.

Correct. Once you have sufficient signal, it is now about the capacity OF the signal. A lot of the desktop / domestic hardware is quite old in feature set compared to mobile handsets. Most networks now transmit many 'beams' of signal, and the handset/mast together negotiate. Newer handsets can aggregate beams together.

Much of the domestic hardware is only Category 4 which limits the capabilities of aggregation. Most handsets are now Category 9 or higher.

My Figures are below

RSRQ -3.0dB
RSRP -85dBm
RSSI -59dBm
SINR 18dB

I'm getting abput 100Mbps on average.

I remember trying to understand from places like THIS but it just seemed to be more confusing.

Thats interesting because the B535 is supposed to be CAT 7 LTE.

FDD-LTE Cat7: 300Mbps(DL), 100Mbps(UL) @ 20MBW
TDD-LTE Cat7: 220Mbps(DL),20Mbps(UL) @ 20MBW

Certainly looks like bandwidth capacity is the limiting factor here then.

"I remember trying to understand from places like THIS but it just seemed to be more confusing. "

Yes, it does seem to be more confusing.

Cat 7 is a useful tweak to Cat 6, which in phones was a 2015 ish model.

I believe for each 5Mhz of 4G bandwidth the maximum download is around 37.5Mbps (without any CA).

In reply to a post by buggerlugs:

Certainly looks like bandwidth capacity is the limiting factor here then.

And this is LTE technology (4g) which stands for "Long Term Evolution" and was a dramatic increase in capacity over the radio side from the previous UMTS (3G) and 2G (GPRS) systems. You can see why 5G is required, this is 5G NR (New Radio) to add capacity on the radio side.

Adding capacity to the mast is just down to cost. Openreach, Virgin Media Business, Vodafone Networks and others can provide fibre capacities of 10 Gigabit for the money - the problem is getting that into the air and sharing it with allo the customers.

As Marc Allera (BT's consumer division boss) posts on twitter, the amount of data going over the EE network is increasing at an unthinkable rate. This of course is just 1 of the 4 physical networks in the UK.