Just to mention that there's a major telephone line outage in our area, no less than 3 separate cable thefts in the last few days, all requiring 400 metre replacement from Openreach, down from 1am Tuesday, fix not due until mid Monday...

Hundreds of lines down, very bad mobile signal at best of time.

I'm sticking to the radiator...!

Not as daft as it sounds the radiator, if the dongle is facing a transmitter, basically a large directional antenna.

Right! I'm on to this now. Going to have to demolish the office next door 'cos I've ordered a skip...

In reply to a post by TMCR:

Right! I'm on to this now. Going to have to demolish the office next door 'cos I've ordered a skip...

Good plan!!

You can actually buy directional antennas for 3g dongles. Some can be mounted on a pole outside and pointed at the mast will give much better reception.

The mini-skip is on place and...

WOW! - Think what a full size Skoda, I mean skip, will do !

OK, I'll own up, that's not from the office. I've been out doing a PA and had the mobile in action, about 100 metres from a 3G mast... The same one we connect to if I force 3G at the office, but a couple of Km closer.

If only I could get that speed at the office...

In reply to a post by 5km:

You can actually buy directional antennas for 3g dongles. Some can be mounted on a pole outside and pointed at the mast will give much better reception.

You would need to have the dongle on the pole outside all the time though?

We use it at different locations on a regular basis, it was only used at the office due to the landfline being out of service, but a thought for the future perhaps.

You would need to have the dongle on the pole outside all the time though?

No.

Have a look at http://www.panorama-antennas.com/shop/products/wm11-...

You'd need to drill a hole in the wall for the cable but the dongle would be inside. Just disconnect from the antenna's cable and take the dongle with you when needed.

Be careful playing with antennas I have spent over £115 on a pole mounted antenna trying to squeeze more out of my 0.05mbps Orange dongle only to find that it had no effect at all. Best effect was to hang it in a tree with a 5m repeater cable. Sometimes get 0.1mbps when I first start but then it is throttled back to 0.05mbps on every connection (I am 3miles from 3G orange mast, 5km from BT exchange so no ADSL)

Regards G

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Be careful playing with antennas I have spent over £115 on a pole mounted antenna trying to squeeze more out of my 0.05mbps Orange dongle only to find that it had no effect at all. Best effect was to hang it in a tree with a 5m repeater cable. Sometimes get 0.1mbps when I first start but then it is throttled back to 0.05mbps on every connection (I am 3miles from 3G orange mast, 5km from BT exchange so no ADSL)

Regards G

Have tried all the networks here. Only Three is really good, which is odd since it isn't the nearest transmitter. But the ones from the other networks are in the "busier" end of the village which is also the end furthest from the phone exchange, so 3G may be their only broadband option perhaps hence contention.

We see over 5Mbps average and 6.6Mbps sometimes, that needs the dongle not just outside the window but clipped to a metal rail/runner that goes along the top of the windows (like a rain shield) and that takes the signal strength to 48% (like the radiator above perhaps)

3 miles from the cell is quite a distance (I'd thought that was getting on for borderline service), we're 2.7km from the cell with that signal strength. The exact positioning does mater, especially to the upstream which won't get anywhere near the 1.8Mbps maximum I've seen unless it's facing precisely the right way.

Like your our phone line can't support a broadband connection and so I'm going to get an antenna put on the chimney partly to see if it's any quicker but mostly because the E367 modem isn't going to tolerate getting cold, wet and rained on indefinitely