Have been on the periphery of a similar problem recently and the solution was EE.


EE offer an external antenna which also includes a fixed fee to come and underatke a survey at your location - they will advise if an external antenna is suitable or not and if not you will get a refund of most of the charges. Maybe worth a call.

In reference to ee.co.uk/help/help-new/broadband-and-landline/4gee-home/how-do-i-se...:

An external antenna could help provide a faster and more consistent 4G coverage. It's a good option for customers who live in an area with great outdoor 4G coverage but variable indoor coverage. Installation costs £100 and includes the external antenna.

Call 0800 079 0131 to learn more or book an installation.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

However a SXT LTE or the LHG will get a better signal than a handset outside.

Why? A Cat 19 handset with massive MIMO support (for 5G) standing outside is likely to do better than a Cat 6 unit mounted on a pole - especially if coverage is at the cell edge, which is more likely in the extreme rural areas.

OnePlus Nord is £399 on Amazon, and LTE Cat 19 with 5G NR support.

Folks, my report on the week's roller-coaster investigations, and a relatively happy conclusion...

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions and analysis, all massively useful! Turns out the all singing Huawei 5G router CANNOT make use of a 4G external antenna, despite Huawei's tech support team's insistence that it would.

Special thanks to zzing123 who posted this :

In reply to a post by zzing123:

There might be a problem with that antenna, as you're using the Gigacube being a 5G device with 5G radios. The issue with the Gigacube (aka Huawei 5G CPE Pro) is that the external antenna is ONLY for 5G. 4G uses only the internal antennas. So I fear you have is a 4G antenna that isn't feeding the required frequencies to the Gigacube.

I plugged in an old DLink 953 4G router to our Poynting XPOL/A0002 directional antenna and up popped our Vodafone signal offering 10Mbps DL and 20Mbps UL! Router config is somewhat basic, but claims to see signal of -91dBm. Very pleased!

Also thanks to those who suggested EE. I tried an EE SIM in the same router and achieved a reliable 6Mbps DL and which also improved on attaching the external antenna allbeit the omnidirectional A0001 as we aren't pointing the best direction for the EE transmitter.

Special growls to
* Huawei tech support who insisted the H112-370 was capable of using an external antenna for 4G (and not just 5G as is the actual case) and to
* Vodafone who supplied us with the 5G router knowing we are not in a 5G area and failed to highlight their router's lack of support for 4G external antennas after several tech chats with us discussing which of their (non-5G) transmitters to point our external 4G antenna towards. Grrr.

Performance testing continues into next week - I've been in a happy places before only to find the initial signal tails off or is affected by something that wasn't present on day one!

I'm now wondering what my best router option is. The DLink is very functional, but getting a bit old I believe, so might be worth getting a more up to date box of tricks. Any suggestions?

Also found a really useful application called LTE HMonitor which connected to the Huawei router and gave be some great stats and monitoring capability. It's Huawei specific, sadly. Does anyone know of a generic equivalent I could use with my DLink router?

Thanks loads, fab forum, totally saved my bacon!

Cheers

Iain

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

However a SXT LTE or the LHG will get a better signal than a handset outside.

Why? A Cat 19 handset with massive MIMO support (for 5G) standing outside is likely to do better than a Cat 6 unit mounted on a pole - especially if coverage is at the cell edge, which is more likely in the extreme rural areas.

OnePlus Nord is £399 on Amazon, and LTE Cat 19 with 5G NR support.

It's called the laws of physics. If you can't see why the 39cm parabolic dish on a pole with loads of ground clearance will do better than a poxy handset of *ANY* description then I can't help you. You need to go back to school and study some physics.

In reply to a post by iainmck:

I plugged in an old DLink 953 4G router to our Poynting XPOL/A0002 directional antenna and up popped our Vodafone signal offering 10Mbps DL and 20Mbps UL!

The fact you're getting a faster downstream seems to imply there is likely congestion on the cell and this is about as good as you're going to get. I'm a firm believer of the if it ain't broke, don't try and fix it. DWR-953 is a capable enough device, even if it's only CAT4.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Dec-20 17:29:18)

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

It's called the laws of physics. If you can't see why the 39cm parabolic dish on a pole with loads of ground clearance will do better than a poxy handset of *ANY* description then I can't help you. You need to go back to school and study some physics.

Lots of signal on one antenna on one freq is fantastic RF reception agreed, but does that mean good internet performance? Having two antennas, picking up two freqs at much less signal, can give the user higher data rates. When operators are installing 4T4R antenna panels, and handsets have 2T2R receivers, having only a single antenna does limit.

If you had 2 or 3 of those parabolic dishes fed into a combiner, then into the receiver, it might replicate the newer handsets. Sure most of these capabilities are designed for people walking down a street in an urban area.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

It's called the laws of physics. If you can't see why the 39cm parabolic dish on a pole with loads of ground clearance will do better than a poxy handset of *ANY* description then I can't help you. You need to go back to school and study some physics.

Lots of signal on one antenna on one freq is fantastic RF reception agreed, but does that mean good internet performance? Having two antennas, picking up two freqs at much less signal, can give the user higher data rates. When operators are installing 4T4R antenna panels, and handsets have 2T2R receivers, having only a single antenna does limit.

If you had 2 or 3 of those parabolic dishes fed into a combiner, then into the receiver, it might replicate the newer handsets. Sure most of these capabilities are designed for people walking down a street in an urban area.

If you have low RF performance then it does not matter how many antenna's you have you are going to get poor internet performance. That this needs explaining beggars belief. The SXT and LHR will give you a connection where even the best mobile handset money can buy will give you nothing whatsoever.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

If you have low RF performance then it does not matter how many antenna's you have you are going to get poor internet performance.

But the OP's posted stats was not low RF performance. Around -100 dBm is not low signal, it is the normal indoor level for LTE by the UK operators. The OP had low internet speeds, and the assumption was low signal was the cause.

The hypothesis being tested was if low signal or network congestion was the actual problem. The end game turned out that the receiver was problematic.

The products you suggest are a good solution, solve the problem and move the receiver next to the antenna, solving the problem of cable loss. Their downside is the lower LTE category.