broadband in the highlands

hi
hope someone can help me with my issue, how can I get broadband in a remote area. (is broadband the same as 4G) We have a new mast for emergency services 1/2 mile from my house which EE have control over. I purchased a dongle from EE which they said would pick up a full signal from the mast. This did not happen. After numerous phone calls to EE they have now said that the signal the mast is sending out is not compatible with the dongle and they do not know when that situation will change. I have a friend who has an iPhone with EE picks up a full 4G signal at my house. I have an apple phone and my provider is O2. What can I do to get 4G/broadband.

If an iPhone has 4G via EE and the EE dongle does not, then suggests the dongle or SIM in it is broke or not able to access the frequencies that the iPhone can

Does the dongle pick up a 4G or 3G signal anywhere else?

4G is one format of broadband

Ghiillie - I have a spare O2 4G dongle which you can have to see if it will help you. You would need to purchase an O2 data sim in order to use it.

It is the O2 4G Pocket Hotspot Huawei E5573 from mid-2017.

PM me your address if it is useful to you and I will put it in the post straight away. It worked perfectly when I was moving into our new house last year while Openreach took 7 weeks to activate our line.

Edited by DanielCoffey67 (Mon 03-Sep-18 12:14:36)

Hi that is very kind , there is a o2 mast it only has gprs but is being upgraded I believe next month,the Emergency services mast owned by EE sends out a signal which cannot be picked up on their dongle ,but the apple iPhones can.
These masts are half a mile apart and just over half a mile from my house.
Do you think the o2 dongle will work.

According to the spec sheet, GPRS is supported (but slow of course). You are welcome to have the O2 dongle and you can try it to see what speed it gets. Then, when the mast is upgraded, it should be a lot better.

You will need an O2 sim to put in it of course. They do a variety of PAYG and Pay Monthly data sims in the store.

Send me a PM with your address and I'll get the dongle sent to you.

Hi thanks for the reply ,EE sent me another dongle it was the same ,I did take the dongle further up the valley, and it worked on another mast,
Yes the EE engineer said the frequency from that mast cannot be detected by the dongle,it is a new mast and they can’t tell me if it will be changed/upgraded in the future

There are lots of 4G bands and to get good range likely an emergency network deployment will be one of the lower bands, https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ should let you see which bands the iPhone you had working supports, then need to find the same for the EE Dongle

The EE 4G Home router might cover the band needed, or if you can identify the band the iPhone was using find another device that will support it.

Apologies for jumping on an old post. I think EE might of inadvertently given duff info, in the highlands there are some remote areas that they are providing “private” 4G sites for the ESN (Blue light emergency services network) in addition to standard 4G sites for ESN and public sites. The private, ESN only, sites may show up as another network when searching manually for network operators.