We live in the Finnish countryside. I got rid of my 8M ADSL landline 6 years ago (it became untrustworthy over the years) and ever since I have used the 4G LTE mobile network.
Here outside urban areas the LTE network has mostly 800 MHz base stations. Those have quite a limited capacity and when more and more people in this village have moved to mobile internet the speed has dropped to low readings. It got so bad that last summer the downlink speed dropped even to 2M at evening when there was lots of users. :bored:
There are 1800 and 2600 MHz base stations too, but they have a limited range and there hasn't been any such station nearby as we live practically in forest. The base stations with higher frequency have much better capacity and can serve more users.
However, this October the base station 5,5 km away from our house was updated to 1800 MHz.
In the mobile coverage maps the 1800 MHz masts have a small, 1-2 km radius around them. This far away from mast I decided to go after the best available antenna solution.
I noticed that in Russia the distances between base stations are long and they are built mostly middle of villages. Someone living farther away must have a good antenna to receive a decent signal. The russians are DIY people and sometimes they seem to use satellite dishes for LTE reception. In the english-speaking countries such a antenna setup is very rare.
I made an eBay purchase from Voronezh, Russia. It is a satellite dish
irradiator, if that is the right word. Anyway it is put in the focal point of dish. It's MIMO, there is actually two antennas inside with a 90 degrees angle between them.
The sat dish I bought from Finland. The price of whole setup was around 80 euros.
What amazes me is how fast internet I got. And the most amazing thing is how fast it is under very unfavorable conditions. :wideyed:
The dish is aimed at the 1800 MHz mast 5,5 kms away. However, between the dish and the base station is a roof made of concrete tiles. On the roof is now lots of snow, metered horizontally there is a one meter thick layer of snow! Despite of all this attenuation Huawei router shows 4 beams out of 5 and the speed is such:
The router is in a cheap old styrofoam cooler acting as insulation. There is no heating in the attic so in winter the temperature can drop to -20 degrees of centigrade. The antenna cables are as short as can be made. No cable loss!
I think the router is now the narrowest point in the data flow. It has max speed of 100M and the theoretical speed of my isp account is 150M. I am going to replace the router when I have made a weatherproof enclosure for my ZyXEL. It is faster.