3g modem with best range?

Cyrus

My parents cant get BB at home, and they use a usb dongle, its very hit and miss, yet when my uncle visited with his 4g ipad, it picked up much better signal (im guessing the ipad has a bigger antennae)

Is there such a thing as a 3g modem with a better antenna than the normal usb dongle jobby?

niallb

You should also check out what network your uncle was using.
Before confirming that he was using the same company, it's not worth comparing modems.

Older USB modems sometimes have a socket for an external antenna,
and if the laptop is old enough to have a PCMCIA socket, some of those had much bigger antennas as well as having the external socket.

There's a lot you can do however with the existing modem if you're sure it's the best network provider in your area.
Getting a USB cable long enough to make sure the thing stays near a window is the first step.
Follow this link:

http://www.siteviewer.ie

It's provided by ComReg to show where mobile masts are.
Take a look for your local area, and see what masts are closest to you.
Also make certain that the company you're using actually has 3G on the mast near you - it'll crawl otherwise.

What kind of modem are you currently using?
I've had good experience with the really old E270, a square black one from O2.

Cyrus

He was using a vodafone sim, my parents dongle is emobile, however i have a vodafone sim in my iphone 4s and i only get 3g in two rooms in the house in specific corners LOL, so his ipad was getting better signal everywhere,


Are there any routers or docking station things that they could leave fixed where this is signal (that improve reception themselves) and use this to share the connection?

niallb

There are lots of routers and docking stations like that.
Most of them these days have a USB socket that you put your existing dongle into.
Where the advantage comes in is that you leave it in the specific corner of the room you get good reception in, and connect to it over wifi.

Have they no other option available to them for broadband?
Your own location is set to Blackrock Dublin, but whereabouts roughly are your parents based?

3G is not suitable to be a drop in replacement for fixed line service no matter what anyone tells you.
Particularly if there are a lot of people around, service level can vary wildly.

There are a few very simple routers with 3G support available from TP-Link.
Other companies do them too, but these are half the price, and are available in either DID or Power City, so easy enough to come by around the country. Another alternative is a MiFi unit or the Meteor Hotspot thing which may be available for E-Mobile.

Cyrus

niallb wrote: »

There are lots of routers and docking stations like that.
Most of them these days have a USB socket that you put your existing dongle into.
Where the advantage comes in is that you leave it in the specific corner of the room you get good reception in, and connect to it over wifi.

Have they no other option available to them for broadband?
Your own location is set to Blackrock Dublin, but whereabouts roughly are your parents based?

3G is not suitable to be a drop in replacement for fixed line service no matter what anyone tells you.
Particularly if there are a lot of people around, service level can vary wildly.

There are a few very simple routers with 3G support available from TP-Link.
Other companies do them too, but these are half the price, and are available in either DID or Power City, so easy enough to come by around the country. Another alternative is a MiFi unit or the Meteor Hotspot thing which may be available for E-Mobile.

I have 50mb UPC, as they say im alright jack

My parents are in a place in wexford called Adamstown, they cant get eircom BB, and dont seem to want the hassle of installing satellite (they would only use the internet for browsing and the odd email) plus my dad has good BB in his office so its not crucial i suppose.

Do those routers improve reception tho or are they just distributing whatever reception the modem is picking up?

niallb

Cyrus wrote: »

Do those routers improve reception tho or are they just distributing whatever reception the modem is picking up?

To clarify what I said above, you use these routers to allow you place the USB dongle in a location where it gets the best reception - then you leave it there permanently.

There can be a huge difference in signal with really small position changes, so leaving it stationary is desirable.
It's likely that your parents haven't tried out how the signal is halfway up an upstairs window yet :-)

3G signals don't travel through walls too well, so getting the modem near a window on the side of the house nearest the mast will get you the best connection you're going to get, and improve service far more than investing hundreds in a more powerful receiver and then moving it around indoors.

I'd suggest chucking emobile for vodafone though if you've already noted such an improvement with it.
At the very least get somebody with a Vodafone mobile to visit and see what signal is like room to room.

What the router "distributes" then is a normal wifi connection which can be picked up by anything with a wireless card. It's not 3G anymore at that point.

A secondhand android phone running 2.2 or 2.3 can also work out well as an emergency hotspot!

niallb

I just took a quick look at Adamstown's location, and it's possible that your parents are halfway between two Meteor/E-mobile masts.
Jumping between masts will wreck your signal, which is another thing that's helped by detaching the modem from the laptop as it won't move and will "settle" on the stronger signal. Putting it in a window on the southwest or northeast side of the house should make a noticeable difference.

As you may have gathered, I live in a pretty rural location myself :-)

Cyrus

LOL, its a challenge isnt it

maybe someone like ripplecom makes more sense for them

niallb

Check this out.
We've only had DSL here for 2 years.
This was what I had to do to boost the Vodafone signal enough to lock on.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=+3G+Dunsany&m=text

Once locked on though, you don't need the amplification as much, and I used
a Nokia 6880 attached to the window for a few months passing the internet connection back to a laptop over bluetooth, and then from there to the rest of the house...

-=al=-

niallb wrote: »

Check this out.
We've only had DSL here for 2 years.
This was what I had to do to boost the Vodafone signal enough to lock on.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=+3G+Dunsany&m=text

Once locked on though, you don't need the amplification as much, and I used
a Nokia 6880 attached to the window for a few months passing the internet connection back to a laptop over bluetooth, and then from there to the rest of the house...

That's a proper Job!

Ive a 3g router with the sim on the roof myself and ran a cat5 cable into the main N WiFi router and get a good connection 24/7

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j235/alsfotos/RouterConfig.jpg

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j235/alsfotos/routerchimney2.jpg

Theres a few innovative ways of going about it... tp-link are the most reliable cheap routers I've ever used