Is it worth getting an external antenna?

[Polymathic]

Yesterday I spoke to a Rain Technician yesterday regarding the free to use external routers they were giving 4G customers and found out that the two towers nearest to me are at 96 and 97% capacity.

Although there's another tower 3km away which is has 96% on 1 node and the other nodes being at 60% but unfortunately for me they no longer have any stock of their external 4G routers.

Looking at the map despite being 3kms away from me the tower is near the highway basically in the middle of nowhere and found that there's only 8 homes directly inbetween the tower and the window facing the tower.

Here's the current signal strength



Currently getting 1MB download and 2MB upload right now and gets up to over 2MB when SINR goes over 2. But I see the SINR keeps changing throughout the day, dropping as low as -4 and as high as 3.

How much would it cost to get somebody to install an external antenna? I have a fear of heights and there's no way I'm getting on the roof myself?

Also is it just matter of time before this tower gets congested?

 

[Snyper564]

Totally my speed on telkom lte is 4x with ext ant (it came with free installation but def worth it)

 

[jbroo]

Yesterday I spoke to a Rain Technician yesterday regarding the free to use external routers they were giving 4G customers and found out that the two towers nearest to me are at 96 and 97% capacity.

Although there's another tower 3km away which is has 96% on 1 node and the other nodes being at 60% but unfortunately for me they no longer have any stock of their external 4G routers.

Looking at the map despite being 3kms away from me the tower is near the highway basically in the middle of nowhere and found that there's only 8 homes directly inbetween the tower and the window facing the tower.

Here's the current signal strength

View attachment 1097323

Currently getting 1MB download and 2MB upload right now and gets up to over 2MB when SINR goes over 2. But I see the SINR keeps changing throughout the day, dropping as low as -4 and as high as 3.

How much would it cost to get somebody to install an external antenna? I have a fear of heights and there's no way I'm getting on the roof myself?

Also is it just matter of time before this tower gets congested?

Does your router accommodate external antennas?

Your SINR is low, but I have gotten good speeds with SINR as low as -10.

Currently I connect to a tower 5.5km away as all the towers/cells close to me are congested. My SINR is between 0 and 2. I can get up to 40mbps at 4am when there is no traffic.

Before my current router I used to use a Huawei B311 with a Poynting Xpol-6 antenna with good results. My signal improved a lot. If your router supports an external antenna, you should get good results with a powerful directional antenna.

As for the installation, maybe ask a friend to help? Or a handyman?

 

[Dretastic06]

are you not in 5G coverage?

 

[Polymathic]

are you not in 5G coverage?

KZN

 

[netstrider]

Have you considered driving closer to the tower and test the speeds then just to confirm you will be getting increased speeds?

 

[Dretastic06]

KZN

thats a shame, i recently got on the 5g speeds are unnecessary fast but im not complaining lol

 

[Geoff.D]

Yesterday I spoke to a Rain Technician yesterday regarding the free to use external routers they were giving 4G customers and found out that the two towers nearest to me are at 96 and 97% capacity.

Although there's another tower 3km away which is has 96% on 1 node and the other nodes being at 60% but unfortunately for me they no longer have any stock of their external 4G routers.

Looking at the map despite being 3kms away from me the tower is near the highway basically in the middle of nowhere and found that there's only 8 homes directly inbetween the tower and the window facing the tower.

Here's the current signal strength

View attachment 1097323

Currently getting 1MB download and 2MB upload right now and gets up to over 2MB when SINR goes over 2. But I see the SINR keeps changing throughout the day, dropping as low as -4 and as high as 3.

How much would it cost to get somebody to install an external antenna? I have a fear of heights and there's no way I'm getting on the roof myself?

Also is it just matter of time before this tower gets congested?

Read this it might help to untangle all the BS measurements made these days by devices with no proof that the measurements are accurate enough anyway to mean anything.

Acronyms RSRP, RSSI, RSRQ, SINR When Measuring Signal Strength

In our field test mode post, we refer to few acronyms such as RSRP, RSSI, RSRQ, SINR but did not go into much details to prevent going off-topic. This post elaborates on that terminology for greater understanding. What do the terms RSRP, RSSI, RSRQ, SINR mean when talking about cell phone signal...

www.signalbooster.com

An RSRQ of -14dB is bordering on "medium" which is already starting to lean towards a mediocre service at best.
An RSRP of -111 dBm is beyond weak and inconsistent with the previous value, so it points to a device that cannot measure properly or some or other design/configuration flaw in the network/sw/whatever.
The service is non-existent and should not even be sold as a commercial service.
an SINR of 0dB is just disgusting.

The RSRI of -79 dBm shows how Rain is manipulating the system by playing around with the number of "channels" and the bandwidth of each channel, trying t offer their services, which clearly goes to the heart of why the RAIN network is such a disgusting mess.

 

[Polymathic]

Have you considered driving closer to the tower and test the speeds then just to confirm you will be getting increased speeds?

That's worth a shot although I can't get much more than a few hundred metres closer because between my neighborhood and the tower is, sugar plantations, a forest, a highway, a paper plantation and more Sugarcane plantations.