My landline broadband (vodafone) is limited by the long length of copper wire between me and the fibre cabinet. However speeds have been slowly dropping over the last few years (now 12/0.6 from 17/1.5) and with line drops several times a day. Vodafone can do nothing to help (and I have spent many hours in chats with them)

Its been suggested that I look at a 4G router as my phone (on vodafone) gets 25/20 inside the house.
So I've tried a 3 SIM in a 4G TP-link unlocked router and although it gets 4G+ , the signal strength is only just 1 bar out of 3. and speeds are highly variable, 18 to 6 - lower end being more usual.

I seem to not only have a rubbish landline but the house is also on the edge of the good/adequate 4G coverage when looking at the Ofcom 4G coverage map.

Would an external antenna help ?
If so which? Jules

What is the distance from the fibre cabinet to you?, 70mbs should be attainable at 1Km on copper from the cabinet, if you have a fibre contract the min should be 36mbs otherwis go on a ADSL contract which is cheaper and should achieve a minimumof 15mbs.
It may be that the Vodophone equipment is overloaded and the cause of your drop off, check your contract it may well be that it is under performing, also check other ISP's mininimum speeds, not all ISP equipment in the exchange have the same bandwidth thus leading to slower speeds. my PC is slightly to the right of Genghis
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Just a thought
Are the actual speeds dropping or are you hanging more and more devices off the network?

Days gone by we just had the single computer connected to the router, so the speed test was valid - especially if you were hard wired to the router.
These days we have additional computers and games machines turned on but doing little, video doorbells, smart TVs, smart speakers, even phones hook into the WiFi and use it in preference to gobbling their data.

Physically go around and turn off the TVs, computers, speakers, and games machines - no standby as our TVs update software while in standby. Turn off ALL the phones and WiFi connected doorbells hard wire (Ethernet) to the router and try again Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
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Well before BT installed our broadband we ran with a 4G router for six weeks. It was a Huwei router and SMARTY sim card. Worked a treat and if I am absolutely honest about it was probably as good if not better than the broadband we now have.

The absolutely important things to remember are that in order to get good 4G broadband speeds your reception must be excellent. And, if the 4G network goes down you lose your broadband. This past week after Storm Arwen we lost 4G completely here for a few days.

The great thing about this system is that you can also take it camping with you The router needs 12v and draws only 1 amp of current so you can easily run it off your car battery or solar setup.

Dartman the one wrote:

What is the distance from the fibre cabinet to you?, 70mbs should be attainable at 1Km on copper from the cabinet, if you have a fibre contract the min should be 36mbs otherwis go on a ADSL contract which is cheaper and should achieve a minimumof 15mbs.
It may be that the Vodophone equipment is overloaded and the cause of your drop off, check your contract it may well be that it is under performing, also check other ISP's mininimum speeds, not all ISP equipment in the exchange have the same bandwidth thus leading to slower speeds.

Andy131 wrote:

Just a thought
Are the actual speeds dropping or are you hanging more and more devices off the network?

Geobloke wrote:

The absolutely important things to remember are that in order to get good 4G broadband speeds your reception must be excellent.

Speed check your 4G on your phone might not be as bad as you think. Or it could be worse

a  Andy
Freelander2 HSE (59 Plate, MY10 spec)

This morning my 3 sim 4G router has 22/2.6 and my phone (vodafone) has 22/7 on vodafone 4G.

The router had 1 bar with its 3 sim and when I put my phone's vodafone sim in it I got full 3 bar.
The nearest 3 mast is 4.5km away, whereas the nearest vodafone mast is 1.5km (cellmapper.net).

The question is would an external antenna improve the 3 signal ?- its very flat around here and no hills between me and the distant 3 mast .
Could I expect that if signal was improved would speeds be more towards the higher end of the range available ?

Can anyone recommend a more appropriate forum to ask these sort of questions? Jules

Earlier this year I had to arrange a funeral at a church in Devon with no internet connection. Due to restrictions on attendees due to COVID and the fact that family all over the world wanted to watch I got a professional Live Streaming company in. They had a setup with an aerial on a tripod outside the church and used four sim cards covering the major networks which they referred to as bonded connection. The guy said that it was pretty bullet proof as it used the four networks in parallel and he usually got about 60-100mbs. This would probably be expensive but might be researching in case there is a poor man's option.

I live within site of a 4G mast and have been considering giving up my BT line as even with 37Mb "essential Fibre" we often get the catching up circle on the TV watching BBC iPlayer and I have found that if I use an old phone as a hot spot this never happens.

There are also some big changes coming by 2025 when BT will switch off the PTSN network and the concept of local landlines for voice calls will disappear. This has started to happen already for some local exchanges and I suspect that a lot of people will start thinking about their phone usage and whether they just go mobile in the future especially with 5G coming along. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
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It may sound silly but all radio signals droop over distances, if you are in the bottom of a droop your signal can be poor as your aerial is above the signal, vice versa is also the case, the higher the frequency the shorter the distance between droops, mobile phone masts transmit multiple signals to overcome this however the odd building when the signal droops doesn't help, that is why mobile phone masts use various types of aerials and the masts seem to be in areas that don't seem logical. my PC is slightly to the right of Genghis
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Don't really understand Radio Signals 'Drooping'.

Radio waves travel in very straight lines. (Do not curve with the earth at higher frequencies)
The spread of the beam depends upon the design of transmitting aerial, and the distance depends on the transmitting power.

Problems occur in the increasing inability for the radio waves to penetrate obstacles (walls, etc) as the frequency increases.
Unfortunately, this is at odds with the need to use higher and higher frequencies that allow more data/information to be carried.

The latter point means that we will need more 5G transmitters than 4G needed.

PS What we all need is fibre optic cables all the way to our houses. FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
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As you say Ian, they don't follow the earths curvature, so they apparently droop, but part of the signal will continue at reduced power after it hits the apex of the curve, as frequency increases so does the effective range decreases in that it will hit the apex in a shorter distance, unless the aerial is a narrow beam dish the signal propagates the further away from the transmitter, the mobile data signal tends to be transmitted to major transmitters buy microwave dish and by omni directional aerials between local masts and your phone.
My local mast is below me and due to buildings is useless in the house, the best signal is from the TV mast some 2-3 miles away but that is across water and is subject to variations due to tide and signal bounce associated with the tide but this aerial is some 100 metres above me. Fitting an external aerial will help but the placing of the aerial will result in various speeds due to signal strength, so wandering about using a speed checker at each position and height could be time consuming and could result in higher speeds, a couple of metres in height at the same position can make the world of difference. my PC is slightly to the right of Genghis
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And there was me thinking setting up 4G broadband would be straight forward - how little I knew.

I have since discovered that there is a compatibility issue with the 3 network and the archer MR600 4G router; in that it fails to initiate Carrier Aggregation for the 4G+.

(I assume CA combines data from 2 different bands at the same time - improving download speed)

Either way Ive given up and sent all the stuff back - life is too short and I will have a think about it again over the christmas /new year period.

Thanks for all the advice just the same. Jules