3G Mast location San Severino Marche

[Italia]

Please can someone help me! I am trying to boost the 3G signal at my house in Ugliano which is 12km from San Severino, Marche so that I can finally use the internet properly. By properly I mean opening emails and looking at attachments which at the moment is impossible!

I have bought a 3G router with external connector and SMA port and a Yagi directional antenna. I now need to find out the location of the nearest 3G mast to Ugliano so that I can aim the antenna in that direction to boost the 3G signal. Please help!

[inquisitor]

Why don't you just observe the signal strength while very slowly turning the antenna? Out of my experience I can tell you that - as long as you don't have a clear fresnel zone between your antenna and the tower - the ideal aligment is not necessarily the direction of where the basestation is located. Especially if there are obstacles in the line of sight you will often get a stronger signal from reflections coming from the sides.
A friend of mine has pointed his Yagi antenna to the opposite location of the basestation as the adjacent house reflects the signal and so provides much higher bandwidth than when pointed directly to the basestation.
For best results you should constantly transfer data (e.g. some streaming media) while turning the antenna and also watch how speed changes besides signal strength.

[Italia]

Thank you. There are no adjacent house where we are and there are also lots of surrounding hills but hopefully by as you suggest turning the antenna whilst streaming we'll find the best position. It would still be useful to know where the nearest mast is though so if anybody knows that would be helpful - thanks

[inquisitor]

Which operator are you using?

[Italia]

Thank you.
I am not sure which operator to use and how I would decide? My iPhone switches between TIM and WIND when at the house but more often it shows TIM so I guess it would be sensible to go for TIM. I don't yet have a data card I am hoping to be able to buy one online if possible?? I'll need some guidance with that too.
Thanks for your help

[inquisitor]

If you haven't selected a carrier yet you should make your decision based on which operator provides the strongest signal. You shouldn't judge on your iPhone's behaviour but use the actual 3G router and the Yagi antenna to see which network is the best. If you have a full-sized British SIM card at hand you could try register manually to each network and see how signal strength varies. Of course you shouldn't establish a data connection while using your British SIM card as data roaming usually is extremly expensive.
What type of 3G router do you actually have?

[Italia]

Thanks. We do have an Italian TIM full sized SIM but it is for a phone not data. Could I use that to try? I could also get one on another network to compare signal strength if that seems like a good idea. The 3G router is Solwise -Solwise Compact and mobile built in 3G modem, Wireless Access Point, Router - NET-3G-51R then antenna is Solwise - 3G Broadband Directional Antenna - NET-3G-REN_15YSX
Another difficulty is that I only have 2 days to get this up and running but I gave heard it can take 48 hours to activate the prepaid SIMS, is that correct?

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by Italia

Thanks. We do have an Italian TIM full sized SIM but it is for a phone not data. Could I use that to try?

Yes, you could use it so detect signal strength, but do not connect to the internet as long as you are not sure about the costs for data for that particular SIM card.

I could also get one on another network to compare signal strength if that seems like a good idea.

You should examine signal qualtiy for all Italian networks before turning to a certain carrier. If you have a standard-sized British SIM (or an adaptor for your iPhone's microSIM) you could use it for a network survey, too, since your British SIM will probably be admitted to more than Italian network.

The 3G router is Solwise -Solwise Compact and mobile built in 3G modem, Wireless Access Point, Router - NET-3G-51R

Not the best choice in my eyes as its capabilites are rather limited. E.g. after having looked in its manual I couldn't find any option to manually select networks, which makes my above proposal of accessing all the different networks by a British SIM impossible.

then antenna is Solwise - 3G Broadband Directional Antenna - NET-3G-REN_15YSX

Quite expensive for a Yagi antenna and 10m cable is a bit long. You should know that each meter of cable will attenuate signal strength by at least 1dB, so after those 10m will reduce your antenna's gain of 15dB to 5dB. But let's see if you can't get a decent signal though.

Another difficulty is that I only have 2 days to get this up and running but I gave heard it can take 48 hours to activate the prepaid SIMS, is that correct?

48h seems a bit long to me. Maybe some of our fellow Italian forum members can answer on this.

[Italia]

Thank you. Can you suggest an alternative router with the external connector sma port that also has the facility for manual network selection? I understand about the loss through the cable. I think we would use as little cable as possible, just enough to get the router in an ok position inside the house. Thanks for all your suggestions.

[inquisitor]

I would recommend buying a USB modem (with connector for an external antenna) and a separate 3G-capable router for the following reasons:

• Routers with integrated 3G modems usually do not support so-called USSD commands which are often required to check or top up credit for prepaid SIM cards (something like *100#) and sometimes also to activate data options. A USB modem in contrast can be temporarily connected to a computer where you can submit such USSD commands. This spares you to remove the SIM card and put it in a phone each time you want to perform the afore-mentioned operations.
• You can use a USB extension cable (but not longer than 3m) between the router and the USB modem which often allows to use a shorter antenna cable as the modem can be placed in a less accessible place than the router has to be.
• Once attached to a computer you can perform manual site surveys with a USB modem.
• You can easily take the USB modem with you and use it with your computer on the go.
• In case of failure router and modem can be replace separately.
• Should LTE (aka 4G) become available at your place you can just replace the USB modem and keep your router.
• A separate router and USB modem is usually cheaper than a router with integrated modem.

That said my recommendation would be a TP-Link TL-MR3220 router and a Huawei USB modem that is compatible to the MR3220 and features an antenna connector, such as the Huawei E173, E353 or E367.
Unfortunately Huawei, like most vendors, use a different antenna connector type, namely CRC9, but there are adaptors from SMA/RP-SMA to CRC9. It would be better to use a Yagi with shorter cable and a factory-made CRC9-connector instead of using an adaptor, such as the following:
15dBi UMTS Richtantenne YAGI 5 m Kabel CRC9 3G Huawei | eBay