I live in a semi-rural community with few internet options.
T-mobile become an option so I decided to give it a shot. It’s a decent price/performance option between DSL and cable internet.
As you can see I’ve made a fully custom hanging shelf with a piece of scrap 1/4" plywood and twine for optimal placement.
I then cracked open the unit and installed external antenna adapters. I placed a directional antenna on the roof.
I kept experiencing complete connection dropouts which became worse over time. After some research I found that other users said that the problem was the unit overheating.
I placed a 120mm fan on top. I wired up a barrel jack so it can be plugged into a normal 12v adapter and it just stays on all the time. I might clean this up and use a temperature controller in the future. It’s currently held to the unit with scotch tape.
Everything has been stable for now. Maybe I’ll find some more ways to tweak it to get better performance.
Having a directional antenna is great. If you check the logs on your modem you should be able to see the identifier for the tower you’re connecting to. Using that you can pinpoint it’s location. If you’re really dedicated you can build a tower outside to put a directional antenna above the tree line.
Or at least, that’s what we would have technicians do for customers in rural areas.
They were nice enough to show a lot of signal data including the identifier. I bought a fairly cheap unpowered antenna, so I didn’t want to extend the cables.
I did contemplate getting a powered cell signal booster but went for the less expensive option.