Other rural dwellers will no doubt share my experience of phone line based broadband - i.e. it hardly qualifies for the title. So I was quite surprised to note that the EE 4G coverage map seemed to show us in a full coverage area.
So some experimentation was deemed sensible. I got a Huawei E398 USB dongle jobbie from ebay, and PAYG SIM from EE. Once the SIM finally turned up (took a fortnight for their "next day" delivery, and then some time on the phone to locate the £10 that I had preloaded on it!), I found rather encouragingly that 6MB/s up and down was possible with a laptop in the garden.
So next job, try the dongle in the router... alas relocating it to the router cupboard reduced the signal to 34% and "Marginal" - sometimes rising to workable. Throughput was mostly about 1MB/s although sometimes a bit better.
Next experiment, a 15dB flat panel twin polarisation aerial on the ends of 15m of cable. Lobbed out a window, and sat on a bird bath, and the signal was up into the 50% "Good category". So worth the while installing it for real.
So got the ladder up (only about 16' to the eves), then manhandled the roof ladder up (7.6m twin section heavy bugger![1]) - eventually getting it into place, tried the thing clamped onto the base of the TV aerial mast. Result 68% signal, and "Excellent".
About this time SWMBO commented that it sounded like there were some very heavy pigeons on the roof romping about! All I could say was "Coo".
Now one observation on the first trip up, was that I have got the first load spreader actually hooked over the ridge - not just the hook. Meaning it could in theory have slipped about 8" while I was on it. So for the return trip to secure the device and work out how to get the cables though, I repositioned it "correctly". This in hindsight was a mistake. Since it now put the last load spreader mid span on the final row of (fibre cement look alike) slates. Turn out they are unsupported by battens at this point - a fact drawn to my attention as the load spreading foot of the ladder plus lumpy pigeon descended several inches through about 5 of the buggers in one sickening shattering crunchy sound!
That extended the job somewhat. Quick trip to local roofing yard to collect more slates. Then go find the slater's "rip" I bought some years back just in case. Another couple of hours later I had them all looking pretty again and held in place with a mixture of lead tingles and copper rivets.
So observations:
1) If your broadband is crap, check for wireless coverage. 2) If you have a roof ladder - be careful where you position it on slates - toward the visible end of slates is generally good - 5" up from the eves is not! 3) Load spreaders don't - a 1m wide 4x2 tied to the lower rungs makes it more probable you can get a large load on an off the latter without damage.[1] I have a love hate relationship with that ladder - although its long enough to do pretty much any roof, its bordering on the too heavy to use comfortably while standing on a ladder. I do wish someone would invent a roof ladder where you could adjust the length of it in place, rather than having to pull it half way down each time to reach the adjuster, since otherwise you find you have raised and lower the thing three or four times before getting the length right.