How to find Voda mobile phone masts

If you already have ADSL/cable broadband then you get a Vodafone Access Gateway (a femtocell), which is basically a tiny mobile phone base station, about the size of a WiFi router, that plugs into your broadband and gives you 3G coverage for the area immediately around your home. If you want to use Vodafone's broadband instead of ADSL then this obviously won't work, but plenty of people seem to have both. The Gateways are available for free with some Vodafone packages.

dan.

so perhaps I can get 3G using the yagi. I get low speed through the local exchange due to distance. I want to see if I can do better with mobile.

Peter Scott

If you look at the details for of a Base Station it will tell you if

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Liquorice" saying something like:

Not so. I'm 4 miles from a 3G mast and the 3G coverage stops 2 miles short of me, according to the map - the maps are computer generated and not reliable indicators of fringe reception, they tend to be conservative, ime. Using a 9dBi flat plate antenna, I was getting consistent 3G connection for 3 years until recently, when landline broadband became available. I still have the 3G as backup - or I will, when Vodafone stop charging silly bugger prices for a PAYG setup. A 12dBi yagi will be an improvement on what I had, and a mesh dish (24dBi) even better. In fact, the mesh dish I had was so effective that it actually made steady connection through a roof - it was mounted indoors.

The Ofcom site finder doesn't give any coverage information just what technology is present at a base station, TETRA, GSM or UTMS. If there is no UTMS signal being radiated from the base station no matter what aerial you use you ain't going to create one!

I agree that coverage maps are not to be relied upon but they aren't too bad, where do you lose the 3G signal on a phone, about 2 miles?

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Liquorice" saying something like:

Generally, it would seem so; I suspect the cut-off point for 'reliable' reception is a bit arbitrary. In my case, against the recommendation, it was 4 miles of treetop skimming and a small hill directly in the way. The 9dBi plate antenna is at the top of a 30' pole. Many times I was utterly certain I was getting a bit of bounce or skip from low clouds; this seemed confirmed by the worst days being dead clear skies and the best days overcast. I gave it up in the end because Vodafone had promoted the service to every bugger and his dog for downloading crap away from home and for rural wireless broadband, in a desperate attempt to get some money in to recoup their huge outlay for the 3G licence years ago. As a result the service turned into an unusable struggle a lot of the time and luckily this coincided with availability of wired BB. For the first two years it was wonderful having BB of any description, then it deteriorated mightily. The nominal speeds of 3G are nothing but a joke compared to the steady reliability of ADSL, even contended ADSL.

What kit are you thinking of installing? GC mentioned thiecom and poynting.

The only other supplier I have bookmarked is:

aren't

miles?

Well it depends what is in the way locally. Big tree in leaf, are you upstairs or down stairs on the right side of the hosue etc. But out in the open I expect the maps to be reasonable.

Recomendation to working to a handheld phone at ground level with its built in antenna not a 9dBi gain on on top of a 30' pole... Not the same thing at all.

Yeah I'd like some decent mobile internet access but just for email and a little bit of web browsing. I've got GPRS it works but is painfully slow. Currenty if I use a 1MB (mega not giga) byte in a month it would be a heavy month. Beggered if I'm paying =A310/month for

Thanks to all for the info. Looks like the experiment will be interesting.

I'm about 4 km from a 3G base station so I reckon I'm in with a chance if I put the aerial up as high as I can. Only one bump in the way. If not I'll swing it round and try the O2 that my neighbour uses. About the same distance but flatter. I think I've got an O2 SIM somewhere to get a very check on the signal.

I'm not desperate as I get 1 or 1.2 Mbit/s over copper. However I would like to junk the regular phone line and just go mobile, if I can. The current 3 or 4 gig download is more than enough.

The kit has to come from China so it'll be a while before I can report back.

Peter Scott

Item 280443527594 on eBay. So far I've had good experience of buying electronic kit direct from HK or China.

Peter Scott

Now a true PAYG say 1GB for =A310 that

,,,weren't/aren;t Orange offering such a PAYG "non-expiring data limit" type package?

JimK

I thought 3G worked on a different frequency band to to the 900mhz gsm band - from all that business about the over priced auctions a few years ago. Also, is it strictly legal to use these transmitters or is it not policed?

Dave.

Vodafone PAYG is £15 per GB but with no expiry. I find for my normally low usage that is cheaper than 3 PAYG at £10 per GB but with a one month expiry.

Using 3 at the moment: 6 days and 236MB remaining but that includes the xmas and new year period when I was using the laptop at home. Meanwhile on the Vodafone: 7 Nov credit = £15, today credit = £13.51. So Vodafone cost £1.49 for 45 days normal use and 3 has cost £10 and will probably not be fully used by the end of the week when it expires.

But IIRC Vodafone PAYG does not work with Mac OSX. I would want to be able to switch a dongle between my Windows PCs and partner's MacBook depending on need. It would almost entirely be a backup for those annoying but actually fairly infrequent failures of Virgin media cable.

Well it works with Linux so I don't see why not. The problem for a non-windows user with both 3 and voda is getting the phone number to set up the account. You either need to borrow a windows box to crib the necessary number or put the sim into a phone to request the code (3) or discover the phone number (voda) Instructions for setting up 3 here one day I will write up the voda version. The main difference is that you need to discover the sim phone number and then enter the number on the voda site. 3 doesn't need any details to connect unless you want to set a pin.

I just phoned them up, told them the SIM number, and they told me the associated phone number so I could set the account up.

Something like a Draytek cable router on the main Virgin service and the

An unlocked Huawei D100 and Voda PAYG non-expiry dongle. This would give you WiFi for the laptop and ethernet for the PC (if it doesn't have WiFi...). Unlocking a D100 from 3 is supoosedly a simple reflash with firmware available from Huawei, making sure you get a compatible (with the D100) dongle is probably the hardest part.