4G networks seem to be coming of age as a viable broadband alternative, but as with all radio based networks there is an extra dimension of complexity to plan for.
Firstly not all of the operators are equal. For the first time in UK history, the claims that one network is significantly better than the others has a basis in fact.
The two main factors are coverage and spectrum. Coverage is based on tower locations and EE, on the whole, have the better coverage for 4G. Performance is based on spectrum. The next bit is slightly technical but the conclusion is clear.
EE has the best radio spectrum of any of the UK providers operating in all three allowable frequency ranges ie 800 Mhz, 1800 Mhz and 2600 Mhz and they have 170 Mhz of composite spectrum compared with a composite of 125 Mhz for O2, Three and Vodafone combined.
So crudely, EE have 50% more bandwidth available than all the other operators combined.
The next issue is choosing the correct router/antenna combination. A good multiband external antenna can increase performance by a factor of five or more over an internal antenna. We have customers who have gone from 6 mbit/s to 45 mbit/s by using such an antenna. It also allows the router to “burn through” other competing traffic.
The next choke point is the router. To work well, it needs to support all the available radio bands that the provider uses and be highly efficient in terms of network transfer. It also needs to support the connection of external antenna as well. USB based dongles simply cannot run at the data rates available from the latest generation of networks.
We have tested a wide range of dongles and routers to come up with what we believe to be the optimum solution ….
