I live about 2 and a half miles from a very rural cell tower across forests with 80-100 foot Oaks and Pine Trees. There is no line of sight possible. This causes me a lot of problems on Band 2 especially with weather effects in the summer. I recently put up 2 Wilson WideBand yagi style (white plastic arrow shape)directional antennas with 8 to 10 db gain on the side of my house. I receive reasonably good speeds with Band 2 of 25 to 35 mbps and 1 to 6 mbps upload but the signal is not stable at all when it rains a lot or there are thunderstorms. Normal Band 2 signal would be -109dm to -114dm. But yesterday, it rained all day and it clinged to -118db to -121db and while the download speeds weren't that bad (10mbs to 25mbs). The upload speeds were a disaster all day from 0.01 to 0.75mbps and caused horrible latency and hang ups. Unacceptable as it rains every afternoon in the summer.
Band 12 700MHZ on the other hand is solid as a rock from -99db to -104db with speeds up to 20mbs and 5mbps upload. The problem is that my AT&T router will not move to Band 12 when the weather is bad. It will cling to a horrible -120db Band 2 connection when 700mhz is much better.
I've looked at replacing one of my 2 wilson widebands with a 17db 1900mhz zda communications yagi and leaving the other wideband for any carrier aggregation.
Does anyone know how this would work? I want Band 12 to be my primary band all the time and Band 2 added for carrier aggregation as necessary but my router seems to want to reverse that and cling to unreliable Band 2 all the time.
My router is the IFWA-40 on AT&T's wireless internet plan. It does not allow band locking as far as I know.
The other options I have thought about:
1) Moving to an AT&T reseller and finding a modem that allows bandlocking. Hundreds more dollars I don't want to spend and resellers can be unreliable. I need this for work from home and don't have time for disruptions if suddenly AT&T pulls the plug. That's why I bought from AT&T directly to begin with.
2) Giving up on Band 2 as unreliable and focusing on Band 12 only either with an LTE filter only allowing Band 12 to pass through or replacing both widebands with 700MHZ yagi's and giving up on carrier aggregation.
Best Antenna for Band 2 1900 MHZ deep in the woods
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Re: Best Antenna for Band 2 1900 MHZ deep in the woods
You may be much better off with a flat panel directional antenna. Yagis are not very forgiving on non line of site situations. With no line of sight I always suggest flat panels. I wouldnt mix antenna types either. Another thing you may want to do is up your devices power supply .5 or 1 Amp. Sounds weird, but sometimes it helps.
