Ubifi Rural Internet

[dmccarty]

Somehow I missed this discussion! :confused3:

We have cell tower nearby, but in the past, trying to use ATT, we did not get good connections. I sent a note off to Ubifi this morning and they answered quickly. :thumbsup: Which is very encouraging as a sign of service. My quick web searches indicated that the company has very good service. They said the tower now has ATT so it would seem like this would work.

Will talk this over with the wife but I think we will give the service a try. Replacing Century Link would be a good thing and getting faster speed would be a bonus.

I have tethered the cell phone to have Internet access during a power outage and I got very fast download speeds. Forgot exactly but it was much, much faster than our 1.5mbps.

Later,
Dan

 

[tractorshopper]

Update - so my Mofi should arrive today. I have been fooling around with speed tests and network cell lite and watching a bunch of videos and reading to get the best understanding I can about all this tech.

My home Verizon internet gets about .5 to .6 mbps most of the time. My AT&T cell phone gets about 5-6 most of the time, but about -110 to -117 dB, but also drops below 1 sometimes too and is spotty on 3G or 4G connections. I believe I'll need a signal booster system to get the most out of this. I climbed up on my roof last night to the peak and ran the speed test on my phone and got about 20 mbps down. halfway down the roof with open sky to the same tower location, it dropped to about 6 down.

I'm thinking about possibly having to buy the signal booster system and would like to ask people who know what I should be looking at? The WeBoost or the Surecall?

 

[STx]

You'd be better off getting high gain antennas and putting them on the roof. The Mofi already has the radio at the max power so a booster doesn't really gain for it like it does for a cell phone. Put one of these on a pole and connect it to the Mofi and you should see a significant performance increase.

Proxicast 4G/LTE Cross-Polarized (MIMO) 7-10 dBi High-Gain Fixed-Mount Panel Antenna https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NBSLNJ6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_K7qnCbSZY7J34

 

[jaydee325]

I've been looking at this too. I sent an inquiry to Ubifi with my street address and this was their reply:

With the address provided, it looks you are in a good coverage area and the closest tower is 2.9 miles west of the address. The signal does tend to fade before reaching you, so an external antenna would be recommended. The external antenna I would recommend is a Wilson Directional Panel antenna which is $84.99 plus the cost of cable. The antenna would need to at least clear the roof line and point in the direction of West.

I just might try it. All I'll be out if it does not work is my time and the 15% restocking fee.

 

[TheMan419]

I will be getting a directional antenna in the summer. Currently I can only get attached to the tower to north. The one to the south has more bands that it uses.

My hope is with the directional antenna I can connect and get greater speed. If not I can get a better connection to the tower to the north.

Should boost me from 10mb to 20+.

 

[tractorshopper]

Thanks for the quick replies.

I set up the system last night and wow, what a difference already. On my Verizon system, I had been connecting my phone via wifi and checking the speed test and routinely coming up with 0.6 range down; sometimes higher in the 3 range. With my AT&T phone by itself, I am usually in the 3-5 range, but on 3G. Connecting to the new Mofi wifi, the lowest I would get for short periods was in the 5 down range, but I had many times 8-10 and many times in the 15-20+ down. I can't tell on the speed tester I'm using whether it's 3G or 4G when hooked up on my phone though, because it just shows connected to AT&T network.

All that said, Netflix actually plays previews of whatever movie or show is highlighted. I never knew this because this has never happened on my home TV before. Also, when you open it or Prime, all the Icons are there as you scroll. In the past about 30% of icons would be there and as you moved category to category, they would slowly come up one at a time.

I streamed a movie on the TV in the best picture I've ever seen from streaming and one of my kids also hooked up and was streaming on her laptop at the same time and Alexa was running and on my phone I was running speed tests and still impressed.

So, long story short, I have the best internet I've ever had (even better than dsl years ago when I lived near the city). The Mofi must be already be boosting the signal or receiving it much better than our phones ever have.

On DirecTV, the only thing I can't quite do is get the on-demand working fast enough (It would never even start before; it would download maybe one minute of viewing for record for later every 20 minutes or so before). Now it will download a minute for about every 2 minutes, but not quite to where it would be able to just play live when you really want it to. So, I still want an antenna.

I was thinking signal booster system like Surecall or WeBoost, but with your responses above, I believe I'll try to antenna instead as a much cheaper alternative, since I'm just trying to get smidge more out of this. In any regard, I have no disappointment at all with this new system. I'm very happy with it right out of the gate.

 

[STx]

We stream all of our live TV over Gears TV (Omar's Videos), it gives us every US, UK and Canadian channel for $15/mo. I'm including the link because there are a lot of scam sites that claim to be Gears but will just take your money and not give you anything. Omar's Videos is the actual streaming servers, it's a very basic looking site but it wotks well, we use the Mayfair Guide as the actual viewer, it gives guide listings and has a Gears viewer built in so go to Omar's to sign up, then to Mayfair to get the guide, another $3.50/mo (Subscribe) and install it. During install, it'll ask if you want to use it's Gears add on, say yes.

We use Ttanium TV for on demand viewing, there are lots of tutorials online for installing this.

Both run in our Fire TV. We still stream some stuff from Amazon Prime, we're not going to get rid of that subscription anytime soon because of the shipping savings but, we're probably going to cancel Netflix.

If you use Titanium TV, or KODI for that matter, it's worth buying a Real Dedbrid Premium Subscription, at the current exchange it comes to just over $3/mo and gives you a lot more quality streams.

So, with all of it, our total monthly cost now for internet and TV is $101 ($80 for Internet, $21 for TV), that includes all the premium channels, all sports channels, all ppv events and almost anything we want on demand. At some point, I'm going to try a $30/mo unlimited AT&T SIM in the Mofi and see what happens after 22GB, that's the point they say that you're subject to.throttling based on network congestion, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Sorry for the hijack, back to just Internet discussions.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I bought a weboost but havent installed it. I stream using my AT&T mobley, it's been great. Have gone way over 22GB.

 

[tractorshopper]

We stream all of our live TV over Gears TV (Omar's Videos), it gives us every US, UK and Canadian channel for $15/mo. I'm including the link because there are a lot of scam sites that claim to be Gears but will just take your money and not give you anything. Omar's Videos is the actual streaming servers, it's a very basic looking site but it wotks well, we use the Mayfair Guide as the actual viewer, it gives guide listings and has a Gears viewer built in so go to Omar's to sign up, then to Mayfair to get the guide, another $3.50/mo (Subscribe) and install it. During install, it'll ask if you want to use it's Gears add on, say yes.

We use Ttanium TV for on demand viewing, there are lots of tutorials online for installing this.

Both run in our Fire TV. We still stream some stuff from Amazon Prime, we're not going to get rid of that subscription anytime soon because of the shipping savings but, we're probably going to cancel Netflix.

If you use Titanium TV, or KODI for that matter, it's worth buying a Real Dedbrid Premium Subscription, at the current exchange it comes to just over $3/mo and gives you a lot more quality streams.

So, with all of it, our total monthly cost now for internet and TV is $101 ($80 for Internet, $21 for TV), that includes all the premium channels, all sports channels, all ppv events and almost anything we want on demand. At some point, I'm going to try a $30/mo unlimited AT&T SIM in the Mofi and see what happens after 22GB, that's the point they say that you're subject to.throttling based on network congestion, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Sorry for the hijack, back to just Internet discussions.

Wow, now I have to go learn a whole bunch about streaming. I guess I will be able to get rid of the satellite bill soon once I figure all of this out. That will be an added bonus.

 

[grsthegreat]

The one problem i see with ubifi, it uses 4g lte technology. That technology is going away next year. Maybe they will switch to 5g?