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I am planning to install an LTE router in my apartment, since there is no cable access. There are two LTE towers in the vicinity, one is 1150m (3770ft) away, the other 2550m (8370ft). Both have a line of sight with my apartment, and are about 2° apart as seen from the apartment.

Before I decide to even buy a router, I would like to know if a router (optionally with an external antenna) might solve the problems I currently have when using my mobile phone as a hotspot, namely

  • the connection gets pretty slow in rain. This means my cellphone shows fewer "connection bars" and the internet speed decreases.
  • the connection gets slow in the evening. While the "connection bars" stay, the internet speed decreases.

I'm sure there are a thousand reasons for this, many of which I don't even think of. Is there a way to troubleshoot the current connection, to know if the problems are caused by interference, or too many subscribers, or just the usage of the small antenna in my cellphone, or something totally different?

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  • You need to raise the issue with your internet provider (LTE)
    – DavidPostill ♦
    Commented Nov 1, 2020 at 10:29
  • 2
    Why close this? Questions about home networking are explicitly on-topic.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Nov 1, 2020 at 16:36

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Your two problems are completly unrelated - so are possible solutions:

  • the connection gets pretty slow in rain. This means my cellphone shows fewer "connection bars" and the internet speed decreases: This really is an analog problem, you might easily be able to mitigate it by using a better antenna. The raindrops in the air between you and the tower absorb part of the RF energy, so using a better antenna will allow you to capture more of the remaining energy, thus providing a better connection.

  • the connection gets slow in the evening. While the "connection bars" stay, the internet speed decreases: Only the LTE provider can fix this. In the evening more users are accessing the Internet via LTE, so while the link from your phone to the tower is fine (as witnessed by the bars), the connection from the tower to the internet is obviously saturated from all the users running there data over it. There is nothing you can do about it and you need to expect the problem to become worse over time, as more people use more data-intensive apps.

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  • I think it’s actually the link between cell tower and mobile that is the problem, because cell tower bandwidth is shared between all devices. The only solution is smaller network cells.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Nov 1, 2020 at 11:12
  • @DanielB Cell tower bandwidth to the Internet is shared between all devices. Bandwidth to the mobile devices is no bottleneck.
    – Eugen Rieck
    Commented Nov 1, 2020 at 12:14
  • No, bandwidth to devices is also shared. Keep in mind that airwaves are a shared medium. A cell tower has finite wireless bandwidth. Whether the uplink is slower or not depends on the specific tower, I'd say.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Nov 1, 2020 at 12:49
  • @DanielB Of course the to-device Bandwidth is share - but it still is no bottleneck: For a simple cell tower it is in the order of magnitude of Terabits/second. The uplink bandwidth is lower by far.
    – Eugen Rieck
    Commented Nov 1, 2020 at 12:59
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To improve the reception would require more equipment. Materials you will need are:

  • External directional antenna to point to the nearest tower
  • Gain amplifier
  • Internal antenna

You would find a description by one person of doing that in the article How I built my own mobile cell tower (although I'm sure you can get by with a more modest installation).

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