External Antenna For 3G Internet Access Saves Me Again

I like the countryside, much more quiet and relaxing than cities, especially for vacation. Slight disadvantage one has to live with, though, is that 3G signal quality is often not very strong. I am at the Côte d'Azur at the moment in between Monaco and Menton in a house outside the small villages along the coast. As in previous cases, 3G coverage is non existent at desktop level but quite o.k. only a few feet above the desk. I am glad that instead of a PC card I took my Motorola V3xx HSDPA mobile with me which can be nicely attached to the window. The USB cable makes all the difference in reception quality. Data rates are excellent (*) even in such a cell edge case.

For worse conditions I have a 2m (6 feet) USB extension cable :-) For PC card owners I strongly recommend buying an external antenna with a similar cable length before going on vacation.

(*) My connection speed is around 400 kbit/s but not because the radio link could not support more but because my connection is throttled by the operator.

Comments

[Bobbie A]

I use bluetooth - this gives me a 10m cable ;)

[Martin]

Hi Bobbie,

Bluetooth would have been fast enough in this case. However, for real HSDPA connections with 2 MBit/s or more, it is too slow. Also, I still need a cable for the power supply (the USB cable does both data and power for the V3xx) since without power the battery is flat after 2 hours :-)

Cheers,
Martin

[Evert]

Martin,

There are plenty of good external antennas available for use with pc-cards. Most come with a pigtail/extension lead. Another nice solution for home or soho use is a 3G-to-wifi router.

E.

[Martin]

Hi Evert,

You are right that's another good solution if the card has an antenna connector. I think most cards have that today. With a directional antenna it could even
be better than my solution :-)

Cheers,
Martin