Improving signal strength for Optus mobile hotspot

[T1 Terry]

Thanks Ron, we had an Aldi sim for a while and as you say, useless outside the built up areas where Optus worked fine anyway. Good to know Boost might well be the same.
Yrs ago we bought a 12mth prepaid sim and dongle with something like 12gig on it and it cost $144 from memory. We barely used half of it before it expired, very expensive data. we still have the dongle, I wonder if we can just get a sim for the dongle, I'm not sure if it was 4G or only 3G it was that long ago. It did have a spot to plug an aerial in though, so maybe a high gain Yagi aerial and the dongle might be better than adding the booster box as well. Then I could just get on for the Optus carrier to suit what we use every day.

T1 Terry

[Noggins]

If you go to the Optus site they have a list of phones that are good for fringe areas.
Their sim only plans are a bit expensive for what you get, but then so is Telstra.
A yagi aerial will improve reception as long as you can get a climpse of at least 1 bar when moving around for the "phone reception challenge"

Best buy is a small business sim only plan and with a bit of luck you will already have an Optus listed phone, then use it as a hotspot for anything else you might be using .


Ron

[T1 Terry]

The Optus plan Margaret has both our phones on share data, 60gig for $63, we never use the 60gig each mth, but the increase from roughly 10gig to 60gig was only $15 more, so why not
Frans Hamer (from the old CMCA forum) reported that a fella at one of the remote WA beach camps had full signal strength using a Yagi aerial where no one else could get a signal at all. The bloke leant him the connection and Frans immediately had full data and phone. Apparently the bloke had GPS maps of where all the Telstra towers were, that meant he could adjust the directional aerial to pick up the closest tower.

[Newcastle George]

I have the TV transmitters on my gps but can't remember wher I got them from however, I do have them in gpx format on my computer which may be out of date.

George

[Greynomad]

Just updated my iPhone 4S for an iPhone Xr.

With the 4S (18mths old) I could not get 4G signal anywhere — inside or outside the house. (Even with Optus.)
Even had Telstra testing signal-boosters about the house to get me a 4G signal... no luck. Got out of the contract without penalty because they couldn't deliver!

New iPhone picks up Optus 4G everywhere!


Maybe you could fix it simply by updating your phone?

Just sayin' ...

[T1 Terry]

We regularly ping test both our Samsung phones, Margaret's phone is the newer model, I got the hand-me-down unit. Margaret's is faster on the down load, mine is faster on the upload, but both have the same signal strength. No value in getting the latest model Samsung just to get 5G capability when we live in a country area that will likely never see 5G.
I finally found the Telstra dongle we bought many yrs ago, it is only 3G capable, so another piece of outdate Telstra gear.
Looks like we will just get a Telstra prepaid mobile sim and top it up when every we travel and see if that works for us away from the major town centres.
As the phones no longer have aerial plug in spots, looks like we will have to go with the booster and aerial idea if we go with any of it at all. The 2 bars that both phones on Optus seems to be working ok for what we are using it for, so maybe we'll put the idea on the back burner for a while.

T1 Terry

[Busman]

I have a telstra mobile hot spot in VP, connected to a white pointer antennae on the roof. Phone has one bar, link it to the hotspot, comes up 3 bars. Can be done but dunno about optus.

[dream4red]

Terry, I have found that optus is quite reasonable for service around the country areas that we travel through. We also have a telstra el cheapo phone for the few areas that dont get optus. We pay $30 for six months but dont have any data coming on it. The data costs on that plan are ludicrous, so turned off data with telstra itself. For the internet we do have a telstra dongle thing. It's a netgear LTE mobile router box and for the price of it, we are happy to use it instead of fixed braodband at home and away. Hope this is helpful.

[T1 Terry]

I have a telstra mobile hot spot in VP, connected to a white pointer antennae on the roof. Phone has one bar, link it to the hotspot, comes up 3 bars. Can be done but dunno about optus.

Is this another sort of router Bill? We use our phones as mobile hotspots when needed but they don't have aerial ports, so if we were to add a Telstra sim to my dual sim phone, we would need a booster type unit to connect to an aerial to gain anything from it.

Terry, I have found that optus is quite reasonable for service around the country areas that we travel through. We also have a telstra el cheapo phone for the few areas that dont get optus. We pay $30 for six months but dont have any data coming on it. The data costs on that plan are ludicrous, so turned off data with telstra itself. For the internet we do have a telstra dongle thing. It's a netgear LTE mobile router box and for the price of it, we are happy to use it instead of fixed braodband at home and away. Hope this is helpful.

Thanks Shirley, we find the Optus seems to work ok in most areas where towns are close together, but any real distance from a town and Optus drops dead. Coming back from WA we had 5 bars in some towns, yet zero Optus reception, it was all signal noise probably from the local Telstra tower.
A Telstra data only sim would be much cheaper than a mobile sim that included a reasonable amount of data, but we really need to be able to send and receive phone calls as well. I guess we would redirect the T1 Lithium number to my phones Telstra sim when we were travelling.

T1 Terry

[BruceS]

Terry at one stage you could get an external antenna that 'connected' to your phone by wrapping around it like velcro. Not sure if they still sell them now?