I live East of Phoenix about 30 miles. I have no high speed internet available to me except my wireless connection. When 4G came available I was the first guy in line and purchased a UML290 primarily because it has and external antenna port(s). I figured that I would need an antenna to make my 4G connection reliable as I did in the early stages of 3G. Sure enough I can only get a signal out side of my home and it is sketchy at best. I purchased a dual freq panel antenna from the 3G store when it became available. No luck...except....I today I placed the antenna on one of my building 30ft above the ground where the horizon was visablke 360 degrees. My intention (because the antenna is directional) was to 'find' the best tower with 4G. My calls to Verizon to determine where the physical locations of the 4G antennas were never answered. I was determined to find a signal. I actually located a tower and the connection isn't too bad...ping of 70ms with 9.8 down and 1.8 up. I have been asuured by Verizon that in the next few months there will be more coverage in my area.
I'm curious if any one has experienced this:
When the modem is locked on LTE only it never find a signal or the network, however if I lock it to Global it finds the 4G signal and connects (unless I ge the dreaded WMC604 message, which no one seems to understand). I'm also aware to the handoff issues with the UML290 and the apparent bugs in Access Manager and hope that Verizon will provide the patches soon.
When I'm in a strong area I have seen 28.9 down.....
I have the same hardware. Access manager was giving me fits too (WCM604, flaky 4G/3G). Support won't help me with towers either. All they want do is blame my client. I was hoping they'd be better than Sprint in that regard. Maybe they both have the same call center. ;-)>
Use:
Cell Phone Tower Maps | Antenna Guy USA and AntennaSearch - Search for Cell Towers, Cell Reception, Hidden Antennas and more.
to find towers.
I have my UML290 in a Nexaira BC2 router and locked to LTE and it works flawlessly. I briefly saw a 76mb down on speedtest.net today. Verizon wants us to use Verizon Online -- FiOS Speedtest BTW, although it reports consistently low speeds.
I think Access Manger is a POS. I took my modem and netbook and sat next to my closest tower (7mi from home) and was still flopping around between 3G/4G with Access mangler.
This site is great too (in addition to evodo forums) DSL · Cable · VOIP · Security · Satellite · Fiber · News · Tips · Reviews · Community · Tools - dslr...
Same UML290, same plan, but well in the 4G area, .7 mile from a tower.
And the signal is dancing around from zero to 4 bars! I constantly getting disconnected,
and what are those **bleep**WMC604 &WMC104 errors all about anyway?
What kind of Wizard of Oz Verizon engineer is screwing around with the signal? Can't they get any kind of consistancy?
LTE Advanced is the real 4G according the ITU certification. March 2011 will be the release of 4G specification by the ITU. Many are claiming 4G when in fact its 3.5G. This is how T-Mobile, WiMax (Sprint) and now Verizon is getting around it. Its a little faster than 3G depending on market.
With regard to your device. FM signal is line of site. Foil backed insulation isn't a help either. Your device maybe LTE Advanced ready. By turning off LTE and going global most likely is hitting 3G or 3.5G depending on your market.
I anticipate 4G on a wider scale in 2012/13.
Changing rooms in my house sure helped my connection speed, THANKS
Now all I need is an antenna so I can use in my office.
.i also notice cannot play any online games...my old 3g modem works perfectly with the same games but this new service as far as online games or this modem apparently has issues...i have had nothing but problems, high ping rates and packet loss as well as jitter and no one with the exception of 1 service tech apparently cares...they only care that you can connect and brows web to a degree....i have spoke to 8 techs only one cares and states their is a problem....i have tested this on speedtest.com upload and download speed is fast remarkably fast but inconsistant, the ping is terible and jitter and packet loss is even worse...i am going to try to replace the modem as last form of troubleshoooting, if that doesnt work then 4g can go in the trash until they resolve the problem....they advertise online gameing and video streaming for 4g...i cannot do online gaming will not even connect to game host due to high pings and data loss...and yet the new service wich is supposed to be much better and support online gaming doesnt work and my 3g device works without a problem, can play games all day long without i hitch and no one from tech can explain why....sounds like a problem..i have spoke with several people on forums they have all said the same thing....release tech and dontr know how to fix the problems....the response you will get is all we care about is that you can connect and view the web!!! wow so when i buy a car i guess all they care about is the car moves, they dont care if the ac worrks or anything else does to...thats the way its been explained to me time and time again...except for 1 tech..so my suggestion to you is try a new modem, possably new sim card if still doesnt work go back to 3g device because i m not sure 4g is ready for complete service!! but thtas my opinion as of now..
An update....
After using antennasearch.com and Google Earth I was able to find the nearest tower. My panel antenna is about 30 feet off the ground and after plotting a line between my house & the tower and using a compass I pointed the antenna directly at the tower. I have a very consistent signal and am able to see around Mbps down and 3.5 up with a ping time of around Ms. At times I am able to get up to Mbps. I have noticed an anomaly though, sometimes my d/l speed is much slower than the u/l speed something I attribute to Verizon, not the signal.
Once I had a good signal using Access Manager (the modem is locked to LTE), I connected through a Nexaria BC2 which eliminated Access Manager which seems very buggy. I've been up and running for 48 hours with no disconnect. Verizon has to be working on the 4G system as it (speed) is very inconsistent, but it is at least 3-5 times faster than 3G.
I am in the Orlando area and I move back and forth between 2 RV parks all winter. One park has great 4g service but the other seems weak -80 db and 10 db rssi. Seems to say 2 bars but service is spotty. Very fast at times and then nothing. I had the wmc604 the first week after connecting with my MAC and before support knew anything about it so then replaced my modem (UML290), The replacement did not seem to work as good as the first and finally just about stopped working so I am on my 2nd one.
I am very interested in the external antenna you are using and the adaptor for the connection. If you can shed any more light on it I would appreciate it.
As a Ham radio operator one thing to consider is the length of the wire you are running to the antenna. The longer the run the more signal loss you have. AT high frequency this come into play and putting the antenna higher with a longer run can in some cases not pay off with more signal.
When I get the wmc604 I have been able to get out of it with setting the modem to LTE mode and then back to Global. If all else fails I go back to 3g. just to get online and stay connected.
I have very high pings 200 ms or more. I have not seen anyone else having that long latency from the post that I have seen on a lot of the blogs.
BikingBob wrote:
My connection is real slow also. I'm only 3 miles from an antennas. My download speed is only 0.484 mbps. I'm taking back my 4 g card tomorrow and going back to 3g it's faster. My speed is like a dial-up!!!! I wanted to download movies but sure can't with this card. Good luck to the rest of you folks.
Hi Bob, I'm sure you know (well, not sure) that a movie might be 1.5-2 gigs, so just a heads up.
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