Wireless Telstra modem with external aerial

George

I have passed this on to one of my contractors who does a lot of work in this field and is a bit more on top of this than me - he may have some additional comments.

I would not waste your money getting things "tested" - if the cables are as short as possible, in tact and not damaged in any way (crushed, kinked, etc) and the connectors are solid and clean an shiny (nothing loose or corroded) you are just suffering from the location you are in. You have the bench mark that you get good signal in metro and (I assume) most country centres and it is only when you are more remote that you are getting poor signal - you are probably lucky you are getting signal at all.

The Yagi will get better results than the Omni in the more remote areas because it is directional, but bear in mind (at risk of stating something you are aware of) you must point it at the mobile tower to get best reception (like a TV antenna). And does it need to be vertical and not horizontal?? You may be able to buy a fairly "cheap" meter for measuring the signal level while you rotate the YAGI to get optimum location - I know you can for TV but not sure if they cover the mobile frequency - would have to check and I can provide details if you require.

Height above ground and geography will also be a factor - we live in the Northern Perth Hills and have very intermittent reception apparently because the rock geography bounces the signal all over the place. I push to get 3 bars and drop in and out.

We spend a bit of time in the country and use a car mounted omni (9db I think) - it certainly extends the coverage but there are still a lot of dead spots (talking W. Aus).

We have to get Internet into some remote locations and often have to put an antenna on the roof (omni or sometimes Yagi) to get decent signal. Some places are satellite only because we just cannot get a signal.

Lastly, depending on the modem, Telstra are turning off some country services they shared with another provider. This means a phone I used to use for country travel no longer works in some towns because that phone is lacking a particular "mode" - cannot remember all the details but I can get them if you need them).

You are only going to get the reception you get regardless of what you use in some areas. The mobile coverage is far from complete around WA.

Ken

George

Check out my recent post and experiences post # 86126 also 86210 from another memebr.....a lot of what you are finding / experiencing you may find there

Cheers

This sounds like it is the problem that is documented on Whirlpool - you get no difference in signal levels by connecting an external antenna to the modem.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1382983

Apparently it is a manufacturing problem - but of course no one is going to admit that.

We may be trying this mod on George's modem and if we do we will post the results.

Ken

This is a post from another forum and will go some way to fixing your problems. The Bigpond Elite is a dog of a troublesome product. As the one guy says has the added free bonus supplied by Bigpond of pain and suffering included.

BigPond Elite Network Gateway firmware upgrade (URL at end)
If you have one of these Bigpond Elite/Netcomm Sierra Wireless 3G21WB modems, this update will go a long way to fixing the multitude of issues of this POS. This is still not going to overcome the overheating problems due to the poor design of the hardware and the case. Netcomm ‘solved’ in their minds the issue of the overheating by removing the temperature indication from the firmware. However, another caravanner has come up with a workaround “you can access the internal temperature via telnet. Telnet to 10.0.0.138, log in with username and password, then issue the command "sierra show --gstatus". Not as convenient as before but better than nothing.”

The upgrade won’t improve the poor reception performance of Sierra Wireless equipment, but it will certainly help improve the disgusting performance of the 3G21WB allowing the external aerial to function as it should. Unless you are prepared to remove the case and modify the air flow it is not going to overcome what is a major issue of the Bigpond Elite in that they eventually cook themselves to death. How anybody could engineer such a poorly designed POS and then Telstra Bigpond dump such poor quality rubbish into the market place without testing the unit is amazing.

BigPond Elite Network Gateway firmware upgrade

We've got the same system. I find that when I plug in the external aerial in fringe areas I can go from 1 bar to 4, or 2 bars to 5. My main problem is that it keeps going on to "no internet access" even when connected with full reception. I keep having to turn it restart it.

Outcome so far.

George has the latest firmware and testing that did not make any difference to the outcome - selecting External antenna in the setup screen on the modem did not make any difference with external antenna connected.

As he brought the modem into our office we could change the antenna wiring internally in the modem as per the link I put up but only had a small NextG antenna to use for testing - and we got no signal that way either.

We have not (as yet) been able to test the modified wiring set up on George's external antenna in the van.

As the modem is not very old he is pursuing it back through Telstra to see if they will change the modem for something that actually works with both internal and external antennae.

Ken