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Has anyone checked out the app https://www.coveragemap.com ? I’ve been mapping my state and think it’s amazing. Community sourced map, upload prior speed tests and make new ones to show each other where coverage is.

Well, after going on drunken tirades about how smartphones are terrible because they are capable of so much more than developers are willing to do, I decided to completely throw all of my phones away (not really, I just put them all in a closet, never to use them again), because they arbitrarily cannot run games and apps they easily are able to. I already knew fully well that what I wanted in a phone was a laptop, as smartphones are basically pretending to be them anyway. So anyway, because I absolutely hate phones now, I need a way to connect to a cellular network without them. How do I use a laptop to do this? Laptops with cellular built-in are extremely overpriced, to the point of making anything Apple or NVIDIA makes seem like the Costco hot dog in comparison. Why would I pay $2000 for what is a relatively basic $450 laptop just because cellular apparently dramatically increases its price? Remember, laptops have way more space to fit everything than phones do, so putting cellular features in a laptop is actually way easier than trying to cram every feature that phones have into their tiny size. I get that cellular hardware itself does technically cost money, but fitting it in even an Ultrabook (and I don't even care if the laptop is small) should not be difficult if phones can do it! I understand a maybe $50 price increase, but this is like a $1500 just because of cellular! How the hell is cellular hardware almost the price of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 if phones are able to fit this and much more in a tiny package for $900? What the hell? I feel so stupid for being unable to comprehend this! Can someone explain like I'm five? So it was clear that the only way was to buy a cellular dongle to connect to a cellular network so I can call an Uber on my laptop. Except how do I go about buying one? I know they exist, but where? I could try asking my carrier if they have any. If you all know of any, please link them! As for the laptop itself, you know what they say about buying used... Cannot wait for a GTX 1080 Max-Q with 2 TB of storage!

I am sick and tired of arbitrary software compatibility on Android! I want a device that can be a phone and still run all of my favorite games! It's not like it is due to a technical limitation, it is simply because developers gave me the middle finger and made me go on this search for something to replace my Pixel 7 Pro. I started this search when someone told me that buying a phone to run Yuzu was a bad idea, so I will buy a cellular dongle that allows any laptop to be a phone! But which one should I buy, and what software should I get to make this all happen?

I hate smartphones because of arbitrary software compatibility issues (as well as some actual technical ones). Laptops are better, so I want to replace my Google Pixel 7 Pro with a Framework laptop, but obviously, it needs cellular capabilities to do that. I did find a thread detailing this. I need to know, when will it become available? I need it! https://community.frame.work/t/lte-cat-4-cell-modem-card/9454

I just purchased an MSI Sword 15 recently, and I was wondering if there is a way to add cellular capabilities to it with something like an m.2 add-on. I have an extra sim card with AT&T that I have been wanting to use. Is this possible? What hardware would I need to make this work?

Does anyone here know how low-band 5G achieves higher speeds with the same frequencies as 4G/LTE? Many carriers are building out low band 5G in the sub 1Ghz band that still manage to achieve really high speeds despite their low frequencies. I'm assuming this has something to do with the wireless implementation in software and nothing to do with the RF itself. Could anyone else shed some light on this for me please? T-Mobile 5G using 600Mhz band: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/2/20991566/tmobile-nationwide-5g-600mhz-launch-samsung-oneplus

I live in a newly developed area where Infrastructure is not really developed yet - including internet. Checking with ISPs I see that nothing is really planned for a few years. So I live with a cellular connection. I actually have two. Main one from a carrier which has the best coverage and a backup in case the main one has issues (which is not rare). I have an antenna outside for the main connection and it is great in the middle of the workday - 100+ Mb/s and low ping. In the evenings however (especially on weekends), online gaming is impossible. And even Youtube is sometimes an issue. I was reading about load balancers. Maybe I could even add a third connection. Would that help? Can you suggest a model? Maybe someone has had a similar case and found a clever way to get the most out of bad situation? Or should I just get Starlink?

Hello! The reason I'm writing this post is because I can't find any good information regarding this specific question online. I'm going to be taking an extended trip to Spain this spring and I'm currently figuring out what I'll be doing for my tech needs (international plug adapters, SIM cards, etc;) I have an iPhone 13 on Verizon in the US with my Verizon phone number, which also supports WiFi calling, and that feature has come in particularly handy in rural areas where cell service is crap. My question is, if I have an unlimited data eSIM in Spain (through a provider such as holafly, for example) would I be able to send/receive calls and texts on my US Verizon number via "Wi-Fi calling"? Or do I have to give Verizon hundreds of dollars for an international plan.

Greetings. Somebody keeps dumping trash on my property so I need your help picking out a camera. The location is on a logging road near home. The camera is going to be in the woods away from any structures. It needs to able to capture the license plate if a car pulls in. Facial clarity is less important, Should I get a trail camera or a security camera? Are security cameras weatherproof enough to be used in the woods? I'm also concerned about the camera being stolen or damaged to the point where I can't get the pictures of our crook. I've seen trail cams have a cellular option. It might be somewhat a luxury, but I believe the pictures being sent to me immediately will come in handy if the camera gets stolen. Any recommendations is appreciated! Thank you.

So I have a OnePlus 2 with T-Mobile. I'm currently in Canada. T-Mobile lets you have unlimited data in most other countries, albeit at 2G speeds. Canada is one of them. Cellular data has been working fine for me. I've had roaming on in order to use Cellular, and it connects me to Bell, through which I get Cellular. It's been working all fine and dandy, until today. I updated my phone to OxygenOS 3.5.8 yesterday night. This morning I noticed that I wasn't getting any Cellular anymore. Texting and calling was still fine, but Cellular wasn't. Now before you say, "You updated yesterday not today." If it stopped working yesterday I wouldn't have known since I was on wifi until today. Since that was the main change that happened between then, I suspect the update is what did it. Things I've tried: Rebooting and shutting down then turning my phone on. Resetting the APN settings. Manually entering APN settings that I've found on the internet that are for T-Mobile. Selecting different network operators like Telus or Roger instead. Switching to 2G only or 2G/3G. Turning mobile data off and on again. Turning data roaming off and then on again. Taking the SIM card out and then putting it back in. None of it worked. I also noticed that in my SIM status it says under Service State: Voice: In Service / Data: In Service. It also says under Cellular network type 4G. However, under Cellular network state it says Disconnected. Also, I can't just downgrade back to OxygenOS 3.5.6, partly because I really don't want to since that would require backups and flashing, and partly because I can't yet since I didn't bring a laptop with me to Canada so it's impossible. Do any of you have any idea?

Introduction: Sup LTT! I swear every time my buddy finds his way over here we spend a couple days just nerding out to the max. Projects that aren't even on our table just spontaneously happen. This time is no exception, woke up with no intention of screwing around with the LTE modem for this place but now we've built & spent all day testing two different satellite dish based boosters. The only empirical data we could gather through this process was my modem's status page which gave us Signal Strength in dBm & then a Signal Quality rating as well. Though after a day spent trying all sorts of crazy things, watching those two numbers constantly, and trying to handle this in a scientific manner we've came up with some killer results. Night and day difference! Technically speaking, maybe this is all occurring for reasons we don't properly understand. Though the signal strength/quality gain is hard to argue with & it's noticeably faster for everybody across the network, so I'd call that a win. The Setup: This location is out in the middle of national forest, the closest cell tower is roughly five miles away. Forget power so everything is ran off generators / batteries. Options for decent internet out here are super limited, I've tried all the satellite internet options available, of which they all suck terrible ass. Finally I got temp phones with all the carriers that had towers around the area & just started speed testing the crap out of them. This worked so well in comparison to anything else I'd tried that I bought MOFI4500-4GXeLTE-V2's for all my locations, got unlimited data plans, and said welcome to the LTE revolution. Now these things are pretty cool they've got lots of neat features & run OpenWRT. As I mentioned in stevenkan's 4G/LTE hotspot thread, their customer service is absolutely terrible, plus their is $40 chinese versions of these exact models out there already. So I don't want to sound like a mofi fanboi even though I have enjoyed using their equipment so far. Previous owners of the property had satellite television & left a dish attached to a cement block outside. Plus I still had a dish left over from trying out satellite internet options, one they never picked up or wanted back. Looking around this morning after having coffee we found this lovely guide; DIY 4G LTE Yagi Antenna in 10 Steps for $10 which was very inspiring. Though I tell you what, I don't have any of that gear, am out in the middle of no where for the holiday weekend, & am not driving the two+ hours back to the closest town to find those parts. Regardless if it's ten bucks or not, time & gas alone says no. So we started thinking what we could do that would have any effect at all. So we used Antenna Search.com to find the exact location of the only tower around & started moving the modem all over the place. Got the ladder out & tried mounting it to the roof on the second floor, sitting it in all the window seals, moving electronics, etc. The signal strength would range from -105 through -110 dBm & the quality would jump around like crazy but generally average from 15-20. Outside the numbers it just lists this generically as "poor signal quality" in the modem status page. So we went out and took the dishes off both the old dish system & the old internet system. The when mounted them to studio lighting & green screen poles. Technically these are from Linco & are their 10ft editions. Not really sure what we were doing we used zip ties as a quick an easy solution to mounting things since we could undo them in a heart beat. We also tried to find other guides on the internet for people who have done this, most of which range widely in quality, generally on the terrible side. Most people that seemed more educated suggested mimicking the distance & angles perfectly from how the dish was originally used so we made sure to attempt that first before moving basically every piece possible into every possible position then watching for a while to see if the signal numbers improved at all. This was a day long process, we didn't want to act to quickly on anything though we also learned A LOT along the way. Whole lot of reinventing the wheel and just being noobs going on as curiosity truly was the name of the day. I kept taking pictures but in low light situations my phone did not do that well, I'll be sure to include them though so everybody can see how we progressed. Interesting Notes: The smaller television dish is actually a horizontal oval, we kept kidding it was the 16:9 dish. Though it was also more concave then the internet dish. Much lighter and easier to work with that's for sure. The receiver on it actually had three points laid out horizontal that matched the wider surface area of the dish. This turned out to be important later on while we were trying to get the two cellular antennas perfectly aligned for each dish's nuances. On the other hand the internet dish was easily three inches larger on the left and right plus was an actual circle so much wider top to bottom. Though it was almost flat in shape & it was used with a single receiver pointed right at the center of the dish. The weight of this unit actually made it much harder to move around & test, plus when fully extended ten feet into the air it wobbled pretty concernedly. It was so much harder to try and get the antennas aligned on this dish as well, the signal quality through the whole day was just worse no matter what we did, how we mounted things, or prayed to the cellular gods. At the end of the day after slowly testing everything we could in different locations, adding wood blocks to change tilt, you name it. We started to see some pretty common themes that greatly impacted performance & ones that hindered it to laughable conditions. Finishing the day out with the smaller TV dish about five feet off the ground pointing out a glass door. We would also take our cell phones with apps like Network Signal Info & see if we couldn't boost them as well, which we could. So it was a decent second and third device to have around for playing with during the performance verification steps of each stage of what we were trying to do. I asked if he had any comments for this post & he said that he was really surprised with how precise you have to be & how much tiny amounts of movement mattered to overall signal quality. Getting the antennas to work with the dish is moving everything tiny amounts until you hit just the right spot. At that, he also said, it was neat even with the modem's slow status page poll rates you could see almost immediately when you found the sweet spot. Jumping on that point it was amazing to me as well. If you put the whole rig ten feet in the air and slowly worked it down inch by inch you'd find a huge different between say 7'6" and 7'. I didn't really expect that myself given I'd just been screwing these units into the ceilings / walls of places & walking away pretty happy. The Results: We managed to gain +10 dBm on our signal strength & +10 on the signal quality as well. Though one of the biggest differences is it just doesn't jump around like crazy. It use to spike left and right, no stability. Now it just sits at -98 / -10 with slight changes over time, mainly to the quality rating not the strength. Inside the software this took it from two bars of connectivity at a "poor" rating, to three bars at a "fair" rating. The entire network is considerably snappier & our speed test latency dropped about 25% on average. (from around 100ms to 75ms) Overall for something that cost no money & has no power going to it I'd say that's a massive win. Plus now it's all mobile! I can take this thing with me to other locations. Spin it, raise it, lower it, change it's pitch, completely aim it wherever I need to. Should make finding that sweet spot much easier in the future, plus just knowing WTF we're doing probably helps as well. Was a neat project for the day, sure it could've been done faster but we really wanted to see what would happen if we tested basically every possible outcome. The Winning Idea: Both Attempts Side By Side: Zip Tie Mounting FTW: Final Positioning & Working Version:

Good afternoon, everyone! I just received a brand new Dell Venue 10 Pro 5056 tablet. I have updated to all of the latest drivers and firmware, inserted my compatible SIM card, checked with my network provider, and I don't see the option to connect to a cellular network. Any ideas?

Is there a website or app that will download but not store data on my iPhone. Thanks in advance.

I didn't know where else to post this so I'll drop it here. At school I unearthed a Dell Latitude E6250 that had been stripped for parts and stowed away in catacombs of the IT closet. After blowing off the dust and installing an HDD and RAM I found out it had a SIM card, making it a 3G capable machine. The school has said they're gonna toss it in the next wave of laptop replacements coming soon and that if they do need to purge the laptop I could take it. However, ow that it's out I'm allowed to experiment with it. I'm aware the laptop supports 3G (has an AT&T SIM in it) but since the 3G network has been gutted and cannibalized for the 4G and 4G LTE networks, I have a feeling that even if it did get activated it would be slow as hell. However, Dell has a part out, the DW5800 that belongs in higher-ranking E6** (owo) ranking laptops (the software contains the name and the systems supporting the chip here) that can connect to 4G and 4G LTE networks (this chip came out around the time Verizon was pushing it, so this little part was pretty landmark and had some press around it, plenty of articles online about it). My question is, since all it really is is a mini PCI card, is it possible to install it or an equivalent card to get 4G LTE on this laptop? ...and before you ask why, just know yes this is a really stupid idea but at this point I kinda want to do it and if not actually go through with it I just want to see if it's possible.

I'm not completely sure whether this is the right thread to post this topic. So, please let me know if I'm mistaken. Anyway I have a old 3G mobile dongle lying around that I haven't used in years but I'm curious to know if there is way to use it to make phone calls directly from PC. Thanks in advance! P.S. I use windows 10 and the model number of the dongle is Huawei E173u-1

What is the "house" icon with the bars on my Galaxy S10? It appears when I'm at the same geographic locations, but does it mean I'm connected to like a cellular network extender? Or VoLTE / Wifi Calling?

Currently the setup at my house is extremely slow and expensive satellite internet- about 500kbps up/down with datacaps for 100GB/month for around $200USD/month. Obviously very not fun. I've been looking into other alternatives, and I decided to take a look at cellular. The service is very bad, and we usually can attain one bar standing next to a third-floor window. Recently I've read online of people experimenting using satellite dishes, pointed at the nearest cell tower in order to increase cellular service stability, and then using that for internet. I'm imagining that would basically involve getting one of those cellular USB internet things, setting it up with the dish and trying to get the dish pointed at the tower. This seems feasible and I know I have an extra dish lying around somewhere, but I'm wondering if there will actually be any sort of improvement if the connection is so spotty in the first place. Perhaps instead of the dish this would be easier with a simple cellular booster, but I'm not sure how much the connection would actually improve with that, and if it would be better/worse than with a dish. Another alternative would be to use the setup in Linus's 12KM wifi video, set up a dish somewhere at a friends house within service range, get that connected to local, more powerful cellular, and beam that using the dish setup to my house. Problem with that is I'm not sure how expensive it would be, and the treeline would be difficult for the connection to navigate. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with either of the two methods described above, or knows if the first method is something that sounds technically double and is something that could work. I'm really desperate for internet solutions here as having such speeds for such a price sucks. EDIT: This isn't in the US/Canada.

source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9994/windows-10-mobile-has-a-cellular-data-eating-bug a MS employee answered on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsphone/comments/41vp6x/help_system_is_eating_my_data_plan_and_i_dont/ you can turn off app backup in Backup: Settings, Update & Security, Backup, “More options” you can disable automatic backups across the board, or just individually select the apps you don’t want to backup anymore at least their "excuse" is that's a BETA and "stuff happens"

Trying to figure out exactly how internet connection bonding works, and if it would be a viable ADSL replacement in my area. Right now the fastest available wired connection is 10/1 unlimited for ~$80 from Telus. I get an average of 36/8 on Telus Mobility. Rogers also has LTE in the area, and has a 100GB flex plan for $145/month. Assuming Rogers has speeds similar to Telus, and that I can figure this bonding thing out, the biggest bill I could get would be ~$300. Theoretical speeds would be 72/16, with 200GB of available bandwidth. Acceptable and within budget. Future option would be to add an ADSL connection and configure the bonding system to only use the mobile connections for certain things such as live streaming, uploading media, etc. Anybody have a good starting point material they can recommend?

I recently got an iPhone 6 for my b-day and I love it. It has lte and will show on the top of screen when not connected to wi-fi, but when not connected to wi-fi I can call people, but cannot use safari or any internet apps. It will give me the message you are not subscribed to a cellular data servive. Is this an issue or something that needs to be set up in AT&T?

Just walking in downtown Bangkok, Thailand. Pull the phone up and run speedtest and got this... Since unlimited data unlimited speed plan start at $30 a month here, probably cancel my fiber soon...

What carrier do you use, I am curious.