3G External Antenna

[bizybeaver]

Read quite a bit on this forum, very informative. I have recently moved and found out that I can't get any sort of landline internet connection. Anyhow, I'm in a valley and 4G coverage is depicted all around me (within just several hundred feet) but I guess with the valley and lack of line of sight, I just can't get my Samsung Epic to pick up a 4G signal. However, 3G doesn't seem to be too bad, although sporadic. I've ran several dozen bandwidth speed tests and I get anywhere from 100 to 500 Kbps download and an average of consistent upload of around 150 to 200 Kbps up.

Signal strength is roughly -90 to -100 dBl, would an external antenna improve or solidify this? I guess I'm just wondering if I should go with an external antenna (omni or directional)? Seems directional is better. If I could concrete my numbers to a download of roughly 400-500 Kbps, I'd be happy with this. My only alternative is satellite, which won't work because of the extreme latency for my work.

[NickDBLG]

The Samsung Epic doesn't have an external antenna port and the passive universal antenna coupler doesn't work very well due to huge coupling losses.

In general though the surest way to determine what result an outdoor antenna would yield is to actually move the modem outdoors at the location where you would mount the antenna and do the speed test there. If you can't get significant signal strength or decent speeds there or within a few feet of that outdoor location then it's very unlikely you could benefit from hooking up an outdoor antenna (regardless of how much gain the antenna has).