I live in a semi-rural community with few internet options.
T-mobile become an option so I decided to give it a shot. It's a decent price/performance option between DSL and cable internet.
As you can see I've made a fully custom hanging shelf with a piece of scrap 1/4" plywood and twine for optimal placement.
I then cracked open the unit and installed external antenna adapters. I placed a directional antenna on the roof.
I kept experiencing complete connection dropouts which became worse over time. After some research I found that other users said that the problem was the unit overheating.
I placed a 120mm fan on top. I wired up a barrel jack so it can be plugged into a normal 12v adapter and it just stays on all the time. I might clean this up and use a temperature controller in the future. It's currently held to the unit with scotch tape.
Everything has been stable for now. Maybe I'll find some more ways to tweak it to get better performance.
Are we posting botched together cellular setups? Here's mine:
Pretty much using this exact setup for about 5 years now. Didn't want to place the antenna outside so I just mounted it in my attic and zip-tied a Netgear MR1100 to it.
Ran very well for years but it's starting to show that our LTE network is simply overloaded when everyone is watching Netflix.
On the upside, I should be getting fiber in a month or two so I can finally throw this contraption out. No 5G here yet but with fiber coming soon I won't bother with the overpriced 5G modems.