{"id":7351,"date":"2026-08-21T14:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=7351"},"modified":"2026-08-22T08:25:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T07:25:22","slug":"enhanced-mobile-broadband-backup-for-fttp-internet-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=7351","title":{"rendered":"Enhanced Mobile Broadband Backup for FTTP Internet Connection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During another occasion where the FTTP Broadband Internet connection was offline for a significant period (on this occasion it was two full weeks, when one of the Openreach telegraph poles was severely damaged in a vehicle collision) my thoughts turned to improving the integrity of the backup 4G Mobile Broadband data link. The FTTP connection is generally very reliable but the overhead sections of fibre are vulnerable to storm (or vehicle) damage – and whenever there are issues the repairs seem to take a couple of weeks to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While my policy is very firmly to favour locally-hosted (rather than Cloud-hosted) solutions for home automation, CCTV etc. there are some IoT devices for which the loss of Internet connectivity causes issues so it is convenient (but not essential) to maintain some level of Internet connectivity while the FTTP connection is unavailable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people rely on a USB ‘dongle’ to receive Mobile Broadband but those typically don’t include a very effective antenna (and don’t provide good options for connecting a better one) – plus they rely on the device they’re plugged into to have suitable device drivers available. I’ve had much better results with a dedicated ‘gateway’ device and have been using a Teltonika TRB140 Router Board<\/a> (described as a “compact industrial 4G(LTE) gateway”) for about 3 years now. This presents its Internet network connection via a Gigabit Ethernet port and has a coaxial SMA connector supporting a wide range of different antenna options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The enhancement I’ve just implemented is to swap from having the TRB140 located inside the House, on the second floor (right next to the network router) connected to a simple Omni-Directional antenna (a Poynting OMNI-280<\/a>) to having the TRB140 located outside the Outbuildings, inside a Directional antenna enclosure (a QuWireless QuMax A140M-A<\/a>) which is pointing straight at the 4G cell tower (directly visible about 1km away). This has significantly improved the 4G signal reception, resulting in faster and less variable ‘ping’ times. While there’s now a much longer Ethernet cable connecting the TRB140 to the network router, that has no impact on performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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QuWireless A140M-A Directional Antenna enclosure containing Teltonika TRB140 4G Gateway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

(The larger square enclosure at the top of the pole is the QuWireless antenna; the smaller rectangular enclosure below it is an unrelated Ubiquiti WiFi transceiver, not yet connected)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One new issue encountered while relying on this backup connection during the most recent outage is that some of the Outbuildings’ IoT devices failed to connect to their servers when using the ‘Three’ mobile network:<\/p>\n\n\n\n