DIY 5G mast and finally superfast South Wales

I spotted a tiny patch of 5G coverage on my phone, just the other side of the old railway bridge behind my house. Wow! 100+ whole megabits per second! Could I somehow tap that to improve the speeds at home, where we used a 4G router? Let’s find out.

Firstly, the router would need to be updated. The old one is a Huawei 4G B535 which has been fine with a Three unlimited SIM in it. These ZTE 5G outdoor POE boxes are widely available refurbished for around £200, some branded Three. I think they were used by Three in some installs? Anyway, that works.

Power over Ethernet is cool, so no need for a second cable, just needed an outdoor extender and a POE switch indoors - this TP-Link 8 port gigabit POE one was perfect. A bit of outdoor ethernet cable, and a feed through the airbrick and that was connected up. The old Huawei was fine for a wifi hub. Bosh, all connected: Speedtest says ~100 mbps.

Add on a couple of dumb mediaconverters either end of the 70m fibre I had just trenched down to the cabin, another 8 port switch and we have wifi in there too at ~100mbps with another wifi box - more cheap TP-Link kit, a POE access point in this case. Quite happy (apart from the POE in that box not working with the same standard as POE on the switch… what?).

Finally, I mounted the 5G box on a larch pole, secured to an oak tree, just peeking out beside the road and railway bridge. You can barely see it, I hope.