How to improve your slow home 4G WiFi speeds.
Whether your ISP is Dialog, SLT or Mobitel – this solution will help you.
Has slow 4G broadband speeds (especially during this WFH time) made you want to call customer support and cry uncontrollably? If yes, keep reading, this is for you.
Before I start enabling you to watch 4K TikTok compilations with no buffering time, there are a few things to know when it’s come to 4G internet.
Improving your 4G internet speed mainly depends on 3 factors:
1. How close you are to a 4G compatible tower (RSRP)
2. How much interference there is between you and the tower (SINR & RSRQ)
3. What kind of WiFi router you are using
In this post, we’ll be talking mainly about the first 2 points – as those will make the most significant difference in your internet speed.
If you’re interested in understanding more technical details,
Currently, you might be just placing your router wherever you get the most bars that light up on your device – however when it comes to raw speed, how much interference there is between your device and the tower, plays a much larger role.
First things first: get an app that showcases the stats you need, so you can take a decision.
1. Download this HManager APK on your android device (iPhone users, you can try this)
Download didn’t work? Try these:
Mirror 1 (Dropbox)
Mirror 2 (MediaFire)
2. Once installed, make sure you’re connected to your 4G WiFi and open the app up
3. You’ll now see a screen such as below, where information from what band you are currently connected to; to your data usage will be displayed.
The numbers we will be mostly looking at are the dB values next to the RSRP, RSRQ and SINR fields.
The next steps are simple – spend the next 30 minutes (or 2 hours, if you’re like me) testing out multiple new locations, antenna angles and orientations for your router.
Remember, there are probably multiple different cell towers around your house that you could potentially connect to, so don’t limit yourself to just moving your router a couple of feet around on your bedroom window. My advice is to test every location where you have a plug point.
Your starting goal will be to find the best spot for your device where the RSRP, RSRQ and SINR all will have excellent values – as detailed by this chart:
HOWEVER – your no. 1 priority will be to find the location where you can get the highest SINR value possible.
The higher this value, the less interference you will have between your device and the cell tower. This will result in the best possible throughput for your down/upload bandwidth.
Again, it doesn’t matter if you don’t see excellent numbers under RSRP (distance from cell tower), as you can technically achieve maximum speeds even with a value as low as -90dBm.
Here’s the difference changing locations from low SINR to high SINR made for me:
As you can see, I technically had ‘full signal bars’ in both screenshots, however, the improvement to my SINR (higher value means less interference) more than tripled my download speed.
And that’s it! Drop a comment if this helped you speed up your 4G WiFi, with a screenshot of your (hopefully improved) internet speed.
TL;DR –
Don’t just go by the signal indicators on your router when deciding on the best location for your device. A location with higher SINR and only 3/5 bars will have a much higher impact on your dload/upload speeds than a location with low SINR and 5/5 bars.
Can’t download the apk in this time. Why
What’s the error you get? Link works for me.
EDIT: We’ve just replaced the link to a direct host as opposed to the Gdrive link previously. Should work now!
Link Doesn’t work mate.
The APK? Others seem to be able to download without an issue. Let me know exactly what’s the error you face and we’ll try to help.
EDIT: Try the 3 new mirrors.
This use ful thank you
You’re welcome!
App does not identify my dialog router. Works fine with the slt any idea why???
What is the model of the dialog router? This particular app only works with Huawei routers. For other brands, you can check these same values via the router’s configuration page (Which you can access by visiting 192.168.8.1).
The link doesn’t work. A blank page opens and closes itself immediately. Nothing gets downloaded. Link doesn’t lead anywhere.
Are you sure you don’t have the file in your downloads? It should auto-download when the link is clicked.
I have added 3 new mirrors for the APK file. Please try those instead!
Wow. Excellent content. Keep them coming
Thanks Chinthaka!
Is it Support to ADSL
Unfortunately, this fix is only applicable for 4G routers/connections.
This article definitely helped. I have added the results of my testing in URL below. I was getting around ~5Mbps recently. After moving the router to a correct place I am getting around ~25Mbps with burst speed up to 30Mbps.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ezi9m9DK5PXGz6wA8
Thanks a lot and I am really glad I didn’t listen to the Dialog technical guys who visited and checked my router and connection.
(If anybody is wondering I was advised to upgrade to a leased line / fibre line connection which I assume is more expensive for the same capacity in my current connection. They just checked if I was getting full signal and did a speed test. Since the ping was low and I was getting around 6Mbps at the time, they said they can’t take any action because its above their guaranteed speed of 4Mbps)
Awesome! Glad to hear this worked so well for you ☺️
I’ve also heard the same ‘unless your speed is lower than 4Mbps, there is nothing to fix’ excuse.
My latest test result after moving my router to a better stable position. (Previous test results were temporary since my ethernet cable wasn’t long enough to permanently fix the position)
https://www.speedtest.net/result/10406426252.png
So after following this guide my download speed pretty much went from ~6Mbps to ~28Mbps to ~52Mbps. And the 52Mbps is during peak hours 😁. That’s a solid 8 times speed boost.
@TechYak whoever you are, you are a definite game changer and a life saver 🙏😊
That’s great man! What were you initial SINR values? And the values you got after relocating?
My initial SINR value was showing up between 0 – 5dB (always poor and I could barely see the red horizontal bar) and RSRQ was around -10dB (average, yellow bar).
Now SINR is between 12 – 16dB (fluctuating between average and good) and RSRQ is around -3dB (excellent, green bar).
In both cases RSRP was around -69dB (excellent, green bar)
Nicee, that’s exactly the difference I was supposed would happen when writing this! Same RSRP but large difference in other two.
Copy download link and paste in to new tab then download will start
Do I need to change any of the router configurations through the Admin portal? I am using an SLT router btw.
Not necessarily. But if you know your details you can go ahead and add it. What brand router are you using? Huawei?
Isn’t this applicable for DIALOG 4G MOBILE DATA?
This entire article stems around location of a physical router – so unfortunately it will not be a practical fix for mobile data as your smartphone will move around quite often!
can we higher our upload speed on dialog ???????? plzzz tell me
You used to be able to get upload speeds similar to mobile data on Dialog by changing the default TDD B40 band to a mobile FDD B3. But recent testing shows Dialog seems to have disabled this option on Home Broadband SIMs.
You might want to consider switching to Mobitel 4G, as they don’t throttle upload speeds.
Thanks for sharing. I have an zte dongle so not working sadly. 😞
Any tips for using on Windows?
Will this work for 4G mobile data as well, especially since I use hotspot?
Theoretically, yes. But practically, no – since your phone will not be in a static location, making the SINR fluctuate.
If you can ensure you rarely move your phone when you are using it for hotspot, then should be fine!
Hi, Will there be an improvement to SINR if I install an external Yagi antenna?