Issues with HUAWEI CPE win

JayLanx

Casual Member

Hi guys.I’ve got a pretty special scenario at a building of mine. It’s an industrial unit, metal clad. We’re ages from the telephone exchange, no fibre, struggled for years for connectivity. And 4g isn’t great.Recently there was a new Three UK 5g mast installed, it’s only 270metres away, direct line of sight with out roof, not our walls. We’re below the mast in a hillside so our walls are retaining walls.I’m on a three business tariff with 10 sims from three.So, my iPhone 13 receives 750/800mbps down and 150 or so up when I’m on my roof. So great I thought, I’ll get a 5g router. For years, at another site I’ve had great success with HUAWEI b818 4g+ router that’s been bridge mode’d over to to my network. So I thought I’d do the same here but on 5g.I didn’t want to mess around with external antennas as I’ve never had much luck with them and found them worse than the internal antennas. So that’s what led me on to a Huawei CPE win. It’s a self contained outdoor unit that’s Poe powered. So Today was the day I managed to get on the roof, run the cables and install the unit. (I’ve had this unit over 6 months and it’s been such a challenge to get on the roof, that’s why it’s taken a while)So I triple check the best location for speed, and I’m getting a solid 700Mbps+ everywhere(on my iPhone whilst testing locations). Again, direct line of sight, no obstacles in the way, less than 300metres. I installed it, set it up in bridge mode to my Unifi gear and started some speed tests.Wow I was shocked, 30mbps if I’m lucky. 4g isn’t the best where we are, and it looks like I’ve got an issue where it’s only connecting to 4g.I tried huactrl on an android emulator (only only got a mac and an iPhone) and I tried h monitor on parallels on my mac. I tried to force it to 5g only but had no luck.I Got a friend set up in a different location with a huawei cpe pro 2 on three and he’s just tossed that in a terrible location, and he gets 500 mbps easily. And we don’t even know where the mast is near him. I’m a bit gutted I’ve got direct line of sight with the cpe win and I’m not getting anything.I can’t go on cellmapper as I can’t see any data for 5g masts in my area.Any advice guys? I might see if I can get a cheap android phone and try and get some better mast/cell/band data.I might see if I can borrow my mates cpe pro2 and see if that’s any better. After some reading today it seems I might be missing some bands on the cpe win? Really gutted as I paid over £550 for the cpe win. You’d think a poxy iPhone wouldn’t have a better antenna/modem than a purpose built expensive 5g router.Thanks.