It’s doubtful that mindsets will change overnight, but getting broadband into your home or business no longer means sticking to a wired provider. With 5G on the horizon, the mobile networks are poised to take a substantial slice of the market – potentially delivering faster speeds in more places.

As an example, those living in rural and remote parts of the UK are stuck with either slow, expensive or laggy broadband because they’re too far from the local exchange. As an example, BT Openreach recently gave a massive quote of £502,586 to upgrade a sub-1Mbps internet connection in Cockermouth, Cumbria, which was already costing £70 every month.

David Roberts working on his laptop

The potential customer, David Roberts, refused to pay the amount and continued on with his expensive and slow connection instead. A BT spokesman told us at the time that..

His property is several kilometres away from our nearest usable network, which means significant civil engineering, build and cabling work is needed to provide a connection.

So, sniffing an opportunity, specialist internet service provider, 4G Internet, got in touch with David to offer him a solution – internet via 4G.

Now sure, I know what you’re thinking. If you’re in such a remote spot then chances are that you’ll have no 4G connection on your phone either. However, if you’re in an area like this, their engineers will fit a small high gain directional 4G antenna to the outside of your property. Once correctly aligned and installed, this latches onto available 4G signals, boosts them and pipes them down to the 4G router inside.

This means that a relatively weak 4G signal becomes a strong one, and – via the WiFi router which is fed from the antenna – you get much better connectivity.

4G Internet visited Mr and Mrs Roberts’ home and succeeded in connecting them via the 4G mobile network instead of relying on BT’s underperforming copper landline connection. The couple are now accessing speeds between 11 and 14 Mbps – at least ten times better than they had previously. The entire bespoke installation process, which costs under £400, also involved the professional fitting of an external 4G antenna and took just one day to complete.

The company does unlimited plans at £39.99 per month and you just need to pay for a 4G router and / or an antenna if there’s only a weak 4G signal.

David Roberts told us…

My wife and I had no idea we could access the internet through a mobile phone signal and we were initially sceptical that it would work. Since the installation we are now able to watch TV and movies from streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime with no buffering and without losing the signal altogether.

Head to 4G Internet for more information.

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Head to Sky Mobile right now and you can bag yourself a half-price deal right now on their 30GB monthly plans.

Going live from 8:30 today, there’s also 50% off select Sky TV Packages when you take Sky Signature(£25 a month) on an 18-month contract and they’ve also got 30% off their Sky Broadband Superfast internet – now £25 a month.

Back to the mobile deal though, and that 50% off includes any phone, even the iPhone 12 range. In addition there’s a deal on the Samsung Galaxy S20 5G – £38 per month for 30GB of data.

Sky, which operates on the O2 network, also has an 8GB data plan from £8 per month as a SIM only offer.

Head to the Sky.com website for more info.

The post Sky Mobile – 50% off 30GB plans for Black Friday is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Available on the Vodafone VOXI brand, a new “For now” plan delivers unlimited 5G-ready data, minutes and texts for six months for a mere £10 a month. It’s available until January 31st 2021 and is ideal for job seekers during these testing times.

To be eligible, you’ll need to be in receipt of either Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance or employment based Universal Credit. Just upload an image of the Universal Credit statement or a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions via the VOXI website. You’ll then be instantly verified, meaning that you can go ahead and purchase the plan. There’s no credit check and no contract to sign.

The VOXI job seekers deal would normally cost £35 per month, so this is a significant saving.

Nick Jeffery, CEO, Vodafone UK, told us..

We want to provide financial relief to those people most in need at this incredibly difficult time. And we want to make sure those people keep connected, because we know how vital that is – vital to finding new work, and vital to good mental health.

In addition, NHS workers and vulnerable customers can also enjoy unlimited mobile data until the same date. It’s available to existing customers who redeemed the original Vodafone offer back in April.

The post Unlimited voice and data for job seekers. Only £10. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

You may have accidentally left your phone on during a flight and, if you’re a geek like me, you may have spotted that sometimes – for a brief moment – you get a mobile signal.

Even 7 miles up, your phone can lock onto the odd network mast as you fly over countries. I’ve accidentally had queued text messages sent this way, and yes – it works.

So… how about doing that in reverse?

Well, that’s what the guys at Cambridge Consultants are planning, and they already have Deutsche Telekom on board and funding the project. Working in conjunction with Stratospheric Platforms Limited (SPL), it’s a wireless antenna unlike anything seen before. Put simply, it (currently) involves sticking high-capacity 5G mobile masts into a fleet of “High Altitude Platforms” – currently these are planes, with test flights being conducted in Bavaria using a H3Grob 520 aeroplane which is remotely piloted and flies at 45,000ft.

However, the end goal is to deploy a fleet of zero emissions HAP aircraft at around 65,000 feet (that’s a smidgen higher than Concorde used to fly at), flying effectively in hold patterns for more than a week at a time.

Each “HAP” plane will provide coverage over an area of up to 140 kilometres (87 miles) in diameter. That would remove the need for hundreds of “normal” 5G masts on the ground. A planned fleet of around 60 HAPs could blanket the whole of the United Kingdom with speedy 5G connectivity.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t this all a bit… mad? A bit .. costly?

One “HAP” pushing 5G to everything in the M25

Well, first you’ve got to consider how many mobile masts are needed to keep our phones going. As an example, here in the UK, Vodafone have 21,000 masts. Each one needs to be built on some land or placed on a building. That costs money and a rental has to be paid. It’s somewhere between £5,000 and £11,000 depending on the location. Then there’s power. More money. Then there’s a high-capacity backhaul (fibre). Loadsa money. Cheap it isn’t.

Imagine being able to turn them all off and instead use some remotely-controlled (or, in the future, computer-controlled) aircraft using zero-emission hydrogen power. It would, according to Stratospheric Platforms Limited, “operate at a fraction of the cost of building and maintaining normal terrestrial masts and infrastructure, with minimal environmental impact”. It would completely rewrite the economics of providing mobile telephony and data.

So, the proof of concept is complete. Once fully ready, the 5G antenna will be large, powerful and lightweight. It’ll sit below the HAP measuring three square meters and will weigh around 120kg.

Best of all? Not much will change. Your current phone will connect to the 5G signal (which will be coming from above instead of alongside you), and the backhaul will be handled without thousands of complex and expensive fibre-optic links.

Imagine just how costly and difficult it currently is to cover Wales with current ground-based masts.

Stratospheric Platforms Limited tell us…

With radically cheaper costs, this new platform has the potential to connect the unconnected in the developing world, to fill gaps in coverage across the developed world and to ensure rural areas aren’t left behind anywhere across the globe. In addition, the hydrogen power system creates a long endurance, low environmental impact aircraft, with low noise, zero CO2 and zero NOx emissions.

Rollout of the first commercial service is anticipated to begin in Germany during 2024.

The clever mobile “masts in the air” will effectively be a modular design which can scale seamlessly. Within the antenna is 480 individual, steerable beams, creating patterns that can be “painted” onto the ground to cover specific areas such as roads, railway lines or towns. Here you can see that the beam has been altered so that the sea isn’t covered…

With the 5G rollout and heavy investment already happening across the UK, the big question is – will networks wait until 2024 and use this instead?

More information on StratosphericPlatforms.com.

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