Using LTE as internet access in rural areas

Have you ever been in the countryside and have seen something like this?

And do you want to change it to something like this?

Then this post might be for you. Recently, my dad asked if I couldn’t improve the internet speed to our house and make it possible to watch TV channels through internet because Viasat (local satellite TV, which costs approx 22 EUR to show some channels) is kind of expensive and is a pain in the ass to configure correctly yourself if you want to connect to Sirius (satellite connection, which is used mainly in Latvia). And, it was also problematic to have good internet at home. So, basically, some things needed to change. To be fair, you could connect to the internet and see most of the channels on the internet for a cheaper price.  (Netflix, or TV3play for local channels) So, I made some improvements.

I bought

• Cat5E outdoor Ethernet wire (305m)
• 2 Xiaomi mi aiot router ac2350 (the cheapest thing I saw for wireless. plus, 6 antennas really work great. at first, I thought that 1 device won’t go through 2 walls. in the end, it was good enough to go through 2 walls, with 2.4Ghz Wifi, and gave about 20 Mbps connection for device)
• RJ45 connectors for outdoors (100 pieces, could do with normal ones, but, whatever)
• LDF series Mikrotik
• Router board CRS112-8P-4S-IN (it has Power over Ethernet (PoE), and it can help to power the LDF series gadget. plus, if needed, surveillance cameras)  In total, in Latvia, it cost about 570 Euros to do this. Plus, a pre-paid SIM  card (Zelta Zivtiņa, costs around 2.49 EUR) to have internet free for 1 week.

How to set up

first of all, you need to log in to your LDF series device and set APN. In my example, I needed to create an APN (Zelta zivtiņa access point)

And you needed to configure your pin (which is found on your pre-paid card), Bands, IP address, DHCP range e.c.

after that, you’re basically done with the LTE device. ( you need to connect to 3,7, 20, 40 bands, at least in Latvia) And… you really don’t need to set anything on the CRS (if you don’t need additional settings for IoT devices) The thing why I bought CRS is because of PoE ports. For this device, if you get the 57V power cord, you can power more or less all Ethernet surveillance cameras you want. (and add something like zoneMinder later). Plus The CRS now powers the LTE device, and I don’t need additional wire to power it. So… basically, you can spend 10 Eur a month ( you need to pay 2.49 per week for ZZ) for unlimited internet.

• and have a pretty decent internet connection.
• And you can watch Netflix at 4K with a decent speed and mostly no problems/stutter. (plus, of course, youtube e.c. with no problems)
• and watch most of the local TV stations in Latvia for 4.99 Eur (TV3Play).

After all of this, you can…

• Add VPN support that you can connect remotely (a built-in feature for Mikrotik)
• add a surveillance system ( a bit expensive, buy a great feature)
• add VLANs to separate IoT things from other things

For a bare-bone system, you would only need the Mikrotik LDF head, long enough Ethernet wire and you should be fine + a sim card for internet and satellite dish. (approx. less than 200 EUR). This will work well enough if you target your internet provider’s tower correctly.

References

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDjn5bL_S78
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_c-nWK18NM (best material how to set it up )

There are a lot of improvements to have, but this is nice to have/create. This project was pretty fun.