Ronski is indeed right. My apologies completely if I was abrupt, emotion and tone is not conveyed well electronically. So my most sincere apologies.
When I dismissed the idea before I believed that 4G was ridiculously expensive. Also I had not thought of doing L2TP to AA. Nor had I thought of bonding/failover between 4G and DSL. Also there were problems with 4G kit being really awkward which I could not see a way past.
So I owe Ronski a great public apology. I suspect he is better informed about such things than I am.
I don’t know if things have changed, but I was shocked by seeing the recent low price for 4G. It may be that Ronski knew about these prices when I did not (my ignorance), or it may be that they are a new development.
So yes indeed we have been here before.
Back then DSL was really very reliable, with less than one fault per line per year iirc. Just recently we have had a run of faults with no end in sight and that obviously made me revisit the 4G thing. At that point I discovered to my amazement that it is extremely affordable.
As for the aerial, I am in direct line of sight to the base station across the valley from the office window. The distance is 6250m to the BT Kinloch site according to mastdata.com. So in the window all should be good. In bed with my iPad things are not so good because I am too low and to far back in the room, so my iPad switches down to 3G not 4G and gets 8Mbps downstream 2.8Mbps upstream. I am not sure what I would get with 4G in the window.mim guessing st perhaps 16Mbps d/s don’t know what upstream.
@underzone Have done this during a major outage. Also did this when in hospital. Stuck my BlackBerry Z10 phone in a window and had my iPad in bed, BB creating a wireless LAN and connecting to 3G or 4G when in Inverness. At home I have an emergency Solwise 4G to 2.4GHz 802.11n router too, with two external antennae which Mrs Weaver has buried (lost).