So im looking at getting a wireless rural broadband connection, i live in Miranda which is a few km southwest of kaiaua. (i can pm you exact location if you need it)


So i called vodafone to begin with and they said i was not able to get it in my area because there is a hill to the south that blocks the direct line of sight.

So then i also tried lightwire who said the same thing except they said they may be able to connect me to the tower to the north east in kaiaua. They sent a technician to do a service check and said yes they were picking up signal from kaiaua (roughly 10-15km away) and from another tower north west towards bombay/pukekohe. (not sure of distance)

Now im pretty sure i read somewhere that lightwire runs its services off a few vodafone towers. so i took a look at the celltower map and it shows that the areas that lightwire mentioned that i can connect to are vodafone towers (or theres a vodafone tower in the same position). So that leads me to think, why couldnt vodafone offer to connect me to those locations?

The person who i did talk to on the phone from vodafone didnt really seem to know what they were talking about, always having to put me on hold to refer to someone else for answers.

So my questions are:

1. So if lightwire are running through the vodafone towers at those areas, shouldnt vodafone also be able to connect me from those areas?

2. whats the max distance you can connect to a cell tower for a stable connection?

3. i know that vodafone are upgrading their towers to 4g but are other providers such as lightwire and others planning to upgrade theirs to something similar?

3. when 4g comes out whats roughly the max distance to connect to that?