External antenna for internet air

Hi there, obi_ron. Great question about an external antenna with AT&T Internet Air. We can answer that.

In short, the answer is no. The reason why is that the AT&T Internet Air All-Fi hub has the antenna built in. Since AT&T Internet Air is AT&T Internet powered by AT&T Wireless it has already will know what tower is the best location for you.

Located in the aforementioned hyperlinked article, there is a video that best explains how to self-installl your service, as well it gives you some troubleshooting steps.

If you have misplaced your physical self-install instructions, you can find them again by using the pdf file locaked in the self-install hyperlink we hav provided.

If there is anything else that we can do for you, please let us know.

Thank you for reaching out to AT&T.

Matthew, AT&T Community Specialist

The reason I ask is because I am in a rural area and my house is surrounded by trees.  I currently have dsl, and according to the search my address is covered by internet air - just not convinced I would have an adequate  connection with internet air.

It's a good question to ask, and I WISH the answer from AT&T was YES.  I also live in a rural area where I have AT&T Fixed Wireless Internet that works great with it's external antenna.  I tried the Internet Air service this past summer since it promised faster speeds and a lower price and no monthly data cap, but the signal inside the house was borderline at best.  It was actually slower than my Internet Air in all cases, and periodically thru the day the signal would drop entirely leaving us with no service at all.  Not a viable option to work from home, if the service isn't stable.  AT&T, please figure out a way to boost the signal for Internet Air if you truly intend it to replace Fixed Wireless.

The fact is if AT&T wants Air to be a viable product for rural use they MUST provide the ability to use external antennas at some point, and the hub is something they can alter fairly easily to provide for external antenna jacks and usage as well. 

The facility for external antennas already exists inside on the internal circuit boards, all they need to do is change the external casing to allow for that ability. 

So thought I would chime in...while the answer for EASY addition of adding a external antenna is NO...meaning does it have an external built-in port via back of HUB where the USB/Ethernet 1G/10G etc are located & where it'd be a so called  simple plug n' play is again NO... Internally it's a different subject. Much like the older T-Mobile gateways didn't include the ability to easily add an external antenna.

In order to add an antenna to the Air HUB- it must be done internally... meaning you have to take the shell off & there's adapters that you have to get w/whichever antenna your purchasing and it's done from the inside much like the older T-Mobile gateways. You can find the stuff easily available online. It's not too difficult, it doesn't require extensive knowledge. Just easy to follow a tutorials via video or reading and making sure you get the right stuff. Obviously there's different recommendation for antennas(such as bi/omni-directional) and these are external antennas obviously and that's the benefit as a pulling a signal from outside and bringing them into your home versus being in your home & obstructed by walls(the big downside). 5G can offer up to gigabytes fees but they're also diminished by walls, paper, trees or tree leaves the smallest little interference will peg down your 1-2GB speeds(or more) to essentially meager 4G, which still can be good but why not get the best if you can.

Like the first commenter to your question mentioned-there's a lot of great tech in the HUBS such as finding which is the best tower etc but there're still limitations and they're great limitations which come with a lot of drawbacks that can out way to pros. Most times in order to connect to a new tower you're having to refresh the HUB by disconnecting/unplugging for 10 seconds and letting it do its thing and even then it may connect to the same tower or You may be stuck on their app moving it around to one of many locations in your house trying to find that tower. And then you may find out a week later that's how it's not good anymore because it's over saturated, this may not apply to you if you're not in a dense area but a rural area.. so any benefit we can achieve from a stronger antenna and well pulling stronger signal etc & IMHO is well worth it.

Also, It's not like when you purchase a DSL/Cable package and you're limited or speed capped to what it can provide IE: $80/M for upto 300MBS/DL & upto 60MBS/UP, we don't suffer those constraints because 5G and 4G speeds can be massive even though it's not hardlined and it's a "meager" cell/data service internet. I cannot clarify or verify for that matter if any damages are to be done, cracking up the Air HUB would violate any warranty of sorts. Best of luck 

There are no internal connections for an external antenna so I'd advise not to attempt to open up the AirFi hub and try to jerry-rig one. Doing so will definitely void the warranty. This issue is coming up quite often in rural areas where proper location of the AirHub is essential. Facing the towers and as high up (on a shelf or something) as is possible would be something to try.

Yes, the same solutions are to place as high as possible & using the app to face the best direction to tower. I get that and I'm certain many others do as it's the instructed way to set-up the device. However, I must disagree with you when you state- There's no way to connect an external antenna. As I mentioned doing so is not plug and play, so yes it is jerry-rigged and has to be done by opening the Air HUB. It is possible. It's not hard. And it works. If you don't believe, please just look into what's available to be done. I mean to disrespect. I don't encourage it. I'm simply answering the OG question that was asked. 

@RepsRslick  AT&T's femtocells (the discontinued MicroCell and the new Cell Booster) have connections for external GPS antennas. But opening them up automatically voided the warranty as there are "clips" inside that notify AT&T that the devices have been tampered with. I don't know if the AirHub has the same sort of "tamper mechanism" inside or not. It would stand to reason that it does but not having opened one up, like I did with the femtocells I can't check.  The Air-Hub may indeed have that capability for future use but have it currently disabled, or a simple jerry-rig will work if one wants to take the chance and mess around inside. However I do believe that it will cause issues and is not worth it because AT&T won't replace it. At least not for free. It's totally up the customer if they want to attempt it but is something that I would not recommend.