@gemma10 "3g signal is crap"
Perhaps you need a colander?
In the case illustrated signal went from pretty much unusable broadband to steady several Mbps download with colander. I can't now recall but it was at least 2Mbps.
Phone taped to LNB on old sky dish resting on doormat was even better:-) but less practical and left no spare hands for photography.
The Galaxy S II has a bulge where the antennas are (I suspect) and so it was easy enough to figure out roughly how to orientate the phone in the dish.
Android has a sensitive and responsive signal strength meter in the settings menu so you do not have to rely on the almost useless "bars".
In same rural location Huawei E5332 MiFi device on same provider just works to the extent that reliable 512k BT service was discontinued in favour of the several Mbps MiFi.
Sorry about wide images, they are uploaded now and I don't have the energy to re-size them and re-upload at present.
More images a click away -
http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/y...6/P1010760.jpg
http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/y...6/P1010761.jpg
http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/y...6/P1010762.jpg