CAT 6 versus CAT 18 LTE Modems

[lemondrop9344]

Even though this particular rumor is false, it does appear that some of the carriers are restricting the modems being used on their "high limit" data plans. I currently have a 400 GB/mo AT&T plan from Millenicom and was told that I couldn't use my Netgear Nighthawk because it was "too good." Rather than the Nighthawk's Cat 16 modem with 4 or 5 level carrier aggregation I was forced to select specific router with a Cat 4 modem. My assumption is that advanced modems use more network resources and the carrier wants to be able to limit resources used on low-cost, high-data-limit plans.

Interesting comment. Who told you that you could not use not use the Netgear Nighthawk, AT&T or Millenicom?
On the surface, I do not believe this is coming from AT&T as I have an AT&T plan thru a reseller & I use a CAT-18 Peplink device. When I initially acquired the plan, one was cautioned to not use more than 1000GB a month. Now there is a hard limit of 600GB a month. If you exceed that, your plan will be cancelled. This is a restriction imposed by the reseller, not AT&T.
It's a relatively easy exercise to determine if a device is certified for use by a given carrier. If the device is certified for use by AT&T on their network, that would certainly raise some BS flags regarding this 'directive' if it were me.

 

[docj]

. Who told you that you could not use not use the Netgear Nighthawk, AT&T or Millenicom?

I was told this by the guy who run s (owns?) the company. It may have something to do with the fact that the plan's APN is "accessmylan" not "broadband". It's my understanding that Access My LAN is a business unit within AT&T and I guess it's possible that its rules are different than those of AT&T itself.

It has been my understanding that a carrier can restrict network usage by the specific IMEI number of a device. That only devices with approved IMEIs can access the network or specific plans. Are you saying that this only applies at an overall network level, not on a plan by plan basis?

 

[lemondrop9344]

I was told this by the guy who run s (owns?) the company. It may have something to do with the fact that the plan's APN is "accessmylan" not "broadband". It's my understanding that Access My LAN is a business unit within AT&T and I guess it's possible that its rules are different than those of AT&T itself.

It has been my understanding that a carrier can restrict network usage by the specific IMEI number of a device. That only devices with approved IMEIs can access the network or specific plans. Are you saying that this only applies at an overall network level, not on a plan by plan basis?

docj
At this juncture, I am not convinced the carriers are sophisticated enough to have an IMEI data base per se, instead they identify the information of the base modem (like Sierra Wireless) & depending on the firmware configuration, establish connectivity. As I'm sure you are aware, there are multiple individuals that are using SIMs designed for a specific plan & they are messing with the configurations (APNs, TTL ,etc.) to achieve 'better' performance.
I also believe you recognize there are some 3rd party resellers that do not accurately represent, or, obfuscate the capabilities of the product (data plan) they are selling. It's apparent the resellers have access to a variety of plans that are not available to use mere mortals. With all that said, I checked the APN on my AT&T SIM & it's entered as 'broadband'. Hmmm!
I checked out the websites for both Millenicom & AccessMyLan (see links below). You can draw your own conclusions as to how your 400GB AT&T plan was represented by your provider.

Plans

Mobile Internet Access For home, office, or on the road. No contract. Blue Unlimited Plan $109.99/month • Unlimited High-Speed Data • Works with most routers

www.millenicom.com

AccessMyLan - M2M & SIM Card Connectivity at AT&T Business.

Let your machines work communicate effectively with M2M using AccessMyLAN from AT&T to quickly and cost-effectively extend your company’s ability to collect, track and monitor business processes.

www.business.att.com

I do appreciate this bit of information as the more knowledge we have as consumers, the better off we are. Thanks.

 

[CaptainGizmo]

This has proven to be false.

Before making a brand new post, I did a search and found this old thread. Soooo...

I wanted to share this important info that I've just confirmed after spending last couple days digging through tech posts, documents, and multiple phone calls.

T-Mobile ABSOLUTELY blocks a CAT18 modem using a normal "Tablet SIM". Even though it's "supposedly" a SIM for a tablet, and not a phone, it's not on a TRUE DATA plan, and their system will NOT allow it to connect.

Before calling T-Mobile, I had a brand new SIM card, put it into my CAT12 Transit and it instantly connected. Moved that card to the new CradlePoint IBR1700 with Dual CAT18 modems and NO GO!

Got ahold of a fantastic upper level engineer at T-Mobile, and we confirmed that it is, indeed, the plan that the "Tablet SIM" is on that causes the system to block connections from CAT18 modems.

Once he re-provisioned the card to a simple 5GB DATA plan, I was able to connect without a problem.

We did this temporarily since it didn't affect billing at all. This is only for testing and I'm not going to bump the plan up to $50/mo for only 50GB; I have other things in mind. But at least this was an answer to what's going on with newest modems and T-Mobile.

P.S. At this time, others are reporting that this type of blocking is unique to T-Mobile. I can’t confirm this.