Cellular struggles, a day in the life of mobile Internet

[Kcmusa]

i have been reading much on cellular modems. Currently use an old Mobley and visible phone plan with a small router to teather. Bought a web boost years ago and set it up at times for a signal. Now I want something better. Browsing the 5G store I thought maybe just the pepwave cat 4 max transit to test and see how it would work for me. Then my other side says get something more modern like the max transit cat 18 so I would not be obsolete. Then I read issues with getting sims to work from verizon, at&t can be an issue to use with the newer routers.
i do not have the unlock code for my Mobley, not sure how hard that would be to obtain.
for others out here, what is your experience with the newer routers and compatibility with the major carriers.

 

[docj]

With all due respect, there's no particular reason why it would be any more difficult to get a SIM to work in a more advanced modem than in your Mobley. Most of the issues you read about are related to modem settings and/or to resellers and carriers failing to activate SIMs as they claim. My Inseego 5G M2000 hotspots have Category 22 modems and are no more finicky to operate than my old Jetpack 7730L with its Category 8 modem.

What you're losing out on with your Mobley are all the benefits of advanced features such as carrier aggregation which can provide significant speed enhancement and performance improvement.

 

[AbdRahim]

Man this is getting complex.

 

[Neal]

It's really simple, the answer is stop worrying about something working or not. It WILL work. Get the latest and greatest that you can afford and your SIM will work. If for some reason it didn't work, ask here first, if we can't help, return it. It will work.

 

[tj90241]

Does the Pepwave UI allow you to lock bands, and have you tried locking bands which perform best at a particular site?

I think the Pepwave uses the LM960 (Cat18 model) based on what I have seen... that being said, I have the LM940 (Cat11 rendition in a Turris Omnia) in my parents' RV and was able to get MUCH more consistent performance out of it when band locking to the best bands at any particular site. So much so, that I wrote a python script which runs speedtest.net on each band in isolation and then programs the modem with the set of bands which perform within 33% (?) of the "best' band (leveraging CA).

Without the band locking approach, I observed that we would be unable to go from streaming video (NFL game on Youtube TV) to being able to do so interrupted. Though with a limited sample size, I have no idea if it's fools gold (working around a flaky tower), or is a genuine issue with the firmware/LTE solutions that can be worked around by band locking.

 

[Neal]

You can choose your bands but you’d need to know which ones. I tried it once and it didn’t work well. Back to auto.

 

[Kcmusa]

Picking up the pepwave max transit cat 12. Got the AA&T sim but it was a runaround with Different stores to get the 100gig plan. Looking forward to trying the visible sim it it. Have the att sim In the iPad now.

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[tetranz]

I guess it's a bit late to learn this after running around several stores but you should be able to buy the AT&T 100 GB for $55 online using this form AT&T Prepaid Activation Portal
You just need an unused AT&T prepaid SIM starting with 89 which you can get from Amazon or many other places such as Walmart, Best Buy etc.

It depends if the form recognizes your IMEI. It didn't recognize my Pepwave MAX BR1 MK2 when I got the plan just over a month ago so I had to go to a store but they seem to have improved the database of IMEIs since then because it does recognize it now.

 

[Kcmusa]

The first store I went to said they could not find a 100gig $55 plan. Tried to sell me the 40gig $85 plan. Called att. Got 3 transfers, nothing. Hit another att store, bingo. Sad it took all that to get the plan on their site

 

[Neal]

Cellular stores are ALWAYS a hassle. Not sure if this is their intention or simply the fact that the big cell companies don't keep these independent providers in the know. You can walk into a store, as I did, and ask for a plan they don't even know they have. I had to use their computer and find it for them, then after pulling teeth I walked out with a SIM regardless if my IMEI is recognized or not, it wasn't.