First off, I’m using a new Pepwave MAX HD2 w/ LTE Advanced (MAX-HD2-LTEA-W-T) and it’s an awesome device.
Backstory: I provide IT support for a mobile church location that recently started meeting at a high school auditorium. We moved from a movie theater where we had a 20Mb fixed wireless connection. The school district wouldn’t allow any permanent antenna installations on campus, so we looked at LTE options (Pepwave).
We receive a feed from the main campus via a Living As One Multisite Platform h.265 decoder (https://livingasone.com/). Every Sunday we receive about 20GB of data to the decoder.
I tested the Pepwave last Sunday with T-mobile and Verizon SIM cards and it worked great. The T-Moble LTE connection was much faster than the Verizon LTE-A connection. (I’m thinking Verizon might have throttled the “unlimited” SIM). In fact, the speeds were even better than our old 20Mb fixed wireless connection.
Our dilemma is that according to T-mobile business sales, they only offer 22GB/mo plans. With the amount we use, I’m going to have to have 4 different SIMs and swap them out each week.
Does anyone know of any other providers that offer high usage, router-friendly plans? The fixed wireless was $700/mo, so LTE seems cheaper so far. I just need a good service. Any recommendations?
With the HD2 you have space for 2 SIM cards = 44 GB/month, There are other equipment options (e.g., the MAX Transit Duo) with redundant SIM cards providing for up to 4 lines = 88 GB/month. Enough?
Yes,I could do 2 T-Mobile SIMs at a time to avoid swapping out every week. That’s my plan for this weekend. Ideally I’d like a second carrier SIM in case the T-Mobile tower goes down.
I’m reaching out to Verizon and Sprint about possible 100GB plans. As LTE-A rolls out, hopefully the carriers make it simpler to sign up for high usage plans.
We might be able to provide you an alternative much more flexible and even less pricey if you’re interested.
You can mail your full requirements to [email protected] and they’ll come back to you with a proposal.
I would highly recommend working with @Venn’s team for other international bundles as his team have some amazing data package solutions around the world.
Get a MAX Transit Duo - it accommodates up to four SIM cards (two primary, two secondary (“redundant”), with automatic switchover when an allocation limit has been met (e.g., 15 GB/SIM/month)
Get four Verizon BeyondUnlimited (15 GB/month at $50/line) or AboveUnlimited (20 GB/month at $60/line).
Deploy the Transit Duo with all four SIM cards, and set the capacity for each radio to be 15 GB or 20 GB/month, with switch-over to the secondary SIM cards for each radio if the limit for a SIM card has been exceeded.
Cost:
BeyondUnlimited: $200/month for 4 x 15 = 60 GB = $3.33/GB
AboveUnlimited: $240/month for 4 x 20 = 80 GB = $3.00/GB
If 80 GB/month is insufficient, get another MAX Transit Duo, cascade the two routers (the LAN of one feeds into the wired WAN of the other for a total of up to 8 cellular lines).
Upside:
You get up to 160 GB/month for $3.00/GB.
You get the benefit of equipment redundancy (two Max Transit Duos, and the option of employing more than one carrier)
Downside:
System complexity: More than one SIM card, possibly more than one router.
With one MAX Transit Duo there is the set-up complexity of four SIM cards (not much) and quota-management (set-and-forget ).
With two Max Transit Duos there is the added complexity of making the two routers work together. It is fairly straight-forward, but one has to pay attention to the traffic balancing and (depending on how you set it up) the routing of packets between the two.
It is all a bit of a kluge, but it works
PS: I suggest the MAX Transit rather than the HD2/HD4s since you have not requested SpeedFusion (line bonding). The MAX Transits are less expensive.
If you wanted to have more data allowance by combining 2 MAX Transit Duo’s (for instance) then I’ve written a guide to explain how to do this - in my example I use a pair of MAX BR1’s but the principle is the same. The guide is available > Here <
