There is a lot to unpack here, but I can quickly share my experience, as I’m in the PNW and like to do 1-2 month outings, working remotely…
I have a Max Transit DUO (LTE Cat-12?), and a Pepwave PUMA 401 external antenna.
I have the external antenna soft-mounted on a box-mount, and deploy it only when I need a bit of extra range (run the wires out the window of my RV and have some velcro on the roof of the RV), other wise I use the included antennas.
I have 3 data plans that cover all the networks:
- AT&T unlimited (3rd party)
- Visible
- Sprint/TMobile unlimited (3rd party)
I haven’t found any issues with Visible when using Speedfusion. The connection is a little bit more laggy, but it hasn’t prevented me from normal internet use (work, games, Video Chats). There is a “TTL” setting in the interface, setting to 64/65 can help a bit to get a bit more bandwidth.
You may have to mess around with the speedfusion settings a bit if you are running your own hub (I setup a separate VOIP tunnel to my AWS Hub instance for Zoom/Teams/etc)
Experience:
Having all 3 networks is GOOD. Most places I’ve travelled so far (Seattle to Salt Lake, staying at BLM and RV camp sites all over in between) have had a 5+ mbit down connection on at least two of the carriers, and speedfusion has been pretty good about maxing out connections that have different capabilities.
There were 2 spots where I did have to deploy the external antenna. Both had low-LTE with the antennas that came with my Max Transit. One of those spots was a bit tough to get bandwidth through, even when I got back to reasonable signal with the external antenna (it was near a highway so probably congestion). My 5G iPhone on TMobile was doing well, however.
SOOOO, my plan now: when the MAX Adapter is available for purchase: Say Hi to our newest edition MAX Adapter! Grab one of those, stuff the Sprint/TMobile SIM in there, and run 3 way Speedfusion (yay! no more having to tweak the SIMs at every site!) The MAX Adapter has the b71/n71 capabilities, and SHOULD be the workhorse of the solution. I’ll probably grab another of the Puma 401 antennas, and hard-mount both. There isn’t any reason I haven’t done that with the one I have now, other than not getting around to it.