Cricket wireless data only plan with pepwave?

Thanks very much for that info.

It sounds like they’re rejecting some modems for no good reason. I sure wish that finding a decent data plan in the US wasn’t such a struggle.

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Went on a couple nights ago and the MC7455 was accepted. Went on tonight to place my order – blacklisted and no longer accepted. Such a bummer. It accepted my Nighthawk M1 IEMI, so that will be the solution for now.

Yeah, cricket seems to be cracking down on routers, they now complain that

This AirPrime MC7455 MC7455 is not compatible with the Cricket Network due to network changes

Oh, well.

Z

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Cricket’s IMEI checker doesn’t even work for me.

On Firefox on my Mac laptop it always return this:

Oops! We’re having trouble processing your request right now. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please try again later.

On Chrome it just spins forever. Same for Chrome on an Android phone.

I’m beginning to understand why people in the US give up in frustration trying to get a legitimate plan. They instead go with dubious resellers or use an “unlimited” phone or tablet plan in a router where they can change the IMEI to match the device it was activated on.

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The IMEI checker is working for me now.

The bad news is that my Pepwave MAX BR1 MK2 is no longer compatible :disappointed:. That’s very frustrating. I don’t have it but it was on my “emergency” list of plans that I could get quickly if the reseller plan I’m on stops working. It’s more than I really want to pay for 100 GB but it would have got me by until I found something else.

I watched the Pepwave video presentation on working from home. Good stuff but it’s all kind of moot for the average person if they can’t find a data plan.

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For some reason the IMEI checker nor the signup would work for me on the cricket website when connected to a vpn connection. But when I was able to use a different internet connection it worked.

The bad news is that my Pepwave MAX BR1 MK2 is no longer compatible :disappointed:. That’s very frustrating. I don’t have it but it was on my “emergency” list of plans that I could get quickly if the reseller plan I’m on stops working. It’s more than I really want to pay for 100 GB but it would have got me by until I found something else.

I watched the Pepwave video presentation on working from home. Good stuff but it’s all kind of moot for the average person if they can’t find a data plan.

Yes, this is a major problem in the US.

I wonder if there is anything that Peplink could do to get the pepwave devices (re)certified for use with Cricket?

It was nice to have a backup data option such as these plans, where a set amount of data was sold for a set price. It seemed like a reasonable deal, one of the few options available in the USA for a pepwave right now. I felt much more confidence in my max transit purchase when it was officially supported by the IMEI checker a couple of weeks ago. My cricket simply data plan is still working, but it makes me uneasy that my pepwave could one morning not work…

When the pandemic hit, I bought a max transit cat 18 for $770 as I live where there is no landline internet option. I had checked with a t-mobile reseller and they said it was compatible; then after 3 months it simply quit working on the t-mobile network. I had not used a huge amount of data or done anything odd or against the service terms in any way. This cricket plan seemed like a nice replacement. Not unlimited. But a fair price for a reasonable amount of data.

It is frustrating how difficult it is in the US right now.

I don’t know how likely it is to improve. There doesn’t seem to be much hope on the horizon. My backup plan now is probably to use a phone plan. AT&T Unlimited Elite postpaid seems to work, at least for now.

T-Mobile’s 100 GB for $50 is good and is the obvious and cheaper alternative to Cricket although I think it’s supposed to be “limited time only” and I think you really want band 71 for T-Mobile, especially if moving around like in an RV.

My first experience with t-mobile wasn’t as great as I had hoped… if cricket stops working though, that will be my backup plan.

On my MAX BR1 MKII LTEA I set it to custom and APN ndo and it connects, gets an address, but won’t pass data. Has anyone had a different experience with Cricket recently?

Was it working on cricket before for you, or is this a new plan that you just signed up for?

My cricket plan is still working in my pepwave that I activated when cricket showed the pepwave IMEI as compatible with their network.

Unfortunately it appears that cricket may label the pepwave as a “3G” device even though it’s an LTEA device starting in February of 2022

It’s an old plan that I had been using in a “MOXEE” mobile hotspot (provided by Cricket) but thought I’d give it a try in my Pepwave as the MOXEE’s USB tethering seems to mysteriously decide to stop working intermittently.

In the past I’ve seen providers claim Pepwaves don’t work on their service simply because they didn’t want to take the time to test it - small use case. But it ends up working fine once the APN is entered.

I find it peculiar that my Pepwave goes so far as to get an IP address and still is unable to send/receive data.

Unfortunately it looks like starting on 1/19/21 cricket “decertified” (not sure if that is the correct word for this case or how this works exactly?) some of the pepwave devices. I’m not sure which pepwave devices will still pass the cricket IMEI checker?

Before I think they were using the att certified list and showed the pepwave cat 18 imei as specifically compatible which was great. After 1/19/21 they showed the pepwave cat 18 as a 3G device. So as of 1/19/21 I cannot move a sim to a pepwave or move a sim out of a currently running pepwave to another device and then put it back in the pepwave, or the pepwave will no longer work on cricket :frowning: I’m assuming this may be what you are seeing if your BR1 won’t work now. See what the IMEI checker says for its imei. There is a video in the thread above from rvmobileinternet talking about this issue. I had hoped that it would be a glitch that would get ironed out by now since these seemed like a great way to buy a fair amount of metered data.

If you already have an active sim in the pepwave, it will (hopefully) continue to work until February of 2022.

It looks like you can change your plan if you need to add more data by changing one simply data plan to another simply data plan

Power cycling the pepwave seems fine and it seems to continue to work after it boots up again.
.
But you can’t change devices.

Could anyone clarify what will happen with Pepwave MAx Cat18 with a Cricket sim card on 2/22? On my Cricket app there is a pop up that says that this device will no longer work. Cricket uses ATT network and according to Peplink, the Max Cat18 will continue to work on ATT network after the 3G shutdown. Why is Cricket warning me then? Is it just some error/confusion on their side or are they actually going to cut off that router from the network, even though technically it should continue to work?

Regards,
Maciek

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Hi @maciek . Your question is a good one but I think it would be difficult for anyone – other than Cricket – to say definitively what will happen. The product you have is a good one, of recent production and is unaffected by AT&T’s 3G shutdown. The important thing is that the modem within the router is certified for use on the subject network.

I sorta hate to say this but this is a question best asked of Cricket. Please share the answer – if you get one. Alternatively, you may want to “wait and see” – although I know that’s not your preferred approach.

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OK, I will try to call their customer support and see what they have to say.

Maciek

Don’t expect anything useful/accurate. In fact, I would not ask. I would instead procure and test.

Not looking good – I actually switched from cricket to att prepaid when cricket removed the max transit cat 18 from their imei checker. ATT still had the max transit cat 18 as an ok bring your own device for the prepaid data plan so I switched to the att prepaid 100 GB plan. Now this morning I got an email from AT&T that my pepwave max transit “will stop working any day now”. Very disappointing.

You have two options really: 1) wait to see what happens, 2) raise an escalation with the executive office, 3) file a FCC complaint which usually gets their attention.

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