Are you able to use your max br1 light out of the country? In the Philippines. With unknown providers???
depends on the model, bands, carrier.
Allegedly - LTE bands in the Philippines are:
B1 (2100), B3 (1800), B5 (850), B7 (2600), B28a (700), B34 (TDD 2100), B40 (TDD 2300), B41 (TDD 2500)
The US version of the BR1 mini (MAX-BR1-MINI-LTE-US-T) supports: B2, B4, B5, B12, B13, B14, B66, B71
So only a single RF band - it could work but likely not all the time.
You’d be more successful with the Europe/International version (MAX-BR1-MINI-LTE-E-T) which supports B1, B3, B5, B7, B8, B20, B38 (TDD), B40(TDD), B41 (TDD) so that’s 6 bands that should work there.
1 Like
In many parts of the world, if the device is not locally approved by the government regulators and then also the local carriers, you must not turn that device on; if you do, you may be exposing yourself to heavy fines and other penalties.
As an example, most carriers in the US now restrict/deny the connection of devices on their network if they do not approve the modem cellular chipset serial number (take a look at the history of this in these threads https://forum.peplink.com/c/Everything-Else/Wireless-Carrier-Troubleshooting).
The cellular standards may exist, though each county/region and carrier interprets those and chooses how to implement them.
Happy to Help,
Marcus 
1 Like
I have not traveled much, but am curious so I’m going to ask a dumb question. Is this an issue that people face with cell phones now too? I see a lot of youtube travel videos where people always get a new sim card when landing in a different country to have a data plan that works there, but I don’t remember seeing one where someone bought a new cell phone for the country they landed in. Just curious how much legal incompatibility there is with the cellular radios in phones.
We shipped some 310X CAT18 units to the Philippines earlier this year, zero problems getting them online with locally sourced SIM cards in Manilla, but as Martin points out you may have a bit less luck as your model has less bands covered.
We ship our equipment all over the world on a regular basis without issue, but sure if it is for commercial purposes in particular do some research and get your paperwork in order.
Our biggest concern is typically more to do with not falling foul of import/export regulations rather than whether the device is “approved” by some local network operator, but carrying a single device in your backpack or luggage is unlikely to get the same attention as me shipping in dozens of boxes of equipment where everything is registered on a carnet.
It seems that the US has more of these restrictions than anywhere else in the world in my experience, as you can generally see from the glut of posts on here from people asking “what plan works with this device on this carrier because it says the IMEMI number isn’t valid” (most of these people would also benefit from learning how to use the search function as these questions have been answered a hundred times! 
).
Not sure I personally agree with that statement - the 3GPP are pretty rigidly defined standards adhered to by both the infrastructure vendors and the people who make the modems that end up in the end user devices, I cannot think of an occurrence where a device that is 3GPP compliant in its operation has not worked on a local network for me, I am not sure any known vendor on either the infrastructure or device side would make anything not compliant these days.
Sure there are corner cases, and I generally would think those are mostly where you are dealing with cheap / off-brand locally made devices sold specifically for a local market, whereas the modems used inside Peplink are from well regarded vendors (Sierra, Thales etc.) who sell their components to a pretty vast market.
I cannot think in recent memory of getting off a plane and finding my cellphone would not connect either with a roaming partner or a local SIM and I typically do ≥250k miles of international travel a year including to some rather esoteric and out of the way locations.
Local “tourist” SIMs are helpful in a few circumstances though for me most mostly due to cost if I am somewhere for more than a couple of days:
Some places I travel to cost ≥$1 USD / per mb of data or / per minute of calling using roaming!
You might get better service on a local SIM than one that is roaming, especially given most roaming data is tunnelled back to your home country, although at times that can also be an advantage.
Having a local number is often handy for my work purposes, many of the local engineers I am working alongside cannot call internationally or certainly would prefer not to!