Peplink Balance 20X - Verizon requires business plan for sim card? Anyone got an IMEI for validation?

Product Discussion Peplink Balance
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I was looking pretty seriously to order a Peplink Balance 20x today, until I hit a bit of a brick wall.

My cellular service is with Verizon. They support the device at the network level. Unfortunately they tell me I must have a business plan to use it!! To me that is pretty crazy… I’m paying for data, charge me the device fee and let me use it? Nope.

Unfortunately, without the device, I can’t get ‘for-sure’ verification online or through a rep, since I don’t have an IMEI (given I didn’t purchase the peplink yet). Does anyone have an IMEI for a 20x you could share privately, just so I can see if my plan would accept the device?

If not, does anyone know how I can go about getting a SIM that will work with the device? Furthermore, do any providers using the Verizon (possibly AT&T) network have a low-cost or pay-as-you-need data-only option, which keeps normal monthly costs low?

I would imagine I might use 100MB-1GB/mo max, during failovers.

Thanks!

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First of all, the Peplink is an enterprise device. I would start with assumptions that you should get an enterprise or business plan. Second, there are consumer, post paid, and prepaid plans with Verizon that work on it. YMMV. Some even have gotten Visible (verizon MVNO) to work on it. I know some have had luck with the 50/100GB plans.

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Thanks. I personally would not consider the 20x an enterprise device (rather SMB), though certainly most of the product line is.

So, you are saying that with the 20x there are folks who have used verizon on consumer plans? They are telling me they only handle it on a business wireless account.

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FWIW: On the Verizon network Visible SIM cards do work (with a bit of footwork), but the quality of the service is very dependent on the location (VZW de-prioritizes Visible during congestion). I have seen folks pull 200+ GB/month streaming and zoom’ing in rural areas.

Z

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activate in another device, put sim card into peplink, try it out.

if you want guarantees, then business / enterprise plan.

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FWIW: I plopped the IMEI of a B20x (which is currently being deployed on another network) into the VZW compatibility page. VZW proceeded to try t sell me a consumer plan.

Make of it what you will :slight_smile:

Z

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Thanks Z! I will definitely check out those. One of the use cases for the backup is when we have other events like the recent natural disaster, so likely there would be a lot of congestion at that time. Regardelss, I will check it out!

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Awesome Z - thanks so much - that was above and beyond the call of duty… appreciate you doing that, and I had a hunch the verizon reps were possibly a bit off base. It’s a good data point!

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People have had good experiences with AT&T and T-Mobile as well - it is all a matter of your location. Plans are month-by-month, so the threshold for experimenting with your options is pretty low.
With Peplink equipment you can deploy a device with two plans (e.g. VZW/Visible with TMO as fall-back or vice versa), switching among them as the mood (and service level) moves you.

We often deploy with TMO + VZW cards to good effect, and it is not prohibitively expensive,. Or (if you want to guard against deprioritization after a certain amount of usage (e.g., some of the VZW plans threaten to deprioritize after 15 or 22 GB) you may consider deploying two SIM cards from the same carrier, switching automatically between them half-way through the billing cycle. .

Z

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As someone who has managed CoB/BC/Disaster planning, there have been so many times the cell tower has been 1) brought offline due to loss of power or back haul connectivity, 2) if online radios were overwhelmed, 3) if radios weren’t overwhelmed the back haul was congested.

All of the carriers are using deprioritization on most plans. You cannot bank on the connectivity working during a major event, especially when priority is given to first responders, LEO, and other important people. Heck, some places we go to on the weekends the local cell tower is overwhelmed and you basically have no data during the day. We do have some FirstNET devices and those tend to work a bit better but still YMMV, and I dont think they are intended for anything other than end user connectivity (read the ToS).

There are times I had hotspots with every single major carrier (VZW, ATT, TM) and walked around with them at all times, as well as a sat phone. With multiple options, some times you get lucky, and one works. Interesting enough, during a recent natural disaster, none of them worked, and our saving grace was a public outdoor wifi hotspot in a neighboring town that was on a different power grid and internet provider. Starlink is another option that I am considering, it should be launched in my area this year, but it is currently not portable. Some smart phones apparently will have satellite capabilities, which is interesting.

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I have a Balance 20x, with a VZW SIM card on a consumer plan. It is capped at the 15GB monthly typically applied to home router solutions, and we pair it with Starlink, VZW being the backup during Starlink outages.

-Michele

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Thanks, Z. Lots of good ideas.

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Thanks mystery, though I my case I’m looking for the next step up in reliability, not necessarily a perfect solution… getting there sees much greater costs.

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Hi Michele @michele654 - that is great information - thanks for sharing!! I keep being told by verizon it is a business device requiring a business plan. The 15G plan sounds a lot like a jetpack plan.

If I might, can I ask:

  • Do you know what plan you have it on?
  • Did you provide Verizon the IMEI for this device, and if so, was it online or to a rep?
  • How much did it add to your monthly bill?
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I’ve had to get 2 consumer VZ cards, one 50GB/mo and the other 15GB/mo in the past few months… Each time they would look up the B20X IMEI, but the system wouldn’t accept it. They just pulled a spare hotspot out of the back and used that IMEI. Then the SIM went in the B20X and a Max Transit 5G with no problems. When I registered my AT&T Unlimited Elite SIM, I just assigned it to an old iPhone6 I had sitting around.

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  • I’m on the “new Verizon Plan Unlimited”, which is an older plan, despite “new” in the name.
  • I can’t really answer about the IMEI, I don’t recall the process, if the SIM was already active or not. However, looking at my account, it says the device model is “PEPWAVE - BPL-021X-LTE-US-PRM” so I must have. Pretty sure it would have been online.
  • It added $20 plus taxes/fees, my plan is $100 for the bucket of “unlimited” data, and then attach devices to it.
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Thanks so much for taking the time to check and share, Michele! I think I found a way through this and will post up my results here afterwards.

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We have some of the equipment on this plan.

I have been informed by Verizon that the plan allows routers, and that has been operationally confirmed by a few instances where new Peplink routers had to be manually allowed onto the network by tech. support (involving multi-level escalation) after getting kicked off as being “incompatible” with Verizon (presumably incompatible with the current “unlimited” consumer plans).

So - hold on to that plan!

It is golden :slight_smile:

Z

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Hi All,

I wanted to provide an update on my experience. I was initially on the Verizon Shared Data Large plan (8GB/mo + 1 month carry-over). I probably moved to this plan in 2017.

To begin with, when I contacted the department for business users, they did not improve the situation. What really helped was being able to get a hold of an IMEI for a unit on eBay, and using that to confirm with Verizon that they would support the device, and the cost on my plan as $10/mo + taxes.

This gave me the confidence to order the 20X, which arrived 2 days ago. While there were some general activation issues, I did find that by going to the page which shows all my phones, selecting add device > other, and the entering the IMEI, I could self-provision the device and see a preview of the next month’s bill, but opted to work with an agent, such that I could ensure my questions were being answered. In hindsight, self-provisioning may have been better, as the agents were still confused, but with being able to show them the rate and device support through the self-service, they were able to sort it out. I had to have the SIM sent to me, then call back to activate it (incorrectly associated with my phone, which disabled it for a bit!).

Thought the process, I also moved over to the current Shared data plan (10GB), which appears to be a bit cheaper than my current plan and allows for the data to be shared across devices and to use my existing discount on the data portion of the plan (corp discounts do not apply to unlimited plans). The 20X is also supported on this plan in the same manner, and also runs $10/mo + taxes.

With the 1-month carry-over of unused data, if we use 3GB/month, we’re really getting a 17GB/mo that can be used for the 20X, which should be more than enough to cover our needs and for standard outages of the primary internet.

FWIW, you can see the data devices that are valid on the Verizon network at opendevelopment.verizon.com, though it does not indicate which plans a device is compatible with.

Real bummer here is that Xfinity (using Verizon towers) has really good rates, except they don’t seem to support any data-only devices, other than the tablets. Anyone know if Xfinity will be adding jetpack equivalents in the future?

I’m happy with the product. The failover on the 20x works particularly well, and I was surprised that inside the home (metal roof, etc, where my phone only gets 1-2 bars) I seem to be getting 4 bars and about 15Mbps download, and 1.5-2Mbps upload. That’s enough to keep my wife and I working, though maybe a bit close on upload for both of us being on video calls.

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be careful, data goes quick when connected to computers. video conferencing, windows update, streaming youtube, can all wipe 10GB in an hour easily.