I am curious if the peplink max br1 pro 5g will work with my T-Mobile home internet?
I am currently using T-Mobile’s Nokia 5g21 gateway and wanting something better. If I purchase the peplink max br1 pro 5g, can I just take the sim card out of the Nokia and put it in the peplink and have internet?
I think the SIM is locked to the IMEI of the device so it probably won’t work at all.
From what I’ve read, TMHI is more strict than tablet plans etc which usually work until they detect an unapproved device. TMHI really is locked to the device. Of course, rightly or wrongly, people do use TMHI SIMs in better devices but they change the IMEI of the new device to match the original. I don’t think you can do that with a Pepwave.
Ok. Next question. What about if I get a cell phone plan through them (Magenta Max) and I take the sim card they send me for that plan and put it in the Pepwave. Do you think that would work?
@Jisaiah14, Currently on Magenta Max postpaid plan. Have never had an issue swapping SIM cards between devices once the lines were activated.
The only issue you might run into is the initial activation with the IMEI of your Peplink device. If that is the case, use a different IMEI and then once active swap the SIM over.
Ok, so if the sim card is in the peplink and I can’t get it to activate, swap it to an unused phone and active it that way, then swap the sim card back to the peplink?
Also, can you select what bands you want the peplink to use?
T-Mobile seem to be the most open in terms of what you can get away with. I saw someone on YouTube demonstrating a router that his company sells and one of the good things is that it’s approved for T-Mobile with “TTL and nothing else” which means no IMEI changes required. I have one of those routers and sure enough, if I enter the IMEI here, Bring Your Own Unlocked Phone | IMEI Compatibility Check & Activate Online | T-Mobile (scroll down) and click “Check phone” it says “This device is fully compatible with T-Mobile’s network technology” but it says that for pretty much any IMEI I can throw at it, including my Pepwave MAX BR1 MK2. It would be interesting to see what that check says for your 5G router.
I’m not sure what to make of that. Does it really mean it’s officially okay to use a phone SIM in a router that passes that check? It obviously works for Cable17 so … give it a go. 
. I know a lot of people use Magenta Max and it works very well. One guy on a particular Facebook group posted a screenshot of his usage and he does about 3 TB per month without problem. Another option that people use if they already have a T-Mobile phone plan is to get a tablet add-on for I think $10 per month and put that in a router. Unlimited internet for $10 per month is kind of tempting when other people are paying $90 for 100 GB prepaid on AT&T or dealing with dubious resellers.
The reference to TTL is that you probably need to set the TTL to trick T-Mobile into thinking that you’re on the phone, not hotspot which is limited. Of course that’s kind of a clue that this is not really legit but … what’s the worse that can really happen?
As a point of reference. Peplink devices are typically considered hotspots or IOT devices. The major carriers AT&T, T-Mobile & Verizon maintain listings of devices certified for use on their networks (see above URL for T-Mobile) I would pose your question to a Peplink partner (seller) or to T-Mobile since Peplink has partnered with them.
All the carriers have some means of managing the use of unauthorized/non-certified devices on their networks. Many users have found ways/means to circumvent these. I believe tetranz has articulated this very clearly.
I would suggest there is some risk anytime you ‘game’ the carrier by circumventing their ‘Terms of Service’.
Perhaps the marketing mindset at T-Mobile was such that T-Mobile would provide a device that would not fully utilize the capabilities of their service so their offering price would be lower. In turn their ‘Terms of Service’ would limit the type of device which could be utilized with this service.
No trying to be judgemental…
This is new today. T-Mobile Business Internet Plans - Unlimited and Tiered Data Options For Routers and Data Devices - Mobile Internet Resource Center
That sure looks like a good option if you have a business. I tried my old Pepwave MAX BR1 MK2 in the IMEI checker and that returned “Data Device Fully Compatible” as did a couple of other non-Pepwave products I have. It’s probably hitting the same database as the bring-your-own-phone link I posted earlier but this one does seem to know the difference between a phone and a data device. I entered a phone IMEI and it gave a different message, still “compatible” but I couldn’t “Continue with a physical SIM”.
Unfortunately I don’t have a business so it’s not an option for me. Also, we really do want something in our RV which we can use for “entertainment” purposes as well as work (as employees).
For what it’s worth, I’m using Calyx these days. Rightly or wrongly, it might not be in the little Franklin device supplied with the SIM but … at least it’s a genuine data plan. That’s working great. We recently drove from Houston TX to New Hampshire and I don’t think it dropped out once.
It depends on whether you have a personal or business account. Personal accounts require you to use the “garbage can”, but business accounts will let you enable BYOD.
A business-lite account with only SSN verification will get you BYOD.
A full business account with an EIN will get you static IP / CG-NAT bypass in addition.
We run a bunch of these in peplink devices. Sometimes the provisioning is weird, but once it starts working, it works great.
Since this seems like a similar problem, I have a T-Mobile business tablet chip i just inserted on to my max br1 one pro, it just stays “obtaining ip address” ive tried looking on the tmobile page for any way to activate the IMEI or anything but nothing, it works just fine when inserted on to one of our laptops, or on the original tablet we got issued by tmobile, just not on the peplink, not sure why just the peplink refuses to get an IP address, signal is fine.
Anyone have any ideas why? maybe were missing something.
Thanks in advance
added info: the laptop also has a sierra wireless card
I recently asked tmobile this very question and was told that they support byor. Just tell them and they send u a si card