Recently we have received some feedback saying our LTE CAT-18 models have an issue connecting to data networks of few the US MNOs.
Our investigation so far has yet to come to the conclusion. So, we would like to hear from you guys, our valuable partners about this, and at the same time, it could serve as the point of reference which will be beneficial to the community who faces a similar situation.
If you don’t mind, please share with us your success story and the data plan details used with our LTE CAT-18 models (eg. MAX Transit, HD1 Dome, etc).
Your kind assistance is very much appreciated.
[Update: List of working data plan]
AT&T FirstNet - Band 14
AT&T IoT Plan
AT&T Business Wireless Broadband - 50Mbps
AT&T Post-paid ‘Tablet’
AT&T Pre-paid - Unlimited RV Plan
AT&T Retail 5GB/month
AT&T through Free Packet Hosting
AT&T through NeverThrottled
AT&T through Nomad Internet - unlimited
AT&T through Puretalk
AT&T through Webbing
AT&T postpaid iPad unlimited plan
ATT post-paid Unlimited Choice(R) II plan
Cricket Wireless Simply Data Plan (data only plan)
GoogleFi | T-Mobile
T-Mobile metered (Mobile Internet) data plans
T-Mobile Magenta One Hotspot (22GB then 3G speeds)
T-Mobile Pre-paid
T-Mobile through OTRMobile (March 2020)
Verizon Pre-paid
Verizon Post-paid
Verizon through PagePlus
Verizon through Visible
Verizon Unlimited (prepaid hotspot plan from 2 years ago)
Max Transit Cat 18 working on AT&T through NeverThrottled.
Also worked on T-Mobile through the OTRMobile in March 2020
Currently troubleshooting an odd disconnect issue that happens every few days for 55-70 seconds, but other than that, it’s giving me 95-130Mbps with around 25ms latency at 2 miles from the tower clear line of sight.
Both NeverThrottled and OTRMobile sell only “unlimited” plans.
NeverThrottled / AT&T deem fair use to be no more than 400GB per month or 80GB per day, or they will disconnect your “unlimited” plan for abuse. It’s deprioritized after 22GB per month, but it doesn’t seem to be a congested tower.
OTRMobile / T-Mobile deem abuse at 1TB. It’s deprioritized after 50GB and it’s a very congested tower.
I split my traffic between the 2 for redundancy.
T-Mobile recently made a change to block all unlimited data plans associating to their network with the SIM card in Telit Cat-18 modems, like the Telit LM960A18 used in Pepwave routers.
The OTR Mobile plan @Legionetz had working in March will almost certainly not work any longer, unfortunately.
We haven’t found any T-Mobile unlimited plan resellers that have been able to get around this, and we track over 30 of them here:
This block does not impact T-Mobile metered data plans - we just this week have been testing with an old T-Mobile Simple Choice 6GB plan in a Cat-18 Pepwave, and it has no issues. But other T-Mobile unlimited plans that used to work no longer do.
It is really unfortunate. @stevemitchell even filed an FCC complaint, but T-Mobile seems set on this new policy.
Fortunately only Cat-18 models are being impacted - so we’ve seen some people switching orders from Cat-18 to Cat-12 Pepwave routers to avoid getting locked out of T-Mobile.
I can vouch for this. I have T-Mobile through OTR Mobile and it is extremely slow in my MAX Transit CAT-18. I am currently using the SIM in a Netgear Nighthawk M1 and pulling that through the MAX Transit via WiFi and the speeds are much better (it’s more complicated but it works).
AT&T through Free Packet Hosting is almost always really fast (I’m all over Colorado and Utah with this router).
Chris, thanks for all you do and for keeping us in the know! I’ve learned a lot from your channel.
I am new to mobile routers and this group. I just received my max transit cat-18 last week and went camping with it to give it a try. I have a plan through MintMobile (TMobile) which has worked well in my Ipad and even using my Ipad as a hotspot. When I went camping I had a strong signal, but extremely slow speeds like 120kbps down. It sounds to me like I’m having a similar issue or I am being affected by this. But it does work, it was just slow.
Now that could have been the location I was camping, so when I came home I have been doing some speed tests with the same sim in the router and the ipad. It seems I have about 1/2 the speed in the router than the ipad. Few things seem concrete when testing because of the towers bandwidth, and other users and so forth. But in my limited testing this is what appears to be going on.
What kind of speeds are you seeing on neverthrottled/ATT? I use an old grandfathered unlimited verizon sim at my home (rural/CRAP DSL). But speeds are not great. I get good speeds on ATT but had not run across this unlimited plan. But I have only tested ATT on a regular LTE balance 30 LTE.
I appreciate seeing this post was created, thank you Peplink team and all contributors!
This is on a Balance 310X.
AT&T Business Wireless Broadband: this doesn’t work at all, won’t even try to connect; AT&T lists Cradlepoint routers as recommended so it was surprising to me the Peplink didn’t work.
Verizon via PagePlus: finally got a SIM to try this today… works great so far! Definitely not limited to 3G speeds.
Pageplus , is the max 60gb on the unlimited plan?
The website says:At 60 GB, we reserve the right to review your account for usage in violation of Page Plus’s terms and conditions. *At 2G Speeds, the functionality of some data applications, such as streaming audio or video may be affected.
If that’s the case I would recommend visable instead.
I haven’t tried a lot of data but it’s suppose to be unlimited, capped at 5mb throughput.
One of our test setups ran through 117GB in July on a Visible SIM card (but not on a CAT18 device).
The 5 Mbps limit seems to be a thing of the past. Aside from the effect of running at a lower priority than Verizon SIM cards on Verizon’s network when the network is congested the experience has been that the Visible connections run a t the same speed as Verizon’s, possibly with a somewhat higher latency.
Hmmmm… that seemed like an interesting plan and was in my short list of options. Did you try the 12mbps plan or the 50 mbps or the 100 mbps plan offered there?
I just read another post in the last week or so but can’t find it now-- believe someone with a cat12 peplink was using one of those plans and tried the 50 mbps plan and it didn’t work, the thinking being that they didn’t have a cat18 modem which att required for the higher plan, but it worked again on the lower tier that didn’t require a cat18 modem.
Yes, that’s the one. I’ve heard their enforcement of the limit may be pretty lax in rural areas. So we’ll see how it goes. Thanks for the heads up about Visible. Will check that out also.
I’ve tried the 8 Mbps (which works fine on a Cat 12 MAX Transit) and the 50 Mbps (which did not work in the Cat 12 MAX Transit). Neither works in the Cat 18 B310X.
