5 Miles, but we are on a hilltop so I can see it from my roof. I get about the same results with 4x4 mimo as I do with a booster that takes mimo away. I've considered getting 4 Yagi's to point at it, but that just seems a bit crazy.

Thanks for the info on distance from towers. The reason I ask is I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the refurb Cradlepoint 850LP6 that was linked earlier. Got the SIM from OTR and set it up yesterday. Just using the basic default settings now, and I am only getting 1-2MB down and about same upload. Ping speeds are high, like around 100ms. My iPhone is on Verizon, and sitting on my couch I can get 30-50MB down pretty consistently.

I figure I am about the same distance from either carrier's tower, about 4 miles max. I'm located a mile or two south of Wellborn, no access to Suddenlink. Using CEO, which is okay, but kind of slow for what you pay. My vehicle has a 120 volt outlet in it, so I took the Cradlepoint on a road trip to check speed closer to a tower. Sitting in the Lowes at Fitch and 6 parking lot and staring at the tower across the road, I was getting a max of 7-8MB down. My RSSI went from -97/-91 at home to -63 at Lowes.

I see the APN setting mentioned, mine is defaulted at Broadband. Is there something I should change? Not sure offhand how to tell if I'm getting 3G or LTE on it. I see the SIM cards from OTR are possibly a problem, it's hard to believe they would be doling out a bunch of possibly known bad cards. Unless there is something I am missing, this won't cut it for me.

labmansid said:

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Thanks for the info on distance from towers. The reason I ask is I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the refurb Cradlepoint 850LP6 that was linked earlier. Got the SIM from OTR and set it up yesterday. Just using the basic default settings now, and I am only getting 1-2MB down and about same upload. Ping speeds are high, like around 100ms. My iPhone is on Verizon, and sitting on my couch I can get 30-50MB down pretty consistently.

I figure I am about the same distance from either carrier's tower, about 4 miles max. I'm located a mile or two south of Wellborn, no access to Suddenlink. Using CEO, which is okay, but kind of slow for what you pay. My vehicle has a 120 volt outlet in it, so I took the Cradlepoint on a road trip to check speed closer to a tower. Sitting in the Lowes at Fitch and 6 parking lot and staring at the tower across the road, I was getting a max of 7-8MB down. My RSSI went from -97/-91 at home to -63 at Lowes.

I see the APN setting mentioned, mine is defaulted at Broadband. Is there something I should change? Not sure offhand how to tell if I'm getting 3G or LTE on it. I see the SIM cards from OTR are possibly a problem, it's hard to believe they would be doling out a bunch of possibly known bad cards. Unless there is something I am missing, this won't cut it for me.

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My guess is you got a 3G sim card like I did the first time. On my dashboard on my modem, it shows 4G and then tells me I'm on LTE on the detailed status of the network.

If you get a new sim and things still aren't working out for you, I may be interested in the Cradlepoint. Did you buy the refurb or new one?

Thanks. I got the Cradlepoint as a refurb.

Here is a pic of my Dashboard. Where could I look to see whether I am getting 3G or LTE? It says LTE next to Modem in the upper right, but not sure if that's it. Snooping around the different tabs it's not clear to me.

tfunk could better tell you since he has a Cradlepoint, but I would look where you found the RSSI.

This is on the app for my phone within the advanced network section.

Parents got another SIM from OTR and it is yet again delivering 3G speeds. They can pull upwards of 20 mb/s to their phones, but only getting 1-2 mb/s on the modem. My dad is fed up with trying to figure it out, so they're sending me the modem and the SIM and I'm gonna have to go to battle with OTR to get a functional SIM.

hph6203 said:

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Parents got another SIM from OTR and it is yet again delivering 3G speeds. They can pull upwards of 20 mb/s to their phones, but only getting 1-2 mb/s on the modem. My dad is fed up with trying to figure it out, so they're sending me the modem and the SIM and I'm gonna have to go to battle with OTR to get a functional SIM.

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Have you tried the OTR sim in a phone to see if it is the sim or the modem? Sorry you are having so many issues!

labmansid said:

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Thanks. I got the Cradlepoint as a refurb.

Here is a pic of my Dashboard. Where could I look to see whether I am getting 3G or LTE? It says LTE next to Modem in the upper right, but not sure if that's it. Snooping around the different tabs it's not clear to me.

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Looks like your AT&T signal is just bad. I'd switch to a Verizon prepaid unlimited since you know Verizon works well in the house. It is network managed, but it is still truly unlimited.

On the left side click Status -> Internet -> Connections
Under Device List choose the sim tray you are using, and then scroll down and click Cellular Network. That will tell you everything you need to know.

Thanks for the info and all your help on here, it's much appreciated. You may have missed earlier where I took the modem in my vehicle to within a quarter mile of the tower and had great signal, RSSI of -63. I was still only getting 7-8MB max down. I could be wrong, but I don't really think it is just due to signal strength.

I have checked that Netcloud screen you suggested several times since setting this up, and never saw anything that mentioned either 3G or LTE. Looking at it now, where you show your System Mode as LTE, mine shows as WCDMA, not sure what that means, but I'm guessing it's not good. I don't remember specifically if I checked that yesterday while almost under the tower, but I have never seen either 3G or LTE in that box.

ETA: Doing a bit of research shows that WCDMA looks like it is the same as 3G, so no LTE.

CDMA is Verizon and Sprint. Are you sure the sim is an AT&T sim?

Edit: I see your picture says the sim is AT&T, but they are GSM/HSPA+ so something is wrong somewhere. I don't think it would matter, but I would add an APN that is OTR Mobile for the name and leave everything else the same.

A couple of things:
This is 2019 and all carriers are cdma, lte and umts rquire wcdma. Gsm and hspX are all but a bad memory.
Not all cell sites have "enhanced backhaul", which means not fiber fed and usually only have a few t1 feeding it. Not sure which tower you went to Sid but one by duckhaven was not fiber, it was built long ago but last I checked it was not active on fiber.

After having so many troubles with my dad getting the SIM card in the LB1120 I bit the bullet and bought the Cradlepoint you linked. The thing is that my parents are in their 70s and getting them to put the effort into getting this set up when they don't understand they need to be connected to the WiFi router to see if it's working.

Gonna try to get it all working at my house and then take it back to there's.

labmansid said:

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Thanks for the info and all your help on here, it's much appreciated. You may have missed earlier where I took the modem in my vehicle to within a quarter mile of the tower and had great signal, RSSI of -63. I was still only getting 7-8MB max down. I could be wrong, but I don't really think it is just due to signal strength.

I have checked that Netcloud screen you suggested several times since setting this up, and never saw anything that mentioned either 3G or LTE. Looking at it now, where you show your System Mode as LTE, mine shows as WCDMA, not sure what that means, but I'm guessing it's not good. I don't remember specifically if I checked that yesterday while almost under the tower, but I have never seen either 3G or LTE in that box.

ETA: Doing a bit of research shows that WCDMA looks like it is the same as 3G, so no LTE.

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Are you sure the AT&T firmware is flashed to the modem?
System -> System Control -> Modem Firmware

Or type Firmware in the upper right search. Make sure you have AT&T firmware installed and not Verizon or Sprint.



EDIT: Here's a link to a good article on that modem...
https://ltehacks.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=201&p=1309#p1309

hph6203 said:

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After having so many troubles with my dad getting the SIM card in the LB1120 I bit the bullet and bought the Cradlepoint you linked. The thing is that my parents are in their 70s and getting them to put the effort into getting this set up when they don't understand they need to be connected to the WiFi router to see if it's working.

Gonna try to get it all working at my house and then take it back to there's.

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This is the best idea possible. Good luck!!

Thanks again for the help. That link is what I used to help with initial setup. Yes, the AT&T firmware shows as up to date. The APN is as suggested by OTR Mobile at broadband. I even tried swapping the SIM slots on the modem, no change. I'm thinking it must be a SIM issue like others have had. I'll probably try calling OTR Mobile and see about a replacement.

labmansid said:

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Thanks again for the help. That link is what I used to help with initial setup. Yes, the AT&T firmware shows as up to date. The APN is as suggested by OTR Mobile at broadband. I even tried swapping the SIM slots on the modem, no change. I'm thinking it must be a SIM issue like others have had. I'll probably try calling OTR Mobile and see about a replacement.

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Strange how common that has been here. I wonder how many were in their bad batch? Hope they solve the issue for you quickly!

I was getting 3G speeds (HSPA+) on the Cradlepoint modem, which is what my dad was getting when testing it. I just spoke with OTR and gave them the number on the SIM card and the rep was able to do something in 2 minutes to get it fixed without shipping me out another SIM card. Don't know if it's a bad batch, or not activating the SIM cards correctly or what, but my service should be working now.

hph6203 said:

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I was getting 3G speeds (HSPA+) on the Cradlepoint modem, which is what my dad was getting when testing it. I just spoke with OTR and gave them the number on the SIM card and the rep was able to do something in 2 minutes to get it fixed without shipping me out another SIM card. Don't know if it's a bad batch, or not activating the SIM cards correctly or what, but my service should be working now.

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I was having similar problems. I'm using a netgear modem. My modem showed I was only getting 3g speeds. I contacted otr and they were able to correct the problem on their end.

Also to the other person having problems. When you access the modem settings is it configured as router or bridge? My netgear came defaulted at bridge, that setting severely limited my speeds as it caused IP problems. Once I changed that setting to router, all my issues went away. Not sure if the cradle point has a toggle for that or not.

I never got around to contacting OTR until this morning about my issue. When I first called, the guy who answered acted like I was trying to summon a demon by mentioning the word "Cradlepoint". He literally said he wasn't going to repeat "Cradlepoint" lest some of his coworkers hear and pop their heads up above their cubicles! Anyway, he arranged for an "advanced" tech support person to call me back later. I bet they try to steer people away from competitive hardware like that.

So the tech support guy calls me later and was pretty helpful and informative, although he couldn't help much, understandably, with any settings I may need to adjust on my Cradle...... err, I mean modem. He said my SIM just needed the proper setting to change it from 3G only to LTE enabled, which he did on their end. He said they had a batch of SIMS that apparently didn't behave the way they normally would, and needed something a bit different at activation to enable the use of LTE. He said there were about 60 customers affected, and I told him I knew where a good bunch of them were. LTE didn't show up for me until I had rebooted and reset my modem a few times, but it did finally show up. Then, when it did show LTE, latency was sky high like over 200 and very slow still.

I decided I will let it run overnight, and mess with it again tomorrow. Hopefully it will resolve itself eventually. I was showing better signal than before at least.

My latency was wonky when they made the change, but it normalized after a bit. If you're pulling LTE I'm betting it'll work going forward.

How is the service today?

khkman22 said:

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How is the service today?

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It seems to be better. I had some errands to run today, and took the modem along with me to test at various places around town. I was getting great speeds, 50-80MB down near a couple of towers, so it seems to be working as it should now. Unfortunately, my place is close to equidistant in between two or three towers and kind of in a hole, so I don't get anything near that with it in my living room. Still less than 10MB down, so I may need to play around with placement of it and see what happens. What's frustrating is I can get 30-50MB down on my Verizon phone sitting here in my recliner.

Try slapping in your Verizon sim or in the 2nd slot if that Cradlepoint has one and changing the firmware. I'm guessing it's just AT&T. My Cradlepoint gets a much better signal than any of our phones.

This is what I saw on my parents set up, but it didn't exactly translate to better speeds.

I just moved into a new rural house and the info in this thread has been timely and extremely helpful. Based on the comments in the thread I picked up the Cradlepoint CBA850 (Cat6) that was recommended on page 2 of the thread.

I am relatively computer savy, but terrible at networks, but I got internet access setup today relatively painless. I am currently getting 9-11mb down and 2-3 mb up. With the same setup, I was getting 35/12 in town, so I would like to see if I can increase the speed.

What are the next step(s)? Drive over and check near the tower to find max speed? Change/program the modem? Start shopping for antenna? Note that Google maps and cellmapper.net say that I am less than 1.5 miles (as the crow flies) from the nearest tower, but i'm in north/east Tx so trees block all line of sight.

Finding the best spot in the house is step 1, and then if that isn't enough you can try antennas. I'd recommend a directional one like the link below to start out with. The higher up you can get the better it should work. I found the towers I couldn't see on google maps, and then put their coordinates in a compass app to help me aim the antenna in the right direction. It's really all about trying different things, returning what doesn't help, and using what does. Good luck!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NBSLNJ6/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_5b1UCbTTJ42DT

Hello all,
OK. It's obvious that all of you know much more about this than I do, so I am going to ask a complete newbie question. I am seriously considering OTR, and I am one of those RVers who will only be using the service periodically to download and stream movies. I have been looking and I can't seem to find out how much difference the hotspot makes as far speed and reception go. I currently have an ATT Unite 35F4, and did a test last week and was getting around 8 mbps download with my regular att prepaid service. As long as I have a 4G hotspot, is there a large difference in the speed and reception between various hotspots, or does it mainly depend on the data service you are using? If there is a large difference, I will consider upgrading hotspots, but the Unite is working pretty good for normal data and occasional video streaming. I have never used it on an extended trip like we have upcoming, and I would like to get my data needs taken care of now rather than when we are on the road.
Thanks!

This video explains the differences. Not every tower is going to perform equally and not every hotspot is going to perform equally.

Been meaning to post an update. My service has been pretty consistent. Finally cancelled my other fixed wireless service because everything went smoothly the last month. My two issues have been more with my modem than the service.

First, when it was time to reset the usage meter, the app or Netgear modem webpage wouldn't let me switch it. I tried to restart the modem through both and neither worked. Since I'm on unlimited I didn't really care, but I would like to keep up with my usage in general. Also, after the first couple of days on my new cycle, the usage meter would randomly reset after a day or two.

The other issue was slow speeds and high ping and jitter again. I first noticed on Friday and figured it might just be a one day issue, or somehow related to all the rain and storms that had come through. I went out of town over the weekend, but when I got back, it was the same problem. Turned off my modem and router and after both were turned back on, it's back to normal. I think the issue is that the modem was picking up Band 4 instead of the normal Band 2. There is no manual way to switch the bands, so I guess it will require a restart in the future when this happens. That or upgrade the modem so I have carrier aggregation and it would theoretically always be picking up multiple bands.

It depends on if yours has carrier aggregation and how old it is as far as being able to get any better speeds than you are currently getting. I think the new Unite Express 2 has carrier aggregation, but I couldn't find your model you listed when I searched so I'm not sure what you have. If you can get within 1/4-1/2 mile of a tower, you could test it and see what your speeds are. They should be better than 8 Mbps at that distance. Try cellmapper.net to help locate AT&T towers.

If you wanted to upgrade, the Netgear Nighthawk that has been mentioned in this thread may be a decent solution. It has carrier aggregation and would theoretically give you faster speeds if your current hotspot is more than 2-3 years old. If it is not an all day, every day home internet source, the issues with overheating mentioned probably wouldn't be an issue.

Quote:

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I think the issue is that the modem was picking up Band 4 instead of the normal Band 2.

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If you end up going with a Cradlepoint eventually, you can lock the Cradlepoint to Band 2. I've been planning to do it, but haven't yet.

"How To" in this post if anyone is interested. CBA850 Cradlepoint Intro

With carrier aggregation, would it not always automatically pickup Band 2 if the tower only has 2-3 bands on it? I guess I'm still not clear on exactly how that works.

khkman22 said:

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With carrier aggregation, would it not always automatically pickup Band 2 if the tower only has 2-3 bands on it? I guess I'm still not clear on exactly how that works.

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I think you are right, but I have barely dipped my toe into understanding it. I can get many different bands from my house, but 2 always seems to work the best. Something I need to research more and figure out...

After the input in this thread, I purchased an OTRMobile Nighthawk for use at our rural property. We are located 8.5 miles from the nearest tower and, as you might imagine, have a very poor outside signal (-120 dBm). A couple of years ago, we installed a WeBoost Connect booster and that enabled acceptable cell service and even some limited internet. After ordering the OTR gear, we double checked all the connections on the booster and optimized the antenna orientation. We now get -90 dBm of amplified signal. The Nighthawk was easy to setup and after experimenting with the location of the modem relative to the "transmit" panel of the booster using the Netgear app, we now have decent internet throughout the house! While not up to the rigorous standards some of you have, we consistently measure 20-40 mpbs down and 6-8 mbps up. It is plenty for our basic needs-internet surfing and up to two streams of 1080p. One anomaly I have seen occasionally is very slow upload speeds, under 1 mbps, but it hasn't affected our use. Also, I do notice when the network gets congested due to traffic on the interstate (where the tower we connect to is located) that our speeds are diminished. I haven't noticed any overheating issues with the Nighthawk. Maybe we just don't work it that hard. On the whole, I'm very pleased with the hardware and the service, and at $60/mo with no contract, this makes a lot of sense for us, given the alternatives.

Just FYI, I'm still having to chat with OTR every month to turn back on my internet. After each billing cycle it shuts down until I tell them and then unplug my router for a reboot. Pretty frustrating when you aren't at home to unplug it, and you want to see your cameras. I thought this would go away when they started doing auto-renew.