Can LTE modems be repurposed as point to point wireless bridges?

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Blurb
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Can LTE modems be repurposed as point to point wireless bridges?

Post by Blurb »

OK STOP! Before anyone complains about legalities, lemme say this. I have FCC approval for use of band 41 @ 2.5GHZ in my designated territories....

Now then, has anyone successfully pointed 2 LTE cards of any make, and or model, at each other and got them to connect and act as a bridge?
No sims would be needed, and band locking, ya I'd have to band lock them to 41.

I've only dealt with sierra wireless cards, but other than those, are there any LTE cards(Quectel) with firmware that can be flashed that allows them to do this?

If there's no way to repurpose an LTE modem, then does anyone know of any m.2 or mPCIe wifi cards that get me up out of 2.4GHZ and into the 2.5GHZ?

regards
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BillA
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Re: Can LTE modems be repurposed as point to point wireless bridges?

Post by BillA »

Legalities aside, theoretically it should be possible by hacking the firmware.
However, it would not be a trivial mod due to the firmware signatures.
LTE modems are not designed to work in bridge mode without a base station.

If you're looking to bridge two locations up to a hundred meters apart, you could simply use two standard routers in bridge mode.
Up to a couple of kilometers, you could use a high speed wireless bridge like from Ubiquity, etc.
A quick Google search should point you in the right direction.
https://www.google.com/search?q=high+sp ... ess+bridge

Here's Linus' speed test over 10 Km away.

Code: Select all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYJFwXw1ZIc&t=4s

Code: Select all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYJFwXw1ZIc&t=1192s
Again with legalities aside, some WiFi routers allow you to use non-standard bands by setting it to different regions like China, Europe, etc.
Just because OpenWRT lets you set different WiFi regions, the router also has to support those bands, otherwise it won't work.
Another issue is that most of your WiFi devices might not be able to use the router's non-standard bands without some firmware hacking too.
Blurb
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Re: Can LTE modems be repurposed as point to point wireless bridges?

Post by Blurb »

I didn't think it'd be easy, and Mikrotik is one of the easiest brands to make a country code change on. But nothing I found on the cheap gets me to my BRS spectrum. Furthermore, if we don't build out and and use it, we lose it. So, since we're not rich, we were hoping to try use the spectrum for our point to point links.


So I guess this sort of thing is our next best option?
https://www.androidauthority.com/ukama- ... e-3216235/
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BillA
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Re: Can LTE modems be repurposed as point to point wireless bridges?

Post by BillA »

Blurb wrote: Thu Mar 21, 2024 12:44 pm I didn't think it'd be easy, and Mikrotik is one of the easiest brands to make a country code change on. But nothing I found on the cheap gets me to my BRS spectrum. Furthermore, if we don't build out and and use it, we lose it. So, since we're not rich, we were hoping to try use the spectrum for our point to point links.


So I guess this sort of thing is our next best option?
https://www.androidauthority.com/ukama- ... e-3216235/

Not sure how a $600 local mobile base station would help you with mobile routers.
In my previous comment I have provided a couple of options for bridging two location for a lot less than this device.
The best solution is usually the simplest and less expensive one.
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