Multi-Carrier Mobile Hardware Recommendations
Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2021 10:33 am
When we sold our sticks and bricks home and moved into our RV to travel full time, we cobbled together our internet solution with what we already owned, and new hardware to give us coverage for all three major carriers.
Our current setup:
ASUS RT-1900AC from our home with MR1100 (housing an unlimited AT&T SIM) USB tethered. This is the workhorse of our internet options, as we find it works well enough most places for us to do our jobs, stream video, and surf the web. To give us options if AT&T coverage isn't great, we also have an old iPhone 6 connected to Visible and a 100GB T-Mobile Inseego M2000. Unsurprisingly, the Visible connection is constantly network managed (well below the 5MB hotspot cap) in most places we've visited, and we are considering replacing that with a Verizon plan.
Our ASUS router has started to fail: 2.4GHz network no longer works (used for wireless printer and security cameras), and recently it has intermittently been refusing to pass data. A reboot has been fixing this, but it's happening much more frequently now, and sometimes requiring multiple reboots. It obviously needs to be replaced.
What we'd like:
Any easy to use all in one setup - all of our devices connected to one SSID, which can be managed on the back end to select a carrier. The ability to use an externally mounted telescoping antenna to achieve the best connectivity, regardless of the carrier. A way to tower select (would band locking work) a distant tower with a lower signal has better speeds than a locally congested tower with a great signal.
I have some basic IT skills, but my cellular knowledge is limited, and I've never been very good with hardware. I'm willing to put some money into this setup since we use it to work, but don't want to purchase unreturnable hardware that is impractical or just won't work the way we need it to work, so I need some help selecting hardware.
Is this even possible? What would your suggest?
Our current setup:
ASUS RT-1900AC from our home with MR1100 (housing an unlimited AT&T SIM) USB tethered. This is the workhorse of our internet options, as we find it works well enough most places for us to do our jobs, stream video, and surf the web. To give us options if AT&T coverage isn't great, we also have an old iPhone 6 connected to Visible and a 100GB T-Mobile Inseego M2000. Unsurprisingly, the Visible connection is constantly network managed (well below the 5MB hotspot cap) in most places we've visited, and we are considering replacing that with a Verizon plan.
Our ASUS router has started to fail: 2.4GHz network no longer works (used for wireless printer and security cameras), and recently it has intermittently been refusing to pass data. A reboot has been fixing this, but it's happening much more frequently now, and sometimes requiring multiple reboots. It obviously needs to be replaced.
What we'd like:
Any easy to use all in one setup - all of our devices connected to one SSID, which can be managed on the back end to select a carrier. The ability to use an externally mounted telescoping antenna to achieve the best connectivity, regardless of the carrier. A way to tower select (would band locking work) a distant tower with a lower signal has better speeds than a locally congested tower with a great signal.
I have some basic IT skills, but my cellular knowledge is limited, and I've never been very good with hardware. I'm willing to put some money into this setup since we use it to work, but don't want to purchase unreturnable hardware that is impractical or just won't work the way we need it to work, so I need some help selecting hardware.
Is this even possible? What would your suggest?