Issues Moving from Verizon Pre to Post Paid

[Oomps]

As the title states, I’ve ran into issues switching a Verizon Pre to Postpaid account. I’m using a NEXG H721 on WiFix with an EM7455. I’m hoping I’m just doing something glaringly wrong.

For the past 3+ months I’ve been using a Verizon Pre-paid $70/month unlimited to try out. Been working flawlessly, getting 75+ Mbps down and 15+ up. Since liking the service so much, thinking I’d be saving some money, I moved the phone number to my Post-paid account….I selected the post-paid ‘Play More’ option which claims unlimited data and 15GB of hotspot. I’ve read others on the forum having success on this plan.

Upon switching to post-paid, the modem lost connection and will not reconnect. Nothing changed from the previously working settings. APN: VZWINTERNET and TTL: 117. Removed the SIM and put it in a phone to confirm activated, could make calls/texts and view webpages. Rebooted router, reset and reconfigured and tired with and without TTL. Also tried the SIM in my backup rig with same issue(Raspberry Pi 3B on Rooter with a second EM7455 in a USB to M.2 enclosure).

Does anyone have any suggestions? Am I doing anything obviously wrong?

Appreciate any assistance or feedback!

[Yipzy]

Does anyone have any suggestions? Am I doing anything obviously wrong?

What's the current firmware? Type

Code: Select all

AT!ENTERCND="A710"
AT!IMPREF?

[Oomps]

What's the current firmware? Type

Code: Select all

AT!ENTERCND="A710"
AT!IMPREF?

Thanks Yipzy, I didn't have a whole lot of time to troubleshoot today and haven't checked the firmware just yet. But I think I'm closer to figuring out the issue.

Removed the router SIM and put it into another phone today just to double check a few things and this time it could make/receive calls, send/receive texts(but not pictures) and couldn't load any webpage. Had service bars, but never got the 4G or LTE to light up in the upper corner of the phone. Put the phone SIM that was being used in the testing phone prior to the tests into the router and it connected without issue but could not provide data. Upon restarting the router it then would no longer connect like the router SIM does. Makes sense for the no data as it was not on a hotspot plan. Removed the phone SIM from router and put it back into the original phone and now it has the same issue as the router SIM.

I'm thinking I triggered something with Verizon. Looking back on it, I originally tried to connect the router SIM when the line was not upgraded to provide hotspot. So the two things in common that I can tell are that I attempted to provide hotspot data on a line that did not have the plan to provide the service. Even though the router line was upgraded after the fact I think I need to have whatever was triggered undone before proceeding. Verizon support line is now closed until Monday, tried their 'chat' system and got a bumbling idiot who eventually threw in the towel and told me to call the support line.

[Yipzy]

Thanks Yipzy, I didn't have a whole lot of time to troubleshoot today and haven't checked the firmware just yet. But I think I'm closer to figuring out the issue.

What I'm seeing here is the postpaid phone sim will not work with the 7455 modem or sierra modems because they are getting flagged as hotspot or incompatibility. I had experience similar issue and my fix was get the postpaid tablet sim or you could get the Quectel modem.

[Oomps]

What I'm seeing here is the postpaid phone sim will not work with the 7455 modem or sierra modems because they are getting flagged as hotspot or incompatibility. I had experience similar issue and my fix was get the postpaid tablet sim or you could get the Quectel modem.

Interesting thought, can't wait to see what they say on the phone tomorrow lol...Any tips on getting a postpaid tablet sim if I don't have a tablet to use it in? I assuming like most of Verizon they want the IMEI up front before I can even view plan options. How much did the tablet plan cost you, is it data capped?

[Yipzy]

Interesting thought, can't wait to see what they say on the phone tomorrow lol...Any tips on getting a postpaid tablet sim if I don't have a tablet to use it in? I assuming like most of Verizon they want the IMEI up front before I can even view plan options. How much did the tablet plan cost you, is it data capped?

You would need a tablet to get it activated. Buy a cheap ipad mini 1st/2nd gen LTE tablet. It was ~$10 unlimited but subject to deprioritization after 22gb if tower was congested. I used from 600GB to 1200GB for a few months. Now on fiber so I will be out of the game for awhile.

[gscheb]

You would need a tablet to get it activated. Buy a cheap ipad mini 1st/2nd gen LTE tablet. It was ~$10 unlimited but subject to deprioritization after 22gb if tower was congested. I used from 600GB to 1200GB for a few months. Now on fiber so I will be out of the game for awhile.

Wondering if anyone can give me some advice on getting this Verizon tablet plan? Have some people that might want to try it out. What plan is it? What is the settings to get it to work on a MC7455? Know they have Verizon phone service now.
Thanks

[Yipzy]

Wondering if anyone can give me some advice on getting this Verizon tablet plan? Have some people that might want to try it out. What plan is it? What is the settings to get it to work on a MC7455? Know they have Verizon phone service now.
Thanks

I had it on Do More Unlimited for the $10 tablet line otherwise it's $20. You just need to set TTL to 65. In my case, it was 67 in order to get a TTL 65 reply from the router's ip via pinging.

[gscheb]

I had it on Do More Unlimited for the $10 tablet line otherwise it's $20. You just need to set TTL to 65. In my case, it was 67 in order to get a TTL 65 reply from the router's ip via pinging.

So just to confirm, this will work with a Sierra Wireless MC7455 modem?

[Yipzy]

So just to confirm, this will work with a Sierra Wireless MC7455 modem?

I'm not sure but it's not a phone sim. Phone sim isn't compatible with MC7455. Tablet line sim tends to work. Search around the forums.

[Oomps]

Well...Yipzy was correct.

Sierra modems(well at least the 7455) is blocked from use on a post paid phone plan. If anyone needs to know how to get the phone line working again you have to speak with the Tier 2 techs via customer support and ask them to perform a re-provisioning on their end. They'll make you jump through a few hoops of baloney with changing settings before finally performing this. Had them fix the phone, confirmed it was fixed. Immediately connected it to the 7455 and loaded one webpage before it was blocked again

I'm going the Visible route at the moment. If the latency is too bad for me I'll go the tablet route.

I'll provide an update of the Visible and Verizon comparison when I get it up and running.

[Yipzy]

Well...Yipzy was correct.

I had experienced it first hand. If you have the option to easily switch to tablet line route, I would suggest you do that instead of going to Visible (streaming quality @ 480p) vs 1080p for tablet line without using a private proxy or vpn.

[BillA]

Well...Yipzy was correct.

Sierra modems(well at least the 7455) is blocked from use on a post paid phone plan. If anyone needs to know how to get the phone line working again you have to speak with the Tier 2 techs via customer support and ask them to perform a re-provisioning on their end. They'll make you jump through a few hoops of baloney with changing settings before finally performing this. Had them fix the phone, confirmed it was fixed. Immediately connected it to the 7455 and loaded one webpage before it was blocked again

I'm going the Visible route at the moment. If the latency is too bad for me I'll go the tablet route.

I'll provide an update of the Visible and Verizon comparison when I get it up and running.

As soon as you switch from a Verizon prepaid plan to a post paid plan, the account falls under different rules and restrictions such as imei, hotspot usage, etc. Here are a couple of ways to get around the restrictions:

1. You could leave the sim card in a phone/tablet which takes care of the device restriction, and tether it to any router which is GoldenOrb flashable ( https://www.ofmodemsandmen.com/firmware16.html and https://www.ofmodemsandmen.com/upload/) in order to change the TTL/DNS/HostName so you can use the unlimited data. Here's how to do it via USB or WiFi (if the router doesn't recognize the phone/tablet via USB, you can go with WiFi tethering to the router with some loss of speed) > https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?p=10303#p10303

2. Prepaid accounts especially resellers/MVNO's have less restrictions, so you may consider switching to Visible (slower speeds, higher latency), or PagePlus (same speeds and latency as Verizon prepaid). All Verizon prepaid services have a 200gig/month high speed data limit at this time (which hopefully will change down the line), and the only way around it is by doing an early monthly refill.

[gscheb]

Anyone have experience how much you get de-prioritized on these post pay tablet plans?
Have an uncle on grandfathered prepay Verizon unlimited mifi jetpack plan and it is de-prioritized badly at night. To the point can't watch tv with it.

[Yipzy]

Anyone have experience how much you get de-prioritized on these post pay tablet plans?
Have an uncle on grandfathered prepay Verizon unlimited mifi jetpack plan and it is de-prioritized badly at night. To the point can't watch tv with it.

It is tower dependent. I don't get de-prioritized at all. If that tower is congested, you could try to test each band out to see which one is still usable. If none are usable, have the modem switch to another tower nearby if it is able to or switch to another provider in the area.

[gscheb]

Tried couple different Verizon tower around here with the Jetpack. Live in the boonies don't see how they get congested. Seems like Verizon just gets kicks out of slowing people down. Sometimes wonder if the jetpack itself helps them to slow you down by switching bands and what not.

[Yipzy]

That sounds like the Jetpack which is a hotspot device has a hard LTE limit not unlimited unlike the postpaid phone plans & tablet plan so it throttles down to useless speeds except for surfing. Try with a phone sim in a phone instead without using the Jetpack. I don't see how you would get de-prioritized then even at prime time due to where you live.

[gscheb]

It is unlimited. Not a hard throttle. The old pre pay an they had that was unlimited and u throttled. It is always subject to data management though.

[Yipzy]

Still worth a try with a phone sim on an always de-prioritized plan (Verizon Prepaid, Verizon Postpaid Starter, or Visible) and mobile phone instead of testing with Jetpack during congested hours then you will know whether it's the jetpack plan or the tower causing slow down.

[gscheb]

Ok I got Verizon phone. Today happen to be out by the good tower in the area around noon time. Ran speed test got 137 down. My uncle said after 10pm that is when we can't use it anymore.
So I drive back or there with my phone at like 10:30 pm. Got about 45 down. Now 45 isn't bad but if you look at percentage wise only getting like 32% at night.
So if you take my uncle's house five miles away from tower and surrounded by trees. This show down does him in.
See don't get why Verizon slowing it down at night like that. Seems crazy to me. Have always seemed to me that Verizon managed data to much!

[Oomps]

As soon as you switch from a Verizon prepaid plan to a post paid plan, the account falls under different rules and restrictions such as imei, hotspot usage, etc. Here are a couple of ways to get around the restrictions:

1. You could leave the sim card in a phone/tablet which takes care of the device restriction, and tether it to any router which is GoldenOrb flashable ( https://www.ofmodemsandmen.com/firmware16.html and https://www.ofmodemsandmen.com/upload/) in order to change the TTL/DNS/HostName so you can use the unlimited data. Here's how to do it via USB or WiFi (if the router doesn't recognize the phone/tablet via USB, you can go with WiFi tethering to the router with some loss of speed) > https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?p=10303#p10303

2. Prepaid accounts especially resellers/MVNO's have less restrictions, so you may consider switching to Visible (slower speeds, higher latency), or PagePlus (same speeds and latency as Verizon prepaid). All Verizon prepaid services have a 200gig/month high speed data limit at this time (which hopefully will change down the line), and the only way around it is by doing an early monthly refill.

Thanks for the feedback Bill. I knew I could tether the phone to the router should exhausting all resources fail. I just didn't want the nice antenna setup I'd previously built go to waste

I was unaware that prepaid had less restrictions that postpaid...Seems entirely backward to what I thought. I mean, I think you still need a credit check to setup a postpaid account, but any ol' ding-bat can get a prepaid setup.

[Oomps]

Got Visible setup this week. I went with Visible because they had a deal where it was only $25 for the first month and no activation fee or other junk Verizon tried to pull on me. I’ll try the Verizon tablet plan eventually when I get around to buying a tablet. I was reluctant to buy a cheap LTE tablet off Ebay because I’ve been burnt before buying LTE devices on Ebay for cheap. Last one I bought, upon activating locked my Verizon account for fraud. Apparently the previous owner scammed them and ran up a $1,200 bill before service was shut off and they associate the bill with the IMEI number or some other identifier because even after going through their fraud department to confirm I was not the person who ran up the bill they would not unlock the device.

Initially had weird issues with Visible. Activated in phone easily then put into the rig. Changed the APN to VSBLINTERNET and left the 117 TTL the same as I had on Verizon pre-paid. Immediately got service but it seemed as though only one device at a time on the entire network could have a connection. It would initially provide connection to the entire network briefly after boot. Extremely strange, I could literally watch the service bounce between devices when a device would make enough requests. Thought the issue was my access points or PfSense config, but still occurred after ruling them out. Ended up changing the TTL to 65 and this resolved the issue.

As far as speeds, latency and streaming:

• Speeds/latency: I’m about 2 miles from the tower and approximately 850’ out of line of sight lower in elevation. Since venturing into the LTE home internet solution I’ve had very unpredictable speed tests across all carriers I’ve tried(Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Visible). Some tests work better than others on some carriers but then fail on others.

• • Previously on Verizon Pre-paid I received around 70-80Mbps down and 10-15Mbps up with 60-80ms latency.
    On Visible, the speeds tests are hard to perform. Many simply cap at 5Mbps up and down. I heard others mention this in other threads, Visible also claim 5Mbps cap for hopspotting. However, I was able to get a couple tests to work on a few occasions. They resulted in 45-60Mbps down and 15-18 Mbps up with 70-90ms ping. Now I should mention, I live in Oregon and we’re experiencing unprecedented levels of thick smoke due to nearby wildfires.

• Streaming: As far as I can tell there is little to no difference in streaming content for me between Verizon Prepaid and Visible. I can easily load 1080p Youtube and Netflix. The other streaming we use is Xfinity online which is the only one that might be impacted. It kind of ping pongs between 480 and 720. However, their entire streaming platform has never been really consistent for me to say definitively that Visible makes it worse.

I’ll update if I end up running into any further issues.

[Yipzy]

As far as speeds, latency and streaming:

• Speeds/latency: I’m about 2 miles from the tower and approximately 850’ out of line of sight lower in elevation. Since venturing into the LTE home internet solution I’ve had very unpredictable speed tests across all carriers I’ve tried(Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Visible). Some tests work better than others on some carriers but then fail on others.

• • Previously on Verizon Pre-paid I received around 70-80Mbps down and 10-15Mbps up with 60-80ms latency.
    On Visible, the speeds tests are hard to perform. Many simply cap at 5Mbps up and down. I heard others mention this in other threads, Visible also claim 5Mbps cap for hopspotting. However, I was able to get a couple tests to work on a few occasions. They resulted in 45-60Mbps down and 15-18 Mbps up with 70-90ms ping. Now I should mention, I live in Oregon and we’re experiencing unprecedented levels of thick smoke due to nearby wildfires.

You are getting capped at 5Mbps sometimes and not all the time tells me you are leaking hotspot data. Do your rules look like this https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&p=12134#p12131 with TTL set at 65,66, or 67 instead? You want to ping the router from your PC with a TTL of 65 reply.

[terryjett]

I have a couple of Visible test accounts. Noticed one of the them would hit 20-30mbps and then drop right down to 5mbps.

Got on Visible chat and explained that I could hit 20-30 but was automatically throttled back to 5. After about 10 minutes, a restart and was back to getting full speed.

Seems they do throttle accounts and will do so again. I just chat them up and live another few months unthrottled. Just tips for others that may have the issue.

[BillA]

I have a couple of Visible test accounts. Noticed one of the them would hit 20-30mbps and then drop right down to 5mbps.

Got on Visible chat and explained that I could hit 20-30 but was automatically throttled back to 5. After about 10 minutes, a restart and was back to getting full speed.

Seems they do throttle accounts and will do so again. I just chat them up and live another few months unthrottled. Just tips for others that may have the issue.

I was just reading an article online at FierceWireless, talking about Visible being owned by Verizon (it's not just a reseller), much like Boost Mobile owned by Sprint (now part of Tmobile). Reportedly Visible is being marketed with the annoying random throttling (they're getting the leftover bandwidth with the least priority) specifically to get people switch over to the more lucrative Verizon post-paid plans... go figure.
In other news, Tracfone/PagePlus/SimpleMobile has been bought by Verizon (woot?! yep!), which should complete by the second half of 2021, so we'll see what's going to happen to the prepaid landscape. It seems the choices for prepaid and even main carriers are shrinking every year due to these out of control mergers (FTC where you at?!).

[Oomps]

You are getting capped at 5Mbps sometimes and not all the time tells me you are leaking hotspot data. Do your rules look like this https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&p=12134#p12131 with TTL set at 65,66, or 67 instead? You want to ping the router from your PC with a TTL of 65 reply.

Been super busy, but wanted to thank Yipzy once again

Figured out, I was only being throttled to 5Mbps on any cell phone/mobile device. All other devices on the network would get 50+Mbps. My TTL settings were not entirely correct, I did not include the IPV6 portion. My pings were messing with me also because my computer was always 1 TTL lower than the setting. Tried all common TTL's, only one that did not throttle the mobile devices was 67.

Fingers crossed Verizon doesn't diddle with Visible much so that I can at least have service for 6 months...Or until hopefully I get beta access to Daddy Musk's new hot stuff Starlink. They recently provided Starlink to nearby emergency services due to fires and they raved about it.