Updated perspectives for 3 carriers (TM/VZW/ATT)?

[colterlovette]

I have a Pepwave install that bonds three LTE connections together (1 x Cat18, 2 x Cat12).

I've procrastinated setting up all three and have only been using a single LTE WAN for the last couple of months. Primarily, an ATT prepaid unlimited tablet SIM with a US Mobile VZW as a failover (using just the CAT18 radio).

But.. I finally got the Speedfusion stuff setup to connect us back to my office and I'm ready to start investigating what I should put in the two Cat12 radios now that bonding is all enabled and functional.

The obvious change would be to move the US Mobile sim into one of the CAT12 radios and then pick up a TMobile sim somewhere, but the recent reversal of truly unlimited from US Mobile is making me investigate what else is out there for VZW.

After some extensive searching of this forum, I see Visible is a favorite, but a lot of what I'm reading is several months old now, so I thought I'd ask for a community update on y'all opinions:

1. What's the best today for Verizon services? Visible, US Mobile, someone else?
2. Same question for TMobile? Calyx, Direct?

I'm pretty technical on all this, so feel free to chat openly. I saw some of you have torn down the new TMobile Home internet setup (pretty neat), but it looks like T-Mobile has locked the service to its proprietary hardware, making it a bit moot for me.

My last question (not knowing the latest on each carrier's frequencies and such) is which carrier do you think would be the best in the Cat18 modem? I was reading TMobile above the others because of LTE band 71?

Thanks for the comments and direction. Hopefully, having a single thread with this updated info can help anyone searching vaguely for the best options of the three carriers.

[LoveMeSomeCALTE]

What's your definition of best?

- Cheapest/best value?
- Priority/best connection?

For the best priority, nothing will beat the business class accounts, directly from AT&T, TMobile and Verizon.

Visible is not the best by either metric - it's neither the best value to connect to Verizon and definitely not the best connection to Verizon.

I personally depend on the internet for my livelihood and use AT&T Business Elite and TMobile Magenta Max.

I would be interested in learning how you have your setup for bonding across providers.

[gscheb]

US Mobile is great for phone service. But not so much to use in a Internet connection. They have a hard throttle after so much usage. 75 gigs on Verizon and 50 gigs on T-Mobile. They say it may slow down. That isn't reality. After that amount it is a hard throttle kind of like how mint mobile works.
But if you want cheap dependable phone service it is great. Perks are great too.

[colterlovette]

Probably best over cheap for sure.

I have two Pepwave Transit's, a dual Cat12 and a single Cat18. The 18 is configured to transparently pass its LTE WAN to the 12's ethernet WAN, thusly making the 12 a 3 x LTE capable router.

I then use a private Speedfusion link to bond them all together and send all our traffic to a FusionHub container I've built at my office on a 10g public fiber. This allows me to be mobile and retain a single public IP (like a consistent virtual ethernet wire back to my office and out through one of its public IP's). It also means I don't care what a carrier is doing with traffic as all our traffic is encrypted back to my office over any of the three WANs either all at once or in a failover situation when only one or two have coverage.

It just works.

But I was wondering if I'm using the best network access providers (MVNO vs Direct).

I did just pick up a Magenta Max SIM which *seems* to be the way to go for them currently. My ATT is the unlimited tablet prepaid plan (works fantastically well). So I guess now, I just need to find the best option(s) for the Verizon network. Which, as it seems, is the hardest one on everyone, haha.

Ultimately, I'd like to pay no mind to data usage per se and get it designed where the system is load-balancing our 600GB of average monthly usage over 2 or more LTE carriers at any one time (3 being in pristine scenarios when we're in larger city areas).

Additionally, each modem has dual sim capability for failover in the event of certain rules being met (usage caps for example). So, I suppose I could have a primary "unlimited" SIM, that is programmed to disconnect at a certain usage stat and fail-over to a 100GB prepaid card using an MVNO on the same network (thereby keeping the radio up on the same carrier).

So I could do both US mobile and Visible I suppose and achieve the "set and forget" mission. Does anyone know if Verizon has a direct plan that's semi-decent instead? I'd like a direct SIM primary with an MVNO failover if it's achievable for them.

[Didneywhorl]

Look for someone selling or renting/leasing an old unlimited prepaid jetpack account. Verizon is very particular about devices to plans, and their only option for data on hotspot imei devices is generally just hotspot plans.