Wireless Joint

Hi all, new here I have done extensive searching and can't find an answer to my problem. I have the maxed out ATT unlimited plan on my cell. I live in a rural area. I bought a Netgear LB1120 and external antenna in hopes of getting decent internet using my plan. The LB1120 came in from Amazon and I inserted my sim from my phone turned it on and bam 4G and 10MB down 5 UP on speedtest. I was thrilled. So next day got home, decided i need to figure out how to get a extra sim to put in LB1120 instead of taking my sim out my cell every day after work. I pop my sim out cell put in 1120 and bam 3G. Tried resetting to default, rebooting, looking at APN, google, etc. Still, 3G.

I am going to "Assume" that somehow ATT figured out what I did and saw my sim in a different device and cut the speed down to 3G when i put my cell sim into the 1120. Cell works fine. Is this what happened? Or is the 1120 somehow not switching to the right band because of signal strength and bypasses 4g for the 3g bands? If I get another sim activated say from the ipad trick i read about, etc wil it work but just get chopped down to 3G again? Is the easiest thing to do is get a Nighthawk because its a "authorized " device and the 1120 isnt? Thanks for any input I really appreciate it, im sick of using my cell as a hotspot because the signal is too weak, i want a more perm solution.

Reek

A lot of people are using the ipad plans still, but only the post paid accounts, as the prepaid ones are getting shut down pretty rapidly.

Carriers usually don't throttle by dropping the connection down to 3G, they can do that even on 4G through their firewall to slow down the packets. In your case there could be a provisioning issue, where the sim was activated specifically for a phone/tablet and it just doesn't like the modem (which is highly likely based on lots of reports by others).
Or it could also be the lack of signal, which you could test by taking your router over to a friend's house and see if it makes a difference.
ATT uses a couple of different APN's, so you could try them all, and make sure to restart the modem after each change.

broadband
phone
nxtgenphone

This should be illegal. There are people in rural areas with no other option and they are making it like pulling teeth to just get an internet connection. I'm going to call my public service commissioner see what he thinks.

Paying isn't an issue for me so not like I'm asking for free services either. I tried all 3 those pans and restarts even tried factory resets between.

Ok so it may be a signal strength issue. I will work on that. If it is, and I get 4g after, what about keeping my sim from my cell in it then just buying another phone and add it to my plan and have number duplicated to it. End result would be my current cell with no sim, that sim in the lb1120, and a new phone with same number? That a good work around?

You can easily add a line to your AT&T plan and they'll mail you an already provisioned sim... Just go to their online store and somewhere under add a line you'll see 'bring your own device. ' That's exactly what I did and I've never been throttled even going over 2tb of usage.

The problem you're having is the main reason I ditched my netgear 2120 for a Quectel in a usb enclosure.. Those netgear modems have zero settings for band prioritization or even 3g/4g selection. They routinely drop to a 3g connection for seemingly no reason, even with a proper directional antenna pulling in a nice -84db signal on LTE BAND 2, and they will NOT go back to 4g without a reboot... Also those ts9 connectors are terrible when you have a nice antenna...

If your main router can support goldenorb firmware (or you have a nice Asus that supports USB cellular modems natively), then I'd grab a USB enclosure and at least a cat6 modem from The Wireless Haven, along with the smb connectors you'll need to connect your antenna properly. If not, then maybe look at grabbing one of the WG series routers with built-in modem slots and putting a cat6+ modem in that.