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Bonded Cellular?

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 4:33 pm
by hpark777
Is there any way/solution to bond two cellular lines? Say I had two T-Mobile sims and wanted a router/modem combo that would be able to bond those two lines to double the speed. Like how many telecoms bond dsl? I'm willing and able to build a router/modem if need be. Especially if it saves money. I have a WE826GO-U build that I built and runs very well. I'm getting about Ping: 27 Download: 50mb/s Upload: 20mb/s. I also got a notice from starlink saying that it will be in my area in around the middle of the year. So I'm wanting to see if I can get starlink speeds for less price. Thanks for any help!

Re: Bonded Cellular?

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 7:45 pm
by toddw
I ordered Starlink, but keep in mind is in beta. Random outages, no eta on resolution. LTE you can count on because you control it, carrier down, change sim card, router, band etc.. I plan to run LTE for quite some time as we are still years out for the full satellite deployment of Starlink based on info out there, and he still needs ground stations that can support the bandwidth and redundancy. I'll use Starlink for massive download stuff, but we are a ways out from seeing what it means, if there will be caps, throttling, etc. Read their TOS carefully, nothing we are not used to but there are some interesting tid bits in there.

Re: Bonded Cellular?

Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:45 am
by radec
I didn't look around too much but here is a thread discussing the topic. I'm sure there is more.

https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1078

Re: Bonded Cellular?

Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 12:29 pm
by paperwastage
Bonding two tmobile SIMs makes sense only in certain scenarios
1) your modem don't have CA
2) some reason the tower doesn't have CA enabled but can broadcast multiple bands
3) tower to the north has one band, tower to south had another band (some modems support additional diversity antenna that could allow you to point 2 antennas pairs in different direction, but it's messy trying to figure out and if diversity only works for low/mid bands? )

Otherwise, you'll likely find less hassle by getting a modem that supports CA which bonds the bands for you under the same provider

Bonding different providers makes a little more sense (for backup /reliability purposes and to aggregate the connections)

Starling may not be fully operational in your area (i.e. you may still have downtime depending on your location), so I'd say to just keep your existing hardware for now

Have you done minor tinkering with your setup? (Best antenna setup, shortest cable for minimal loss, correct antenna angles and direction?) Those are free things to do and could improve your speeds /signal quality