Mofi 4500 question

[NickLarson]

I hope I'm posting this in the right place.

I've been using the Mofi 4500 with a Netbuddy activated AT&T sim with great success for the past year. (I full time RV and have 2 soupcan OTR antenna mounted on the roof of the RV so I can go more remote).

A few days ago now I suddenly lost my internet connection. Nothing had changed, I hadn't moved anywhere new or anything like that. One day I was flying with 50 down and 30 up, and an hour later.... nothing. I reset the Sierra module, did a factory reset, and tried all the bands I had available. Nothing.

So I contacted Netbuddy, no response. I tried 3 more times and never heard back so I found a different AT&T reseller. Gypsy Wireless. I went out, got a new sim card, and signed up. Then I contacted their tech support because I noticed this message on their site "Attention: Due to AT&Ts new policy thousands of customers are experiencing outages across the country. We are working diligently for a permanent fix to avoid interruptions in service. Please notify us immediately if you are experiencing outages with your service so that we can get your internet service back up and running as soon as possible.. We apologize for this. Thanks for being patient with us"

Well the tech support guy got us connected again and we were great, until we moved to a spot in AZ. No service, despite me visual confirmation of the cell towers and seeing a signal strength of -80 on both b2 and b12/17. So I contacted tech support again. He got it back up and running.... for about 12 hours. I lost internet again but was still connected to b12/17 with great strength and signal quality.

Now, after doing more resets and everything I can't even see an LTE band doing a band scan, nor can I lock on to one. I am connected to a WCDMA band and still getting some slight download, no upload, and very unreliable. Tech support told me at this point that it is the Mofi and that AT&T now sees the fact that you are on a mofi and kicks you off. I don't know how much truth there is to this but I need internet. My wife and I both work remotely and would kill our verizon hotspot allowance if we don't get this figured out soon.

Tech support told me to look into the Netgear Nighthawk M1. $350 on amazon.... and my research brought me to this forum.

Any thoughts? Did my mofi crap out? Is AT&T really kicking me off because I have a mofi? Should I try some other hardware, and if so, what? Should I see if I can get a refund and find a different reseller? I am at a loss. I need Starlink to become active at this point. Haha

[gscheb]

Sounds like you are being affected by AT&T ipad data plan being shut down.
More than likely your service providers where reselling this to you which breaks the terms and conditions and now they are getting turned off. It is not your device. To verify this you could try a phone sim in your device to see if it works or not.

Here is some info on that plan getting shut down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX9TblDchtc

https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=888

[Didneywhorl]

Yeah, it sounds like you were paying for a $35 a month plan from someone breaking att ToS. The prepaid ipad plans are being savaged right now.

If you have an ATT phone, post pay not pre pay, you can add an ipad SIM for $20 a month.

[BillA]

Any thoughts? Did my mofi crap out? Is AT&T really kicking me off because I have a mofi? Should I try some other hardware, and if so, what? Should I see if I can get a refund and find a different reseller? I am at a loss. I need Starlink to become active at this point. Haha

As a workaround, if you really want/need to keep your current plan. you could put the sim card into a spare phone or tablet, tether it to the router via usb, set up RNDIS tethering (on the phone turn on "USB tethering", then set it up on the router), and you should be good to go.

[56387f]

My wife and I both work remotely and would kill our verizon hotspot allowance if we don't get this figured out soon.

Let me start from saying that I am not an expert but:

Using your phone for tethering will not work since this is not what you can run 24/7. While your mobile phone can have a pretty good modem and support 3 different kind of tethering (WiFi, BL, USB) the latest models for North America market either cannot be rooted or don't have "RF band selection" service menu enabled meaning that you may not (read it as you will not" have control over band selecton/locking etc. Plus depending on your phone model, tethering may be disabled by the network provider. And the most important moment - the sensitivity of your phone modem is limited and there is not way to connect an external anthena - may be it will not be so important in your case since you are saying that your signal is pretty strong.
So if I were you and was needed a robust internet connection for business purposes then I would just choose the path of least resistance by bying the appropriate plan for hotspots even if it costs a lot - those expenses would be business expenses but it would save me nerves and time.

Tech support told me to look into the Netgear Nighthawk M1.

How would it help, unless I completely missed the point? It will be easily detected by the network provider as a hotspot (because this device is a well known one) and if so then what? The same problem as with MOFI?

Did my mofi crap out?

This is when tethering can help - just use your SIM in your phone to see if it works. If it works, then either you MOFI is detected as hotspot or it does not function properly. I think ( I am guessing here) if you try a different SIM what has never been used in MOFI you can check whether or not MOFI works. The thing is that detecting the hotspot may not happen immediately (especially if your MOFI uses corret TTL) and if even if it works fine for 10 minutes then it works - this is all what you need to know. Depending on the network provider detection of hotspots can be done differently including deep packet inspection and like I said it may not happen in a minute.

Just my 0.2 cents.

[Luiseno]

Ok I have a mofi4500 and had bought a att plan on ebay 80 month. One day it wouldn't work of course after I payed for second month. I contacted them and they said it was suspended. And Last I've heard from them. I purchased a pre paid plan tried in the
Mofi4500 and cant get it to work. Could they have blacklisted my mofi4500? I never gave them my imei number for mofi4500.

[Didneywhorl]

The prepaid plans are getting swept away as far as using them in LTE routers. The post paid plans seem unaffected thus far.