I'm looking for ideas on a device that will take a typical Rogers sim card (Canadian mobile carrier, plan with calling and data), and provide home internet and phone. My (blind) brother currently gets internet and phone (Ooma) from apartment wifi, but it has been undependable.
Home phone meaning, be able to plug in a corded phone - for example old-fashioned analog, unless there's a better idea for corded phone (meaning a fixed phone without batteries, etc). That would use the mobile calling plan (and not a separate VOIP service over data, like with Ooma).
Home internet meaning, even just an ethernet connection - wifi not required as we could use our own (Mikrotik) router. There's not a lot of usage, and I believe with Mikrotik it could be setup as a backup for the apartment wifi to minimize even that.
Rogers used to have a Rocket Hub that had internet (wifi/ethernet) and rj11 port for analog phone, although was expensive per GB. They also had/have a wireless home phone itself (parents used to have both at different times).
He's in a 5G+ coverage area, although I haven't tested that yet. My thinking is using the calling part of the mobile plan (instead of VOIP over the data) would provide best dependability/quality, and not have to buy another service.
Does Mikrotik have any devices that would do this? I don’t see any, but maybe there’s an optional card/addon? Or are there non-Mikrotik devices?
How could I check if the Mikrotik devices are compatible with the Rogers network? Anyone using Rogers here?
What would be a good way to test the signal/bands? I have a Moto Edge 2024 on Rogers, so app recommendations?
Mikrotik doesn't have any devices that would convert between POTS (RJ11 phones) and mobile voice (VoLTE or any other mobile voice technology). There might be some other vendor offering such gateway (German vendor AVM with Fritz line used to have some offering) but they were always rare, even already 25 years ago when fixed phones were still a thing.
Even fixed broadband operators using VoIP to POTS gateways are slowly abandoning it (for "native" VoIP phones). It might be possible to set up a fixed VoIP phone which would use mobile data (4G, 5G ... doesn't matter). But without help of mobile operator (to set up e.g. QoS parameters on mobile network) voice service might be flakey at times due to load on cell tower by other users.
Here in Italy, some ISP's do offer something like that, generally referred to as "FWA" (fixed wireless access) that include - generally - the possibility to plug in the device they provide a normal rj11 phone, besides ethernet/rj45 connections.
That line has a normal phone number and - since the whole stuff is fixed (and I believe geo-localized) - it is not a cellular number, but rather one with the local area code, exactly like if it was a normal phone line.
The thing works (AFAIK) only with the devices the ISP provides that are usually from manufacturers that make these "special" devices expressly for these (large) ISP's.
Here usually they are from ASKEY or from ZTE and you cannot replace them with other modems easily as the service is tied (I believe) to the IMEI or some other unique identifier of the provided device, and having the ISP change them to allow your own router is impossible or very-very difficult to obtain (this depends on the specific ISP, some allow that, some do not AFAIK).
Some Fritxbox devices do have one or two phone ports (usually called FON1 and FON2), but I have never seen them actually used (for the reasons above).
Still here, some ISP's offer - in the same contract as the SIM for mobile phone - an additional SIM (only data), the idea is that you put the main sim in your mobile phone and the additional sim in a tablet or internet key for internet.