I haven’t noticed anyone talking about it, but a month ago I’ve stumbled on a Tweeter post in which 5G roadmap from Mikrotik is posted. Since it’s retweeted by Mikrotik X account I presume it’s authentic. https://x.com/5GTechritory/status/1849022332171403332
Here’s the picture from that post:
I wonder how good are the antennas in ATL 5G going to be. I have LHG LTE 18 at a location rather distant from the only tower and I’m afraid I might rather need “LHG 5G” to justify upgrade to a new hardware.
The antennas are better than the LHG/LHGG. The antennas being inside the bottom of the dish allow more side rejection than an LHG(G) setup, and that’s been a constant as I’ve replaced LHGs. You lose a little off the top end, but not enough to justify fighting the extra interference.
LMP 5G with only 16 MB of storage, seriously?! The ATL 5G looks really promising, though. I guess all these new models are announced on MWC25’s final day tomorrow (Thursday).
Another thing that struck me is that Mikrotik has been improving its design language.
I wonder is there some reason for ATL 5G lack of 2.5Gbit port ?
I know it’s very hard to get above-gigabit speeds from cellular network but it would be logical, since there’s a modem inside that support multi-gig speed, at least on paper.
Very surprised to see Chateau R17 being equipped with RG650E based on X75. The main advantage of this module is its diverse aggregation capability on NR in SA mode for a total of 300Mhz (so up to 3x NR bands), however full 5G SA adoption in lot of EU countries is still lagging behind and seem to be at least year away. This means, the promised speeds of up to 7Gbps are very much theoretical at the moment for lot of buyers and I have to wonder whether high price will be justifiable as a long-term investment on a device that is supposed to be all-in-one. Certainly waiting two more years will give you cheaper modem of same or better capabilities and bonus upgrade in Wi-Fi technology. Mind you, this Chateau still does not come with even WiFi 6E so it is already out of date, and will be more so in two years time. Maybe stepping down to RG650V would’ve been more appropriate for this Chateau model while leaving RG650E for standalone external 5G CPEs.
5G/NR on normal/mid bands (FR1) will never ever get you 7 Gbps. For that, you’ll need a 5G radio that supports FR2, but the trade-off is a much smaller coverage area and you’ll have to be within 50 meters of the base station antenna to get that kind of speed.
RG650E does not support mmWave. It’s theoretical speed based on standard and it is possible to satisfy it with n78A_n78A_n78A combo (total span of 300Mhz) which is what it is based upon. However, this configuration is supported only in SA mode, not in NSA mode where only two NR bands can be aggregated. Obviously real-world performance will be much lower, however my point is that you are paying for device that will not be able to unleash its full potential for another year or two, and it is enclosed together with ancient Wi-Fi 6 (not even 6E, let alone 7), making it a rather poor long-term investment.
I forgot to mention that most NMOs have a soft cap on max speed. With a standard consumer plan, inbound speeds usually top out around 800-900 Mbps. If you want higher, guaranteed speeds with better latency, you’ll need to pay extra.
Such a shame the Chateau 5g AX R17 isn’t WiFi 7 with a tri-band radio. Will be interesting to see it’s price point with that X75 modem, pondering whether it will be worth the upgrade from a Chateau 5g.
Long time waiting for nothing for Mikrotik! Very disappointed long time customer here. I’m forced to use Mikrotik less and less these days, and it’s a shame since I like RouterOS better.
None have worldwide band support*, so I’m in same boat as before — ZERO Mikrotik LTE/5G products to use. Even beyond that, the low memory and CPU specs mean none are useful for multi-wan, which is annoying… other than, it just not working at all in US is bigger problem. And I have a bunch of custom 5G wAPGacR that all need to be replaced because 16MB of flash is too risky, so WTF are they doing still shipping 16MB flash devices. RouterOS clearly not getting smaller over time.
Mikrtotik cannot seem to understand that folks might want a 5G model with “global” bands. And, yes, that be a higher cost, pass it along it fine. My alternative (Pepwave) are 2-3x cost of any Mikrotik equivalent. Quectel makes a bunch of variants, some include all bands & they seem to want to save a few dollars.
Instead of 10 worthless products instead of 5 good ones with multiple SKUs. Clearly some folk might pay for more memory/CPU, beyond just global bands.
Quectel makes a bunch of variants, some include all bands & they seem to want to save a few dollars.
Not the case actually. Global variants have more band coverage but worse aggregation abilities. Clearly, MikroTik cares more about better speeds and connectivity in Europe than they care about global coverage. Can’t blame them for it, and NA specific variants from Quectel are somewhat uncommon, so they likely do not want to sell sub-par product to US which will have maximum speeds lower than what EU variant has.
custom 5G wAPGacR
And that is the way to go in my opinion. I can pick and choose exactly what I want to use. The only issue is 16M of storage and mPCIe slot with USB2.0 lanes exposed only (technically they could wire them for USB3.0 over PCIe pins but…). Personally was hoping for wAPGaxR with M.2 slot to satisfy custom 5G box needs. The issue I see though is that they might not want to produce non-modem variant without appropriate modem variant, and the case hardly has any space for 4x4 MIMO antenna alongside 2x2 WiFi antennas, so it might never happen :<