I’m having a difficult time finding carriers that recognize the IMEI on Mikrotik LTE gear in the US.
AT&T was able to get me 3G only access
Verizon wouldn’t activate at all with an IMEI they didn’t recognize
Does anyone have any input on supported US carriers? I’d prefer to get LTE speeds, but 3G would probably be sufficient.
I’m also starting to wonder about alternatives - would I be better off going with a Routerboard with a mini PCI-express slot and using a more mainstream LTE modem (Huawei maybe?)
T-Mobile got me on 4G here in the DC Metro Area. Didn’t give me any complaints about putting it on a prepaid plan. Used it on and off for the month and now its expired.
I had to manually enter the APN info. Before I did, the connection seemed “flakey”. Once I entered the T-Mobile info… I could easily flip between being a passthrough modem or a Mikrotik router using LTE as its WAN.
Thanks for the replies. No Verizon coverage is going to be a deal breaker for me, so I ordered a Sierra Wireless MC7455 card. Will RouterOS recognize this, or is there a way to install drivers?
Most likely you would be able to use it as PPP emulation mode with speed limit of approx 25mbps. As MBIM support for newer Sierra cards would be implemented only in RouterOS v7.
But that same wAP LTE KIT-US I used on T-Mobile. Is now running on Verizon wireless. I have a static IP on a SIM that is activated on a business account. VZW doesn’t care what device I put the SiM in. Moved it from a CradlePoint, MoFi, and finally its in the wAP LTE.
Please provide me with the magic that you were able to do with Verizon Business to get them to activate a sim without a device imei AND provide you with a static ip? We have a business account and want to use verizon for all of our wAP lte redundancy for customers, but cannot seem to reach anyone at verizon who understands what we are attempting to get done. They all insist that we have to provide them with a “valid” imei in order to purchase a sim.
I deal with a business account rep.
I contact her with the customer info and she sends them the required paperwork and sets me as a PoC. Once they approve the account… I get an email to confirm the plan they want… Then I give her the SIM ID from one of my cards. I pick them up or get them shipped to me when I run out.
I helped another company in North Carolina set up an account. Had the customer go into the store and set up a business account. VZW activated a SIM, and she brought it to her local integrator. He called me up and I TeamViewered into his computer via his hotspot and set the proper APN on the SXT he had. Unit connected to Verizon and they mounted it outside the cabin.
In the land of the US, maybe some operator is trying to sell 3.5G for 4G (as they do with 5G, top kek), but rest assured - 3.5G and 4G are totally different technologies.
I know I’m a little late to the party on this thread - I’m also trying to activate some Microtik LTE boards - this is the R11e-LTE-US boards and our Verizon rep tells us the IMEI “pattern” that Microtik is assigned isn’t “registered” with Verizon so their sales and provisioning systems sees the IMEI numbers as bogus. We had to take an old Cradlepoint router, activate it, steal the SIM out and plug it into a Microtik board and it worked. Thing is we have four more Microtik boards and no other devices to steal SIMs from.
One solution (again, according to Verizon) is for someone at Mikrotik to make contact with someone at Verizon US and arrange to send a listing of IMEIs that were produced for the US market so they can be activated on Verizon service.
So if we tell our Verizon rep to provision us static IP's and send us some SIMs to use, they won't bother with the IMEI numbers of the modem cards themselves? If it makes a difference, these will NOT be stationary devices.
Yup… A static IP follows the Sim card. I have taken one Sim that was setup with a static IP and moved it between 3 modems.
The only issue I could think might bite you…
The APN for Verizon Static is geographic. If you went to another geographic area… You may need to change the APN.
In the DC metro area… NE. So it depends what you meant by “moved around”.
We aren’t putting them on cars and running them around at 220+ MPH These will be in devices that we provide to race teams for test sessions so they could literally go anywhere from coast to coast. Having to change the APN might be a problem as they may not necessarily pass through my hands in between locations, and these must be “plug it in” and it works.
We used to use Cradlepoint but there’s limited space in these device boxes, hence the move to using Routerboards since we’re tunneling back to HQ anyway. The LTE card is perfect for this application. We might try a MVNO that utilizes Verizon and see if they will be more flexible in their accomodations.
