LTE modems

Many people are buying the LTE home routers from Huawei, which seem to be Category 4 or Category 6 or 7 based, which are generally only 2 channel aggregation capable. This is interesting as most mobile phones (e.g. iPhone 8, or later, Samsung S7 or later) support a lot more of these LTE-Advanced modes.

LTE categories - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-UTRA#User_Equipment_...

Netgear now has some (expensive) mobile hot spots, available, which support higher categories, useful for those whom have a mobile network with 3 or more streams of LTE available (e.g. B20, B3+B3 or B3+B7+B7) or where higher modes (e.g. 256QAM) improve stability and throughput.

Netgear M1 (M1100) which can aggregate upto 4 channels together, for a theoretical Gigabit:
https://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/mobile-broad...
£237 at Amazon UK

Netgear M2 (M2100) which can aggregate upto 5 channels together, for theoretical more than Gigabit: https://www.netgear.co.uk/home/products/mobile-broad...
£384 at Amazon UK

I have the older model AC810 which is category 11 (theoretically 600 Mbps downlink) as a mobile hotspot / MiFi device.

Has anyone found a desktop style router that supports higher categories?? I assume Huawei make them, but they're not popular in the UK?

Really depends on your local masts, for the moment CAT6 will work fine for me for several more years, even if the Three L band 32 comes I can just freeze out band 20, upload on band 3 and download on band 3 and 32. With Three band 20 is 5mhz bandwidth so does not add much. So for me it's likely best to stay on Cat 6 until 5G is rolled out locally.

If you want a CAT9 then there is the Huawei B715.

So depends on carrier and mast.

In reply to a post by kommando:

If you want a CAT9 then there is the Huawei B715.
So depends on carrier and mast.

Thanks, for those of us on networks other than Three, the higher categories are interesting. Either that or connect a modern phone to a traditional router via USB.

the higher categories also have more efficiencies than you'd expect, even for a mast with only 2 channels of CA.

Worth a read:
https://www.semiaccurate.com/2017/11/14/qualcomm-sho...