Good question Barker, I don't think my local mast is 64QAM yet, the growth of 6ft high nettles inside its fenced off area makes me think no ones been to it in the last 5 years.

In reply to a post by buggerlugs:

Good question Barker, I don't think my local mast is 64QAM yet, the growth of 6ft high nettles inside its fenced off area makes me think no ones been to it in the last 5 years.

You can't tell from looking, many systems are upgradable remotely by software. You would need to use a rooted Qualcomm Android phone with a tool such as Network Signal Guru to be sure. Until then it is all guesswork.

Hmm in which case does this mr600 support 64QAM ? Does anyone know , or can you suggest one that does ? Not sure if the B535 does ?

In reply to a post by barker04:

Hmm in which case does this mr600 support 64QAM ? Does anyone know , or can you suggest one that does ? Not sure if the B535 does ?

I wouldn't worry about QAM, look at the LTE category. If your mast is cat6 and your receiver is cat 6 that is the best you can get.

QAM seems to have a fairly big difference though 50Mbps for 64 increase vs 16 though so would be a shame not to try it ? No way to know if mast is more than band 6 is there ? And does that even take QAM into account ?

Yes, the category includes QAM as one of hundreds of technical parameters. Try a relatively recent phone on the same network and see if you get higher speeds, e.g. outdoors. If you don't then don't worry about it.

I’m really surprised this is so complicated - surely if a cat 6 device cannot do 64QAM then it simply can’t ? Has anyone found another router that’s cat 8 or higher for reasonable price ?

In reply to a post by barker04:

I’m really surprised this is so complicated - surely if a cat 6 device cannot do 64QAM then it simply can’t ?

I don't know which LTE Category includes which levels of QAM, but if a device is sold as a certain category it will handle the level of QAM required for that category.

The better category routers are the pocket style ones, e.g. the Netgear MR range, which have Ethernet and WiFi and yes, cost as much as a phone.

MR1 / MR1100:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-MR1100-100EUS-Night...

MR2 / MR:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-Nighthawk-Mobile-Ho...

What I don't get is, these high number CAT chips in year old phones are mass produced, so are not expensive chips, So why are they not also put in current routers?

I mean my current mobile a 2018 Honor 8x is even cat 12, so what possible reason is there for carriers to give out Cat 6 routers in 2020?

At a risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, maybe they don't want home broadband LTE customers to have a really fast connection and hammer every single mast's bandwidth? They know folks with 5g and 4g mobiles will mostly just use data in a bursty fashion regardless of how high end (higher CAT level) it is. So could it be done deliberately to hobble home users?

Edited by deleted (Sun 07-Jun-20 20:16:44)

Cant be any other reason I dont think...