Recommendation for Cellular Modem or similar solution

[A.Goldberg]

My sister and I inherited a vacation home a couple years ago. We’re not there 7-8 months out of the year, spending only summer months. I finally got around to installing cameras to keep an eye on things remotely.

My issue is the cable internet is about $120+/month so we’re practically wasting $850+ annually. In the past the internet was shut off seasonally. The data usage accessing the cameras remotely (stored locally) has been like 3-5GB per month (total upload + download)…

I’ve been considering a cellular modem/router with a minimal data plan- like $20/month. UniFi has a several options, some of them being:
- Mobile Router Ultra (LTE)
- 5G Max Router
- Backup LTE Pro (Gateway failover, ATT only)

The bandwidth of LTE is probably okay for my needs, I’ll see what it is when I’m streaming the feeds. I’m just not sure if the latency will become an issue.

T-Mobile has a home 5G “cellular backup” router that’s $20/month limited to 130GB. From what I can tell there’s no cancellation restriction.

There’s also general cellular home internet available from T-Mobile and ATT. It’s a lot cheaper than the current cable ISP but I’m not sure I want to rely on that when I’m staying there. Curious on people’s experiences.

Cellular hotspots might work but there’s no way to remotely manage them, I’d also want a hardwired connection to the camera server (not WiFi, not positive if the server has USB-C). I’m also not thrilled about leaving a device with a lithium ion battery plugged in for months on end unattended.

Any insights or other suggestions?

I use a UniFi network at the house currently. The cameras run on an Axis Camera Station Pro server, if you’re wondering.

Thanks!

 

[losthismarbles]

Just saw this, so quite late to the party. In the off chance you're still looking/not having committed to anything;

You cannot beat cable (fact, sheer physics), so when you can, you stick to it.

So ideally, you'd at least want a lot of cable inhouse.
Meaning ideally you'd be after a 'Mesh' capable router/repeater, linked to a number of 'Mesh' capable WiFi repeaters via cable, all set up as one in-house mesh.
(Google 'Mesh' if you haven't heard of it)

I don't know what's going on in the US side of things, you folks have your own.. way of going about everything "consumer" related, but i mention the above because you will find that -as is often in life once you know where you're aiming- the limited available options allowing for the above will themselves lead you to a decision.

Somewhere in that decision needs of course be, to get back to your question, the source of your signal.

Would strongly advise you to look into Starlink (what with you being in the US, would have made a totally different suggestion for EU/Japan) and forget about "5G" routers.

Set up well, a cabled (LAN bridged/connected) Mesh of Wifi repeaters and singular router (cables via switch or in-wall) cannot be beat. Past a point, the numbers are meaningless, stability is not; Starlink has its own dongle, that can then be hooked into -any- router. Any whatsoever. Options. See above. 5G routers in US are a different thing.
* If in typical US fashion, the house you live in is a glorified perma-temporary mortgage-releated situation, this may seem too much work for just a few years; it's not. Just a bit of reading; practically, the same if not fewer number of devices. And on the plus side, any type of surface inside that might be influencing 5G reception? Will be a thing of the past for you 🙂

 

[macaddiict]

I think you'd be best off with unlimited, whatever you do. The cost difference is low. LTE is extremely overcrowded and does not have the beamforming fixed wireless tech that 5G does - get whatever carrier offers 5g modem/router and service, don't go with LTE unless you have absolutely no other option.

T-mobile itself is a nightmare to work with. If you do get their home internet, try getting it from a t-mobile sub brand like Metro PCS or similar.

I have had great experiences with Verizon's home internet (Straight Talk is $45/month unlimited home 5G, for example, and you can get it at most Walmarts)

AT&T also has good "Air" 5g home internet offerings, but if you're looking for the best price it is "Minternet" home internet if you'll be keeping it at least 120 days.

Would strongly advise you to look into Starlink

Have you not heard about the owner of Starlink? He shouldn't be given more money.

 

[hobowankenobi]

I have had T-mobile 5G (central CA) for a couple years...been good overall. Better uptime than Spectrum cable was.

I have 3 Unifi APs, not using the built-in wifi on the T-mobile modem/router box. Ethernet to POE switch, easy peasy.

I expect the T-Mobile experience is very location specific, both signal strength, and if towers are over-provisioned. My only gripe is that ping is a bit high, but one only notices with gaming. For streaming it is a non-issue.

I should add that I have not had any bad experiences with T-Mobile (certainly nothing worse that ATT or Spectrum), and I like the no contract....cancel anytime policy. They send you the router/modem at no cost...and should replace for free if as needed.

I think the biggest challenge is that the modem needs to be in or near a window on one side of the house to get a decent signal. Obviously, this will vary widely by location, and is primarily a 5G limitation.

 

[bapegg]

I can't recommend AT&T as too many people have had connection issues even with a tower close by. The AT&T tower is right at the western edge of town and the eastern edge of town is maybe 1 to 1 1/4 miles away. And AT&T can't get the connection issues figured out. AT&T phones work just fine but a lot of people are having issues with their 5G Internet Air modems staying connected.

 

[A.Goldberg]

Just saw this, so quite late to the party. In the off chance you're still looking/not having committed to anything;

You cannot beat cable (fact, sheer physics), so when you can, you stick to it.

So ideally, you'd at least want a lot of cable inhouse.
Meaning ideally you'd be after a 'Mesh' capable router/repeater, linked to a number of 'Mesh' capable WiFi repeaters via cable, all set up as one in-house mesh.
(Google 'Mesh' if you haven't heard of it)

I don't know what's going on in the US side of things, you folks have your own.. way of going about everything "consumer" related, but i mention the above because you will find that -as is often in life once you know where you're aiming- the limited available options allowing for the above will themselves lead you to a decision.

Somewhere in that decision needs of course be, to get back to your question, the source of your signal.

Would strongly advise you to look into Starlink (what with you being in the US, would have made a totally different suggestion for EU/Japan) and forget about "5G" routers.

Set up well, a cabled (LAN bridged/connected) Mesh of Wifi repeaters and singular router (cables via switch or in-wall) cannot be beat. Past a point, the numbers are meaningless, stability is not; Starlink has its own dongle, that can then be hooked into -any- router. Any whatsoever. Options. See above. 5G routers in US are a different thing.
* If in typical US fashion, the house you live in is a glorified perma-temporary mortgage-releated situation, this may seem too much work for just a few years; it's not. Just a bit of reading; practically, the same if not fewer number of devices. And on the plus side, any type of surface inside that might be influencing 5G reception? Will be a thing of the past for you 🙂

I haven’t committed to anything yet. In that the summer season is nearing, I probably won’t make a decision until this fall. Again, the cellular would be for the off-season when I am not at this house and do not need a significant amount of data.

Fiber beats cable hands down. The unfortunate thing is my parents have a house maybe 400 yards away and two neighboring rental houses. Those houses have FiOS service (I actually have them all on one FiOS service with a UniFi network w/VLANs for each property and connected with underground Ethernet). My house is on a private road, unable to hardwire or wireless bridge in due to trees and neighbors’ property being in the way. It’s frustrating how close I am yet cannot tap into the other network.

I’m not concerned about the local network (this house has UniFi as well). Again, cellular would be strictly for cameras.

Starlink was briefly considered as a year-round solution due to the low cost. Three concerns though:
1) I don’t necessarily trust Elon to not decide he needs to raise money one day and jack up the price considerably.
2) The house is in a region that gets snow and ice storms in the winter. Not sure how quickly it can melt snow but it seems like it could be problematic. Heavy rain is also a concern.
3) The house is on ocean in New England thus will be exposed hurricane force winds from time to time. Starlink dishes aren’t designed to withstand such weather. In fact we had a blizzard earlier this year with sustained winds over 85mph on top of 30” of snow in 24hrs (once in a generation storm, but my concerns still stand).

 

[A.Goldberg]

I can't recommend AT&T as too many people have had connection issues even with a tower close by. The AT&T tower is right at the western edge of town and the eastern edge of town is maybe 1 to 1 1/4 miles away. And AT&T can't get the connection issues figured out. AT&T phones work just fine but a lot of people are having issues with their 5G Internet Air modems staying connected.

Funny you say that. My primary home is in a major city and ATT in my neighborhood is atrocious. Despite being a very densely populated residential area. It generally doesn’t work in buildings or in allies behind buildings. Side some streets have no service either until you reach the main road. I use Verizon which works perfectly everywhere, even in the basement of my brownstone. T-mobile works fine too. Not sure what ATT’s problem is.

In a completely different area I had invest $2000+ to put in a cell booster system in my business property because our staff and patients with ATT couldn’t get service inside.

My Volvo uses ATT for its data connection and while not quite as apparent as handheld phones, it also suffers from poor service in the area. This includes my garage and the area outside it. I had to put wifi in my garage so I can do OTA updates.

Luckily there is ATT service at this property and 2 ATT cell towers within a couple miles. But ATT would certainly be last on my list between them, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

 

[A.Goldberg]

I have had T-mobile 5G (central CA) for a couple years...been good overall. Better uptime than Spectrum cable was.

I have 3 Unifi APs, not using the built-in wifi on the T-mobile modem/router box. Ethernet to POE switch, easy peasy.

I expect the T-Mobile experience is very location specific, both signal strength, and if towers are over-provisioned. My only gripe is that ping is a bit high, but one only notices with gaming. For streaming it is a non-issue.

I should add that I have not had any bad experiences with T-Mobile (certainly nothing worse that ATT or Spectrum), and I like the no contract....cancel anytime policy. They send you the router/modem at no cost...and should replace for free if as needed.

I think the biggest challenge is that the modem needs to be in or near a window on one side of the house to get a decent signal. Obviously, this will vary widely by location, and is primarily a 5G limitation.

Thanks for your feedback, that is helpful. What do you get for DL/UL speeds?

If I’m not mistaken the Home 5G routers have coaxial jacks for an external antenna? I think the antennas are fairly expensive. Not sure what the limitations on distance are either. I’m guessing not very far- the shorter the run the better.

I know some of the UniFi cellular modems have external antenna jacks and some specific models are outdoor rated which could potentially make things easier. Most of these can use T-Mobile SIMs but you have to use a hotspot SIM which costs a lot more than the Home 5G service.

It’s also my understanding T-Mobile 5G forces you to use their gateway as a router and has no option for bridging to a different router. Correct?

 

[bapegg]

Funny you say that. My primary home is in a major city and ATT in my neighborhood is atrocious. Despite being a very densely populated residential area. It generally doesn’t work in buildings or in allies behind buildings. Side some streets have no service either until you reach the main road. I use Verizon which works perfectly everywhere, even in the basement of my brownstone. T-mobile works fine too. Not sure what ATT’s problem is.

There is something about the small town I live in. For the longest time AT&T was the only cell service that worked reliably inside city limits. Sprint and T Mobile would not get any signal inside the city limits and US Cellular was pretty bad even with a tower on the edge of town.

AT&T is still the best when it comes to cell phones working. But the signal strength varies from 2-4 bars. While a signal may be strong enough for voice, it can be weak enough to not be able to pass data.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Thanks for your feedback, that is helpful. What do you get for DL/UL speeds?

If I’m not mistaken the Home 5G routers have coaxial jacks for an external antenna? I think the antennas are fairly expensive. Not sure what the limitations on distance are either. I’m guessing not very far- the shorter the run the better.

I know some of the UniFi cellular modems have external antenna jacks and some specific models are outdoor rated which could potentially make things easier. Most of these can use T-Mobile SIMs but you have to use a hotspot SIM which costs a lot more than the Home 5G service.

It’s also my understanding T-Mobile 5G forces you to use their gateway as a router and has no option for bridging to a different router. Correct?

I also use T-Mo for home Internet. My router doesn't have a coax jack; some may - it's not needed where I am. Downloads in the ~100-150 range, uploads in the ~10-20 range. Plenty for my purposes.

I don't use the T-Mo for wifi, though it's still "enabled." I have it connected to my own Velop mesh router. Yeah, it's "Double-NAT" but I haven't looked into whether it can be configured differently - it just doesn't matter for my purposes.

We had Cable Modem before T-Mobile but for the cost of the T-Mo service, we could only get 50Mb/s service from the cable company. And frankly, T-Mo tends to have higher reliability than cable (we're "somewhat" rural).

 

[A.Goldberg]

I also use T-Mo for home Internet. My router doesn't have a coax jack; some may - it's not needed where I am. Downloads in the ~100-150 range, uploads in the ~10-20 range. Plenty for my purposes.

I don't use the T-Mo for wifi, though it's still "enabled." I have it connected to my own Velop mesh router. Yeah, it's "Double-NAT" but I haven't looked into whether it can be configured differently - it just doesn't matter for my purposes.

We had Cable Modem before T-Mobile but for the cost of the T-Mo service, we could only get 50Mb/s service from the cable company. And frankly, T-Mo tends to have higher reliability than cable (we're "somewhat" rural).

How do you find the reliability of the 5G home service?

Have you run into any issues with having double NAT? I’m a little concerned this could cause problems accessing my cameras remotely. I think my cctv system will be okay. What might not be is if I need to remotely access the cctv server, I usually use the built in UniFi VPN (Teleport? Which is Wireguard I believe) to access the local network remotely and then use Windows Remote Desktop. I suppose I could switch to something like TeamViewer or Chrome Remote Desktop.

 

[A.Goldberg]

There is something about the small town I live in. For the longest time AT&T was the only cell service that worked reliably inside city limits. Sprint and T Mobile would not get any signal inside the city limits and US Cellular was pretty bad even with a tower on the edge of town.

AT&T is still the best when it comes to cell phones working. But the signal strength varies from 2-4 bars. While a signal may be strong enough for voice, it can be weak enough to not be able to pass data.

Where I grew up, where my parents still live, Verizon was always the far superior service. Idk what happened but in the past few years, perhaps because of 5G, there are so many dead zones. On the 10-15 min drive to the center of town from their house I predictably lose service in 3 places. In one part of town there’s an entire dead zone for at least a several miles. And this is Connecticut 50 miles outside of NYC, not rural Arkansas. In the center of town with a cell tower maybe 1/4 mile away there’s no service anywhere inside of he local CVS.

I know when my car loses service (ATT) because the SOS button blinks. On that same drive my VZW drops out 3x, the car loses service once but only for a moment, not long enough for my Spotify buffer to run out.

I’ve been meaning to trial T-Mobile on my iPhone to see if their service is better than the others.

I guess I’m not the only one who has noticed a degradation in service quality. I never remember it being this bad. Or maybe it’s just our phones use so much more bandwidth than than the did 10-15 years ago. Not to mention 5G doesn’t penetrate as well.