Intel modem is not fine. When it comes to wireless signal processing there are many factors:
Bandwidth, Speed, Latency, Signal attenuation etc
Speed is meaningless to most people (whether they know it or not), getting reception is much more important. The Intel chip has bad reception in comparison to Qualcomm chips (given the same signal to noise ratio).
In my experience it's fine and i've been to many countries in the last 8 months.