4G sim card with unlimited downloads for an office router?

[evilsatan]

Just wondering if anyone is aware of a sim which is suitable to using with a router for an office? Must have unlimited data. I have an office in a city but they cannot get fibre/cable at the moment but will have full 4G signal, was going to plug a 4G dongle into a Draytek.

Cheers

[stevo25]

there is the EE 100gb sims ? any use
http://shop.ee.co.uk/campaigns/christmas-sim-from-ee

[Over Carl]

I used to be setting up temporary connections for small offices on 3G using Draytek 2820's a few years ago quite often (normally at least one or two every month).

My suggestion if this is feasible for you is to plan an initial visit with the router and 4G dongle of your choice, Ethernet cable, laptop and a sim card from all the main providers.

Then actually test out what kind of speeds you are getting in real life on each of the SIMs. Just to make things even more of a pita, the best location to put the router and dongle for one network may not be the best for other networks. I would highly advise purchasing an high gain external antenna - you would probably need to purchase a pigtail lead to convert RP-SMA on the external aerial to MMCX on the dongle. If it's at all possible, spend the rest of the day working from there using the connection you have just setup as the quality of mobile broadband often can vary even at the exact same location.

Just to make life even more fun, connection quality can vary day to day, but there is only so much testing that is practical.

There seem to be two main types of external antenna - some have higher gain than built in normal junk but are omnidirectional, others have even more gain but are unidirectional. My initial tests made me prefer the unidirectional type as this got a stronger signal, but then there would be some periods they would be useless so I ended up preferring the omnidirectional type. My theory is that the unidirectional type couldn't jump to other transmitters.

I would test to see if this still holds true - to get higher speeds devices are using MIMO arrays. I remember Vodafone had a service (HSPA+) that was faster than everything else at the time but supposedly got high speeds by using a 2x2 MIMO antenna inside the dongle. I got similar or better speeds using the single unidirectional aerial and was baffled so I called up tech support, eventually got to a level 3 guy who also thought it was a great question but had no idea whether using a single omnidirectional aerial was a problem or not seeing as I normally got better speeds with the external aerial.

This may sound like making a mountain out of a molehill, but often the best deals are on contracts and I doubt your client would be very impressed if you got them a years contract on a useless SIM.

[evilsatan]

I'm pretty sure those 100GB sims are a special deal for 1-2 months, if they were permanent then 100GB may have been enough data.

Thanks for for the info OC, will test some networks but I'm struggling to find any that allow this sort of setup

[stevo25]

yeah they are, I think theres a guide on HUKD to scam it for a few months

[evilsatan]

Thanks stevo but I need a permanent legit solution so there is no risk of it being cut off, I don't think one exists but was just checking. If not I will use dual ADSL with load balancing but even that would be on the slow side, their old office had Infinity 2.

[stevo25]

NO worries, might be of use for others, I use mine for NZB as its faster than my homebroadband