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In a rural area where the local telco was granted a legal monopoly, their "high speed" comes in a 5/0.5mbps on a good day. The area is now blanketed in T-Mobile

In a rural area where the local telco was granted a legal monopoly, their "high speed" comes in a 5/0.5mbps on a good day. The area is now blanketed in T-Mobile 5G coverage, but questions asking T-Mobile about a 5G hotspot with a wired LAN port have gone unanswered. I'd love to use a 5G hotspot as the house's modem, but WiFi-only just won't work. Do any 5G devices with a SIM slot and a wired LAN port exist?

donatj 6y ago
My parents were in a similar situation. They only had terrible DSL in their area. T-Mobile actually offers a home router with Ethernet out, they got accepted into the beta about 6 months ago and it's been a godsend. - https://www.t-mobile.com/isp https://www.t-mobile.com/isp
- chrsstrm 6y ago
  That's exactly the type of program I'm looking for but it only mentions LTE. The LTE coverage there is spotty and speeds aren't great, so really hoping for 5G. Plus the fine print in the terms talks about how some streaming services can't be used, but doesn't name them. If T-Mobile rolls out a program like this with their 5G network it would be amazing. I really can't imagine them trying to sell 5G phones to country folk, at least not until the price comes way down. What else would they use that 5G bandwidth for in the meantime?
  - joe_the_user 6y ago
    I can't imagine how 5G could leap-frog LTE. As I understand it, 5G has to blanket an area to be able to reliably transmit into a building. When the companies seem to put 2-3 towers per ridge in mountain areas, how is that going to happen? And generally, I'd expect any new 5G towers would also be LTE towers anyway.
camkego 6y ago
I think the Netgear Nighthawk M5 for 5G Mobile Router might help you. It is announced, but not yet released. I have the previous generation, the Netgear Nighthawk M1. I believe both have a wired ethernet port.
jabroni_salad 6y ago
Keep an eye on Cradlepoint. Their 5G modem is available on Telstra and I'm sure American carriers will be available soon.
ropiku 6y ago
Huawei 5G CPE Pro (if you don't mind Huawei) has good reviews, has ethernet and you can use external 5G antennas.
joe_the_user 6y ago
You don't need a 5G device for decent Internet speed - at least not in my rural area (Nevada City, in town). T-Mobile is my only provider for phone/data/etc. At $60/month, 50GB cap, it's the best deal I've had for a while.
dheera 6y ago
If there aren't already there almost certainly will be within months. Keep checking 5gstore.com (formerly 3gstore.com, go figure) among others. Android phones can be configured to present themselves to PCs as a USB ethernet device, and you can then set up some iptables rules to make your PC a router for a wired LAN. There are also Wi-Fi to Ethernet converters on Amazon, but this solution is kind of hacky.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Android phone as a USB-based modem plus a Linux-based router or PC will do it. An OpenWRT router with a USB3 port would be the best bet as it's got a web UI with sane default configurations for being a NAT router and the phone will just show up as a network interface (you just mark that interface as "WAN" and you're good to go).
bleepblorp 6y ago
Cradlepoint makes very good enterprise-grade cellular modems with wired Ethernet support. They're expensive and I'm not sure if individuals in the US can buy them without going through a grey market vendor. For some reason or other, the cellular industry doesn't like it when devices are readily available to end users. It's also possible to use some home routers 'in reverse,' to bridge a wifi signal to wired ethernet. Devices on the wired segment will be stuck in a double-NAT situation, however.
- BenjiWiebe 6y ago
  Doesn't have to be double NAT. You can do passthrough/IP routing with private IPs after the first device.
bmlzootown 6y ago
It's not a realistic solution, but you could always use a secondary router as a client bridge (basically acts like a client, connecting to the hotspot, and then routes ethernet traffic through said connection). It won't be as fast as 5G, or even the wifi hotspot, but I doubt it'd be worse than what you're getting now.

donatj 6y ago

My parents were in a similar situation. They only had terrible DSL in their area. T-Mobile actually offers a home router with Ethernet out, they got accepted into the beta about 6 months ago and it's been a godsend. - https://www.t-mobile.com/isp https://www.t-mobile.com/isp

chrsstrm 6y ago
That's exactly the type of program I'm looking for but it only mentions LTE. The LTE coverage there is spotty and speeds aren't great, so really hoping for 5G. Plus the fine print in the terms talks about how some streaming services can't be used, but doesn't name them. If T-Mobile rolls out a program like this with their 5G network it would be amazing. I really can't imagine them trying to sell 5G phones to country folk, at least not until the price comes way down. What else would they use that 5G bandwidth for in the meantime?
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  I can't imagine how 5G could leap-frog LTE. As I understand it, 5G has to blanket an area to be able to reliably transmit into a building. When the companies seem to put 2-3 towers per ridge in mountain areas, how is that going to happen? And generally, I'd expect any new 5G towers would also be LTE towers anyway.

camkego 6y ago

I think the Netgear Nighthawk M5 for 5G Mobile Router might help you. It is announced, but not yet released. I have the previous generation, the Netgear Nighthawk M1. I believe both have a wired ethernet port.

jabroni_salad 6y ago

Keep an eye on Cradlepoint. Their 5G modem is available on Telstra and I'm sure American carriers will be available soon.

ropiku 6y ago

Huawei 5G CPE Pro (if you don't mind Huawei) has good reviews, has ethernet and you can use external 5G antennas.

joe_the_user 6y ago

You don't need a 5G device for decent Internet speed - at least not in my rural area (Nevada City, in town). T-Mobile is my only provider for phone/data/etc. At $60/month, 50GB cap, it's the best deal I've had for a while.

dheera 6y ago

If there aren't already there almost certainly will be within months. Keep checking 5gstore.com (formerly 3gstore.com, go figure) among others. Android phones can be configured to present themselves to PCs as a USB ethernet device, and you can then set up some iptables rules to make your PC a router for a wired LAN. There are also Wi-Fi to Ethernet converters on Amazon, but this solution is kind of hacky.

Nextgrid 6y ago
Android phone as a USB-based modem plus a Linux-based router or PC will do it. An OpenWRT router with a USB3 port would be the best bet as it's got a web UI with sane default configurations for being a NAT router and the phone will just show up as a network interface (you just mark that interface as "WAN" and you're good to go).

bleepblorp 6y ago

Cradlepoint makes very good enterprise-grade cellular modems with wired Ethernet support. They're expensive and I'm not sure if individuals in the US can buy them without going through a grey market vendor. For some reason or other, the cellular industry doesn't like it when devices are readily available to end users. It's also possible to use some home routers 'in reverse,' to bridge a wifi signal to wired ethernet. Devices on the wired segment will be stuck in a double-NAT situation, however.

BenjiWiebe 6y ago
Doesn't have to be double NAT. You can do passthrough/IP routing with private IPs after the first device.

bmlzootown 6y ago

It's not a realistic solution, but you could always use a secondary router as a client bridge (basically acts like a client, connecting to the hotspot, and then routes ethernet traffic through said connection). It won't be as fast as 5G, or even the wifi hotspot, but I doubt it'd be worse than what you're getting now.