Gateway Router and Verizon Sim Card

[TheTravelingBrowns]

Hi, we purchased the Gateway router for the Winegard Antenna in our 310rl. We we're on the phone for over an hour with three different Verizon reps trying to get a Sim card with our existing account. All three people would get "some error message" and couldn't get any further. Anyone else have this issue? We were going to try walking into a Verizon store but also considering a t mobile plan. Verizon was going to get us set up with the $20 a month 15 GB plan. Not sure T Mobile would have that cheaper option. Any feedback would be helpful. Thanks!

 

[kmac7800]

We got onto the T-Mobile, 100G/$50 plan. I got the SIM directly from Winegard. We live and RV in the PNW, and so far have not ran into an issue where we did not have signal.

As a side note, since we were both over 55, we also moved our phones to the T-Mobile 55+ plan. Bunch of perks and only $45/month per phone cannot be beat.

So all 3 together is $140/month. Period. When we were on Verizon with 2 unlimited phones (only) it was $180+. Just saying.

Good luck and have fun!

//KMac

 

[bhidalgo]

We got a Pepwave with 4 sim card capacity. Works like a champ.

 

[TheTravelingBrowns]

Thanks for the info. The 55+ TMobile plan sounds pretty good but unfortunately we're still paying for the phones. Wondering if T Mobile has a deal that would pay off our phones if we switched? Will definitely inquire about that!

 

[LuckyDog23]

We bought a Travelfi and it’s got four cards in it and it’s unlimited at $129 month which is significantly less that the bunch of hotspots, jet packs and phones all added up. Some guy at TMobile told me they plan to geolock the 5Gndevices. It’s not availabille where we live so I could just go buy on and use one of my kids addresses. We have the Magenta 55+ plus also. We have four lines — two phones and two “digits” lines which is their name for Apple Watch sims — the entire bill for the four is about $100.

It’s weird how utilities morph when you are rving. Get an rv get ride of cable, sewer, gas and electric and use gasoline or diesel plus cell data. The directv account we have now is about $80 and our slow speed internet is $40. Those gone, we have lots of data with Travelfi and not a significant increase in monthly costs.

 

[TheTravelingBrowns]

Just looked into the Travlfi. Sounds good but, I have the Winegard Air 360+ Antenna installed and it doesn't look like it's compatible with that so I guess I would have to change out the Antenna? The initial cost of Antenna, Receiver and hot spot is a little more than I want to spend.

 

[LuckyDog23]

I made an error. It has three carriers not four. When I was thinking about access points in general I included the three it has plus my hotspot on my phone.

There’s a ton of info on using the larger one with the antennas on the TravlFi website. You need an extender, I believe. I don’t have all the ins and outs figured out. We have att internet at home and we’ve suffered with enough power outages to make us nuts so this is a great backup plan since it doesn’t need to plug in to work. At home downloads using it over TMobile are dismally low but my T-Mobile phone which is 5G is around 40 and the TravlFi on LTE is 8. But over att wireless I got 40+ and our att internet at home is about that as well. I was not able to get it to connect to Verizon to do a speed test. Speed test app just timed out.

I’m not going to return it because it is a great little hotspot to take in my car when I hit all the non-coverage areas for TMobile. TMobile claims they are covering most of California but I can attest to the fact that the entire area around Lake Shasta is a dead zone and the top of Donner Summit on I80 has a huge dead zone as well. When we travel in our current rig l drive my car as well since it can’t be towed. We know where all dead zones are along both I5 and I80. One reason we are getting the Paradigm — only burn fuel in one vehicle instead of two. And still have a vehicle to drive to towns etc.

 

[TheTravelingBrowns]

Great info, thank you!

 

[TheTravelingBrowns]

UPDATE: We went to the Verizon store where they use the Omni system and they were able to set us up on a plan (15GB $20) with no errors.

 

[TheTravelingBrowns]

Ok, one more question. Do I really need to add the switch that came with the Gateway router??

 

[LuckyDog23]

Update on this weekend dry camping at a NHRA event with our TravlFi. Once charged it aggregate all three carriers. No delays or outages. No switching from one carrier on a jet pack to another on a phone. The press are here. This is a nationally covered event, all local affiliates in addition to Fox Sport, 50,000 people on Twitter and Facebook and uploading to iCloud and never before in ten years have I ever experienced ability to check my security cameras at home, my packages delivered late by Amazon. It’s amazing. I could not be pleased. It costs less than our Wi-Fi plus directv. I’m sold!

Two days later addendum edit:
Battery life on this is amazing. It’s been awesome. Even last night with the saturated bandwidth post qualifying last night we still had internet access and ability to upload our videos. We were not able to view a Prime movie on the Firestick however. No big deal. We have local OTA here so we turned that on. What I love about this is the seamless operation. But the best part is it’s unlimited and it’s surprising just how anxiety reducing it is to have to keep an eagle eye on usage.