Need suggestions on lte 4g usb modem

[clooner]

Anyone using a lte / 4g usb stick to use as a backup?

I'm open to 3g or anything else. It needs to be reliable and I don't want to spend a bunch. I do not imagine a lot of data will be transferred and it will be mostly for alerts from my home control system.

Any suggestions or experience on which modem to buy and mobile provider to use will be appreciated.

 

[clooner]

I'm thinking of using the huawei e3276 or some other usb dongle together with a freedompop account since their initial 500mb data would be plenty enough... Just not sure about if this will work. There does not seem to be a whole lot of info on this. Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[vaszago]

I have a E3372 USB stick with hilink and its work great. 14 Days whith stable connection. Down with 100mbit and up With 45mbit. Works with Android phone mode.

 

[StuartGrant]

Vaszago,
I had tried to get a Huawei E397 working on an Asus RT-AC66 without success.
Thanks for the tip that the Huawei E3276 can be made to work and about using the Android settings.

Clooner - Be advised the Asus Router USB 3G/4G failover and failback and watchdog are buggy but the router load balance feature using 3G/4G USB Modem did work for me .

 

[strowger]

I've got a Huawei "MiFi" type device, model E5573 working with my asuswrt-merlin device. I think it, or any of their recent devices which appear to the system as a cdc_ether USB ethernet device will work fine. I'm not sure if there is a definitive list of supported USB 4G devices.

As other posters note, the failover and fallback is not without bugs.

The USB devices are also buggy and you might find that if you leave the device plugged in, but inactive, for days or weeks, it (or its baseband) will have crashed and be unable to bring up the wireless connection when you demand it. I bring mine up manually on boot and put a little bit of traffic over it, which I think helps.