For a few years I have needed WIFI in an area with little coverage, where no cable, no fiber, or anything else reaches. The companies in the area with WiMax technology do not cover it either, so I have been with an Orange 4G router for several years. I didn’t get much bandwidth, only 3 -5 Mb but that worked for me. This year it did not exceed 200Kb so I had to look for options.
After trying several acquaintance cards. The company that works best for me is DIGI and to use its 4G coverage I have compared a 4g router, The Tp-link Archer MR600 and the results after a small configuration have been very good, achieving 15 to 20Mb of download.
How to unlock SIM on Tp-link router
Depending on the router it will change the screens a bit, but the process is the same.
The first thing we have to do is unlock our SIM with the router just like when we turn off the smartphone and turn it on we have to confirm our SIM pin, it is a security measure. But there are options here to just do it once and then have the router automatically unlock it.
There are tutorials where they say that you can unlock the card on a smartphone and then use it on the router, but it’s not true, it doesn’t work
To unlock the SIM we put it in the router and we have to connect to it with a computer or smartphone. The ideal, the first time, is to do it with a computer and the network cable.
We connect it and go in the browser to the address http://192.168.1.1/ or http://tplinkmodem.net
Being the first time, it will ask us to create a password for the router, because we create a new one and we can now log in.
As soon as you enter, we will see notices that the SIM pin is needed because it is blocked. To unlock it, let’s Network > PIN Management we put the one that they have given us with the card, we select to save it for future occasions and we give it to save.
Now we will activate roaming. Following the notice they give us.
Let Network > Internet and activate roaming.
And we already have Internet, but by doing speed tests low speeds are achieved, about 2Mb, far from what I had tried.
How to improve bandwidth and speed with DIGI
With a small change we will greatly improve our connection.
If you look at the image, by default we are being connected with a profile that comes by default from Orange.
We are going to create a new profile assigning the correct APN to it. APN is Access Point Name, name of the access point and you have to give it the correct one for each company.
So let’s Network > Internet (Advanced tab) And we give Create Profile, which is small at the bottom.
Reset it to factory values by holding down the button for about 15 seconds, until it flashes and then you go back online and give it a new password and you will have to reconfigure the profile with the DIGI APN.
We fill in the new profile with the DIGI Name and the APN: internet.digimobil.es
Once the profile is created, we go back to Network> Internet and in Profile name: we will choose Digi.
Reboot the router to make sure the changes you’ve made take effect.
And that’s it. We have gone to 15 -20 Mb on average in download. About 10 times more than with the default profile.
If you have a card from another company, find their APN and create a profile for them.
It may interest you: How to cut a SIM card
What to do if I forget the router password.
There are many more options in this router, it is a real wonder, tell me if you are interested in me explaining everything that can be done.
Starlink, the satellite Internet option
They have been speaking very highly of Starlink, the satellite Internet of Elon Musk’s Space X, the only thing you need to pay for is the antenna and the installation and for only 2 or 3 months of service I am not interested. But someone who needs it for the whole year is an option to consider, since we are talking about download speeds of up to 300 Mb/second