CF-30 3g question

Hello everyone. Bought my first toughbook and love it. Not going to get into why I bought it but it was reasonably priced so figured why not. My question is if I put a GOBI 2000 card in it for 3g network capabilities is there still network companies that will sell me internet plans that let me use 3g or is that a thing of the past now. I know some people are trying to get newer cards to work with the 4g lte. I would like to use the internet though carriers when needed but is that still an option or not. Thanks

 

Sure,Verizon has a prepaid plan for about $30 a month,you will need a sim card (they do not have the full size sims) and the number from the card that I can't remember the name of. I have several of the sim cards.

 

Verizon is a rip-off. I had LTE on a Chromebook Pixel and it was costing more than $100/month. I dumped that service and now just wirelessly tether off of a T-Mobile portable hot-spot.

The inconvenience is that it is a separate piece of hardware but I can tether my phone, tablet and laptop off of one device. Much cheaper service too.

 

I am having a hard time finding a gobi 2000 that will work with Verizon,I have several of them but no joy.

 

I'm sure if you signed up for a 4G/4G LTE-capable plan, the networks would have no problem with serving you 3G speeds where backwards compatibility still exists on their networks, (so long as your WWAN card supports the correct frequencies and bands they use for 3G). If you are running anything from Windows XP up to 7, you shouldn't have any problems with a GOBI 2000 card, to the best of my knowledge.

Side note: Is the GOBI 2000 capable of using Verizon? I thought they were CDMA and didn't use SIM cards outside of 4G LTE.

Which CF-30 model do you have? Make sure it is capable of WWAN first. If it is a MK1 model, you may have to run the wiring and modify it to be WWAN-capable. (I believe someone has a topic about this on the forums here).

 

It does a bit of everything, short of LTE:
3G HSPA/UMTS (800/850/900/1900/2100 Mhz)
CDMA EV-DO (800/1900 Mhz)
GSM/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 Mhz)
GPS, A-GPS, gpsOneXTRA

It works primarily with Sprint, Verizon and AT&T. Personally I find them annoying to work with if you don't have the silly software that has to constantly load firmware. It makes it difficult to work under Linux.

 

The problem is when you go to Verizon not all of the cards are able to use their network,I keep entering the IMEI and all of my cards will not work.

 

IMHO, Verizon doesn't use GSM part of these modems while IMEI is for GSM only in this case. You have to use ESN (CDMA analogue of IMEI) to check if it's compatible. And it has to be compatible Also, you can't use SIM/RUIM cards for CDMA part of these gobi modems. They have to be programmed. Not so difficult though.
Maybe my info is false for Verizon )
My Gobi 1000 and Gobi 2000 work here in Ukraine where we have a copy of Verizon's network. 3G only, not 4G.

 

Excellent,thanks.