Advice needed please

[ShelleyN]

Good evening/morning all. This is a bit of a long one so please bear with me...

I have an EE data only sim, and I’m gifting 100Gb a month to it from my EE Unlimited sim only phone plan. 2 months I ago had to re-locate to a rural area to help care for my dad because of a serious illness.

Barely any 4g signal here but overcame it because I have to work from home here too. I bought a Tenda 4g680 router, external directional antenna and was all set. Was all working fine but it soon became clear the 100Gb was getting chewed up pretty fast. Decided to use my unlimited phone sim in the router whenever the data got low on the data only sim. The router has an RJ11 port so I bought a landline handset so I could still make and receive calls when phone sim was in the router. This all worked great for 2 months (probably swapping sims once or twice a week when I needed to go out and have my phone with me). But a couple of weeks ago when I inserted the phone sim the router went into constant power-cycle and would not create any wifi network (or find and actual 4g signal). Wanted to check the settings but couldn’t  even log in to the router via Ethernet either. Hard reset button did not work at all. I presumed the router was faulty and in a panic ordered another. It came, and worked fine for a few days. Time came to have to use my phone sim again and to my horror the exact same thing happened again. No network, no access and no hard reset. I realise swapping sims once a week or so is not ideal but it’s the only way I can have enough data and the use of my phone at certain times (I’m always careful - turn it off beforehand etc). I just don’t understand how a sim that has worked fine in the router for two months and that still works fine in my phone now, can literally brick two routers to the point where I can’t even factory reset them? I’m so desperate to be able to be near my dad that I’ve ordered 2 different router models to try - Huawei B535 235 and TP link Archer MR600 (these both work with my external antenna). Just wondered if anyone has any ideas on what went wrong - I’m worried that when I put my phone sim into these new routers the same thing might happen again!

Sorry that was so long winded, just wanted to be accurate to give me the best chance of getting some advice.

Thanks in advance

Shelley

[Peter_C]

Hello Shelley and welcome to the EE Community.

I am sorry to read that your dad is ill. 

In my many years of forum network queries I have never come across such a behaviour before. I switch around SIMs between devices all the time and never have experienced anything bizarre, let alone a device failing in such a way. 

The MR600 and B535 are quite commonly used with phone SIMs so I would not expect an issue. 

If you are able to keep your phone on charge and the range is not too much if a problem, using your phone's hotspot may be an intervening time solution. 

Let us know how you get on and I wish the best for your father. 

Thanks,

Peter

[XRaySpeX]

Interesting if I understand it correctly. I believe you have confused ports.

A landline handset does not come with a RJ11 plug but a BS 6312 431A plug; colloquially, a British Telecom plug & is physically incompatible with RJ11. How did you manage to make it fit?

The RJ11 port on the router is for a DSL Broadband connection, like on all fixed landline DSL home routers used to connect to a DSL filter from or within a BT phone socket. I assume your router has some option or switching to take its WAN source either from the mobile SIM or from a landline (but probably not both at once).

Sticking a landline phone somehow into to a RJ11 port where it's not meant to go might very well play havoc with the router.

[ShelleyN]

Hello Peter

Thank you for your your reply and kind thoughts. Sadly a hotspot on my phone is not an option. The only way I can get a signal is through the router because I'm using an external antenna.

Many thanks again

Shelley

[ShelleyN]

Good morning Xray

Thanks for your reply. I used the cable that came with the router. One end is for the router, one for a landline phone so that the volte feature of the router can be used as per the router manual. So I think perhaps I've just used the wrong cable name. The landline phone worked fine wile the router was functional.

Thanks again

Shelley

[XRaySpeX]

Are you saying that the cable that comes with the router has :

• a RJ11 plug at 1 end for the router &
• a BT socket at the other end to fit the BT jack at the end of the cable attached to  the handset?