As if we don’t confuse people enough with our industry acronyms, we are now using the same name for two completely different things.
You may know that a Cat5 cable supports speeds up to 100Mb/s, Cat5e up to 1000Mb/s and Cat6 up to 10Gb/s, but does this mean that a Cat6 LTE 4G router supports speeds up to 10Gb/s? No.
The LTE Cat6 is part of the LTE-Advanced standard for routers and supports downstream speeds up to 300Mb/s. Cat4 LTE supports theoretical speeds up to 150Mb/s but our real-world experience is more like 100Mb/s. Confused yet?
Many people understand that 4G speeds have increased significantly recently with the introduction of the LTE-Advanced Standard, and can’t work out why their 4G router only ever speedtests below 100Mb/s.
This is because most people have Cat4 routers and don’t know they need a Cat6 LTE router to run faster.
Cat6 LTE routers are usually around twice the price of Cat4 routers so if you paid c£100 or less for your LTE router it is probably Cat4.
There are plenty of Cat6 LTE routers out there but before you buy one, consider that the new 5G Standard also supports Cat6 LTE.
5G routers are expensive but will come down in price rapidly with volume, so you may want to wait a few months and go straight to 5G.
Jola has partners productising our Intelligent 4G routers with data SIMs, managed in Mobile Manager for all kinds of devices from digital signage to ticketing machines. For further information and package pricing, request our Partner Pack.
