NETGEAR 4G LTE Broadband Modem (LM1200) – Use LTE as a Primary Internet Connection or Failover Solution for Always-On WiFi Certified with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon

My wife works from home 100% now. That means it's MY job to make sure she has100% uptime. Our cable is very reliable, but it does sometimes go out at the most inopportune times so I was looking for a backup to get us through a day or so if we lose wired connectivity.Enter the NETGEAR 4G LTE Broadband Modem (LM1200). Right out of the box it worked with a T-Mobile hotspot SIM that I picked up at my local store. There's no WiFi on the LM1200 which is great, because it's not what I was looking for. If you want an LTE WiFi hotspot, there are a ton of other choices out there for you. Think of the LM1200 more as a cable modem with some very rudimentary routing capabilities (which can be turned off.)We're using Ubiquiti equipment on our network at home so I needed something that would interface with that. The Unifi Dream Machine (UDM, non-pro version) doesn't offer failover capability so the LM1200 fits in perfectly by slipping in between our cable modem and the UDM router's single WAN port. When the cable goes down, the LM1200 kicks into action and seamlessly changes the connection from our cable modem to its built-in LTE modem. When the cable comes back up, it switches back. Exactly what a UDM owner wanting failover is looking for.Having said that, the LM1200 also works well with the Unifi Dream Router 7 (UDR7) that I recently installed. The UDR7 does include failover capability between its two WAN ports and takes care of the switching on its own. In this use case, you would turn off the failover function on the LM1200 and simply attach it as another modem on the UDR7's second WAN port. Of course you still have the option of letting the LM1200 do the failover for you as mentioned above and then switch that second WAN port on the UDR7 to be another LAN port. Your choice.My only gripe with the LM1200 is that it's LTE-only. Don't get me wrong, that's fine. I knew that going in so I'm not going to take away anything from its rating. But this is 2025 and it's about time for NETGEAR to have an upgraded version that has the same capabilities but using 5G. I'm pretty sure NETGEAR knows that which is why the LM1200 is being sold for a reasonably low price. I'm perfectly happy with the LM1200 while I wait for its successor.

The media could not be loaded. So first I'm fully off grid out here, the nearest utility is a mile or more down the road and that's just power and a phone line. Everything I have comes through an larger/upgraded antenna whether it be TV, FM, LTE, ham radio. So I know an thing or too about how to get the most out of the signals in the air around you.Pros:PriceWall mountable(86mm hole spacing)SmallEasy web interfaceEasy setupExternal ant ports if neededCons:-Uses USB C as a power source. (Needs a wall adapter vice a normal 12volt source like most routers and my booster, ideally I would wire it directly to my campers 12 volt system which remains powered if ACpower to the camper is lost.)-Internal antenna doesn't do well in low signal environments.-you must connect directly to it via Ethernet to view the settings menu on a computer. Can't connect from PC>router>lm1200. Has to be PC>LM1200It just happened that I was on a hill that can just about get decent service from band 13 LTE on a tower 5km away from me even know the cell tower antenna barely faces my direction. So I got a booster that can boost that band. All good. Great useable speed from my phones hotspot buuuttt I needed a wired connection, I wanted Ethernet for some equipment I have so enter the lm1200 Netgear cell booster. Very cheap at 110 dollars. Picked it up from an Amazon locker in town and walked right into Verizon store without even taking it out of the box. They scanned the IMEI number and confirmed that they could probably set up a SIM card even though he had no idea what I had in my hand and had never done it before. Probably 5 minutes later we were powering up the unit with a new SIM card and it was online 2 minutes later after initializing a connection. I ran home and powered it back up and bam, connected to cell tower(via my booster) and I ran a temp line directly to my PC and it worked perfect. Pings range from 40-100ms for me so you ain't gonna game on this bad boy but anything else not time sensitive will do fine. So in my video you see I run it into a normal wifi router, this allows me to have multiple ethernet ports for multiple things and it allows me to have both a 2.4 and 5.0 Wi-Fi band like a standard household would, which allows visitors without cell service to still connect to something. The same thing that you would do if you went to a friend's house and you didn't have cell phone service. So my first impression is that the internal antenna of the LM 1200 is fairly terrible because I can only get up to around 10 megabytes per second when testing(in my signal environment), I thought about getting a splitter and connecting the TS9 ports on the back of this directly to the same antenna that my cell phone booster uses, but I'm willing to try the $7 whip antennas you can buy for this that just plug right into the back and I'll update this and let you know how much speed I get just by adding those two little whip antennas. If those don't work, they sell a coax type f to ts-9 splitter that I can use to connect this lm1200 directly to my cell phone booster antenna you see in my video.So the data for the nerdy people:-I can get near full bars which means -70db signal on my pixel 6 when located at the same spot as this product and this product gets 70 db(viewed on the web portal)- With my cell booster OFF, I get about -115db on my phone and -115 on this device.-So the cheap Amazon booster works great when set up properly even with stock antennas.That translated to about 20-30 down and 5-10 up on my phone using the boosted LTE.-BUT when doing speed test on my computer when using this product I only get around 6 down and 2-5 up at the time of testingThese speeds change with network/tower traffic of course but I think its interesting that the speeds can be so different from 2 devices that are using the same carrier and cell band and have about the same signal strength so I'm going to call my carrier and present this data as i suspect they are messing with my speeds.Other details, 70 bucks added on my bill for this extra "line" and 150gb of data...