NB-IoT, LTE-M and GSM all have their uses still. NB-IoT gives you stable, reliable, operation in low signal areas, LTE-M is fast and gives enhanced coverage and GSM is the perfect fall back network offering a bit of everything (we'll miss 2.5G Edge when it goes!).
However, EE-NB-IoT is borderline useless at the moment. Vodafone 2G is currently causing us a headache and LTE-M is still new and sometimes has some teething problems. It's good to be able to switch off a technology or specific network in certain places - this is why we have the RAT Modal on the IoT Portal.
To bring up the RAT modal, click the network chip on the Live Screen:
This is circled red above around the network info chip (Vodafone-LTE-M ONLINE).
This will bring up the RAT modal:
Starting with RAT Scan - this allows you to turn off either GSM (on this model it's EDGE or 2.5G in network stage nomenclature) or the IoT technologies (labelled LTE - LTE-M/NB-IoT).
You may wish to do this if either technology is just not performing where you are. Occasionally you may find the older Edge/GSM technology is interfering with other equipment such as power supplies - Edge transmits at up to 2W!
IoT Op.Mode
The IoT Op Mode control is probably the most useful. If you have an application where you require a high speed network you may wish to turn off NB-IoT. The latency on NB-IoT can be 2s to 50s. This is no good for dial-to-open access control systems! If your NB-IoT network is slow try switching to LTE-M only.
Similarly, you may find LTE-M is not reliable where you are or where your access control system or alarm dialler is. It does require a good return-signal path. In which case turn off LTE-M.
Band Scan
Now, as smart as you are, I'm going to recommend you don't touch this apart from 1 example: EE-NB-IoT. If you're in the UK and your device is borderline uesless check to see if it's on EE-NB-IoT. At the moment this brand new network is not performing well at all!
EE-NB-IoT uses band 3 which is unusual for EU NB-IoT; they normally use band 20.
If you click the 'UK' button under the NB-IoT bands you will see it change the hex number to 80080. This removes band 3. Once we used to exclude LTE-M on band 3 and that is EE's LTE-M band and now it's our favoured network. So one day you may wish to turn it back on by setting the value to 80084 or just clicking the EU button.
If you're in Canada you will need to click the North America button for both LTE-M and NB-IoT bands (labelled NA).
If you set it all wrong, don't worry. You may lose connectivity for up to 20 minutes but our firmware will set it all back to its factory default if it doesn't get a lock after 4 reboot attempts (it will try for 4 minutes and then reboot). Obviously, if you're in Canada and you have an EU device, it will return to EU settings so you should request the correct firmware from the portal for your region!
Currently it's only for the Quectel BG95-M3 systems as we don't see the value in changing anything on the EU 4G modems.
This app note applies to our ZR5, DR5 and CQ5 Alarm Diallers, SMS Sender and Access Control Systems.