In times like these the thoughts of a broadband outage are enough to make you shudder. So here’s a look at the Tenda 4G LTE Broadband Router which could just save your sanity.

4G to WiFi

The 4G680V2.0 N300 is a router with VoLTE (Voice over LTE) and Tenda say it will “support over 300 mobile/cellular networks in over 135 countries”.

It is everything you need, in a single box, to receive 3G or 4G LTE cellular broadband and turn it into a WiFi network that you can use to share an Internet connection with up to 32 of your devices.

The 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN it creates can transfer data at speed of up to 300Mbps down and up to 50Mbps up, where supported by your local cellular network.

As well as being a backup for when your road is dug up or some other outage, it could also be perfect for a temporary office, holiday homes or rural houses that have rubbish broadband. I’ve even read of people using them in their car as a WiFi Hotspot too.

Setup

The box includes the 4G680V2.0 unit, Quick Install Guide, Two antennas the 12v/1A Power supply, Ethernet cable and an RJ11 phone cable.

Within a minute or two the unit had booted and I was able to connect to its WiFi network and access the Internet.

Our install actually lived up to the advertised ‘zero config’. I just took it out of the box, slotted one of these Three Data Sims into the bottom of the unit (it’s unlocked for any network) and turned it on.

You can set a maximum monthly data usage limit via the mobile app which will automatically disconnect for the cellular network to avoid overcharges.

Two hidden internal antennas handle the Wi-Fi, whilst the two external ones are for 3G / 4G. As the unit has removable cellular antennas (SMA connectors) you have to option of changing them for a high gain antenna like this or even an external one like this to really maximise your signal strength.

As long as your SIM supports it (not data only) you can also simultaneously make phone calls as well by plugging a regular handset into the RJ11 phone port on the rear. You can make calls and use the WiFi data network simultaneously.

You can manage the router via a browser (default 192.168.0.1 admin:admin) or Telnet. It can provide DHCP (or not) although it’s worth pointing out that the router does not allow Port Forwarding of any kind.

the WAN port allows you to connect your hardwired broadband instead, using the unit as for WiFi and moving the cellular feature to become a failover backup option.