I was trying to use the Quectel EC25-A as a WiFi hotspot and after spending a half-day with an AT&T technician (+1-800-331-0500 for data tech support) I found the solution in this forum in this post. Thank you.
First, I, too, was trying to use a generic AT&T pay-as-you-go SIM that i picked up from BestBuy. In my AT&T wireless phone account the “Add-A-Line” option was only $20 month extra which was a much better deal for me than any of the other pre-paid plans.
So in trying to add a line it presents you with two boxes. One on the left for the IMEI of your device and one on the right for the SIM card ID. The IMEI printed on the Quectel EC25-A was not accepted by AT&T and I could proceed no further. So I tried using the IMEI of my Android Moto-G5+ phone. Well, that wasn’t accepted either. They did accept an iPhone-6S IMEI. I ended up submitting the IMEI of an old Netgear hotspot device I was no longer using and then entered the ICCID of the SIM and everything seemed finished. Except the hotspot did not register with LTE service (only WCDMA was enabled) and the PPP connection was being rejected.
The next morning I got a message from AT&T saying my new line had been provisioned and it listed my new phone number. Tried again with the same results. No LTE, no PPP. Called AT&T tech support and got a technician who spent a lot of time with me trying to resolve this issue. He stated:
- The IMEI number given must match the SIM card ID given. (Really?)
- His system recognized the Quectel IMEI (It should, Quectel’s website has press releases about gaining AT&T certificates).
- He removed some unwanted provision features (related to voice or SMS, I think).
- He confirmed “nxtgenphone” was the correct APN to use (it isn’t).
I don’t know which of the above are true. Tried it again with the same results - no PPP, no LTE.
Changed my APN to “broadband” in the wvdial.conf file and bingo, it worked:
[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,“IP”,“broadband”
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Baud = 720000000
Stupid Mode = 1
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB2
ISDN = 0
Phone = *99#
Username = []
Password = []
The PPP device is showing up and stable, it’s registering with LTE and I’m getting about 11 Mbps download speeds.
Prior to this I had been using StraightTalk (Walmart) SIM cards with their prepaid plans. Last year and currently in Michigan I was getting LTE service with 10 Mbps+ performance, but this year in California it seems like AT&T is blocking LTE for StraightTalk. I’ve tried four different cell sites and even with -65 dBm signals all I can get is HSPA+ (WCDMA) service in areas that are known to have LTE (my cellphone show LTE). It’s like StraightTalk is now a second-class service.