Verizon’s Novatel USB551L 4G LTE Modem Partially Working with CTR35 after Outage

Posted on Apr 27, 2011 in Mobile

I received the Novatel USB551L 4G LTE modem from Verizon Wireless today. Due to today’s nationwide LTE outage, I couldn’t activate the modem when I received it. According to the Verizon Wireless customer service representative I spoke with, even though I live in a 3G-only area, the provisioning system for the LTE SIM cards is down which prevents any LTE-type device from being properly programmed and activated. I tried getting the modem to work this afternoon several times to no avail. I gave up until this evening.

Earlier, I plugged USB551L modem into the CTR35 but, due to the LTE outage, was unable to really test whether it might work or not. This evening I once again plugged it in and to my surprise, the modem connected and worked fine through the CTR35. There are some issues still due to there not being official support for this modem yet. The most obvious so far is that no 3G/4G signal strength is reported in the router’s web interface.

Expect a full review of the USB551L modem in a few days and I will also test with several other Cradlepoint routers including the CTR500 and MBR800. Stay tuned!