Since September 2013, the Austrian provider T-Mobile offered a powerful new LTE router Home Net Box. The device is a combination of stationary and mobile router, and is manufactured by Chinese manufacturer Huawei. The factory model number is Huawei E5170s-22, which was already shown in February 2013 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. With peak speed of up to 150 MBit/s for downsteam (LTE Category 4), T-Mobile Home Net Box is one of the fastest home wireless routers available on the market.
Built-in rechargeable battery and docking station
T-Mobile Home Net Box Huawei E5170s-22 basically consists of two parts: the actual router with integrated modem and the wireless module for up to 32 wireless devices, as well as a docking station that supplies the router with power and also has an Ethernet LAN interface.
A special feature is the built-in battery in the T-Mobile Home Net box. This enables wireless operation without docking station for up to 2.5 hours, just as you would expect the E5170 working as a 4G router. The operation is normally via a web interface, so the browser of any terminal is possible. The configuration via the Huawei Mobile WiFi app is also possible.
Fast modem with LTE
As we can see, there is a “s-22” in the model number, Huawei ‘s subsidiary HiSilicon chipset is integrated inside the Huawei E5170s-22 modem. This supports cellular standards GSM, UMTS and LTE. In the fourth generation, wireless network connection of up to 150 Mbit/s for the downlink and up to 50 Mbit/s for the uplink are possible because of the LTE Category 4 can be used . Over UMTS, the maximum downlink speed of 42.2 Mbit/s are achievable, provided the network with DC-HSPA+ is equipped.
If the reception is poor, two external antenna connectors are ready for LTE or UMTS external antennas to be connected. The connection would be much helpful for computers, tablets and other devices via Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and the surfing speed could reach up to 300 Mbit/s, unfortunately, neither the 5 GHz band, nor the fast Gigabit 802.11ac Wi-Fi is supported.
We believe the HUAWEI E5170 is not introduced by only T-mobile Austria; the 4G LTE Cat4 Router E5170 would be in many operators’ product range.