We recently relocated to a rural area of West NC (Asheville area), and when we arrived, we were using just our phone hotspots for a couple months while we figured out our options.
We don’t have access to cable or fiber-optic, and satellite is prohibitively expensive. In addition, we have a lot of trees on the property and I didn’t want to deal with mounting Starlink to the roof and killing myself in the process. And so, I arrived at the InvisaGig. We have good 4G LTE reception on our property, and only a little bit of 5G (says our phones). So while I planned on 4G LTE carrying the workload, I was curious to see if the InvisaGig could squeeze some 5G juice out of my nearest tower.
Setting up the modem was easy. I plugged it in, slapped my SIM card in, and within a few minutes I was up and running. I tested it out on the kitchen table first, before mounting outside in the enclosure, so that I could configure and troubleshoot if needed. So I used it like this for a couple weeks before migrating it into the outdoor enclosure. The modem itself is compact enough that we ended up mounting it outside on the "closest tower" side of the house in the optional enclosure, after signal strength testing for a bit. It comes with a clear quick-start guide (1 page, which I appreciated) so setup was easy.
I live where broadband is unavailable, but 5G coverage in my area has been expanding. With the InvisaGig, I get great speeds that are suitable for our family of 6. I'm unsure how it stacks up against competing products, since this is the first device I tried out, but it's performing great as the sole internet source for our household. We have unlimited data plans on our phones, so we stay off Wi-Fi (to give everything else on our home network as much bandwidth as possible) and simply use cellular data on our phones, but even if we had to jump on Wi-Fi, I’m pretty sure we could do it without issue. Everything else on our house is connected to Wi-Fi and ultimately runs through the InvisaGig, and it still runs great; more than enough for streaming, working from home, and online gaming.
On days when the cellular congestion is a little higher (or whatever is causing it), my speed is reduced, but I believe this is out of control of the modem and is simply inherent with cellular internet and my nearby towers, etc. As I mentioned, we have some 5G but not 100% reliability. But the good news is that the modem automatically switches to 4G LTE if 5G isn't available, so there's no downtime or disconnects that I’ve seen. I haven’t needed to go into any tower locking or anything of that sort just yet — I’m pretty happy with the connection I get out of the box, but I may mess with this in the coming months to see if I can lock onto a solid 5G signal. Good to know the modem has this capability and configuration depth.
The most impressive thing about the InvisaGig is how reliable it has been. We’ve had heavy rain, snow, and storms, and the internet connection holds up through most weather conditions. I was kind of a doubter of cellular internet as a whole home solution, but the robust connection I seem to maintain regardless of conditions with InvisaGig has changed my mind. The 5G signal strength has been steady in most parts of the house, though I did need to experiment with the positioning to get the best signal. Thankfully, it’s not too bulky, so finding a good spot to mount the enclosure outside the house was simple enough. With Starlink, setup and mounting seemed to be a very particular process so I’m glad I didn’t have to go down that road.
The price point of the modem was a bit higher than what I initially wanted to pay, but when I compared it to the ongoing costs of Starlink (and their equipment fees), the unit will likely pay for itself in short time. The speeds I’m getting are solid, and I feel like I'm getting a lot of value out of it. Also some of the competing cellular modems out there seem to have subscription pricing for some of the features and I didn't like the sound of that. Not the case with InvisaGig. Upfront cost is higher than some alternatives, but I think it's a net positive when you consider there are no equipment lease fees or subscriptions.
If you’re in a remote area with any sort of viable 5G or 4G reception, I would check out the InvisaGig if you’re looking for a more cost-feasible alternative than Starlink. I think my unlimited cellular data plan is around $35/month before taxes and fees, and the InvisaGig runs on that SIM card. I think Starlink is around $120/month, which is a big gap. Honestly even if you have access to fiber you may want to see if InvisaGig with a cellular data plan is a better alternative if you’re paying any more than $50/month for fiber. If you are single in an apartment or something, and you have a 5G signal, I would definitely consider doing cellular internet.
