Much better than a Mifi for mobile internet ....

For all the internet junkies out there I can highly recommend this bit of kit.

I have been using mifi units from Huawei (with external antenna) for several years, but have found that for full-timing they don't like being plugged in 24/7. The battery gets very hot and expands - I replaced batteries twice - and they don't work without a battery in place. In the end I was worried I was sat on a fire risk. My last mifi battery expanded to the point of popping off its cover.

So I started to research something a bit more robust and came up with this Teltonika RUT240 for £135. Proper piece of commercial kit as used in trucks and buses. Works directly off 9 to 36v DC and has external sockets for both wifi and 3G/4G. It is specced to work in temperatures up to 45 degrees, which is great, because I have it installed inside the wardrobe and it gets hot in there in summer. In this heatwave it is just warm to the touch.

It came with 3 antennas as standard - big high gain ones. I did an experiment and compared 4G signal strength from my roof antenna and the supplied ones, with the unit on the table in the van, but near a window. The signal strengths were almost (but not quite) the same, but miles better than the built in antenna of the little mifi units (or even phones). This leads me to believe that standalone performance would be acceptable to all but purists, and save the hassle of installing an external antenna, while performing much better than a mifi alone. I can imagine it would perform very well on the front dashboard of any Hymer, or against a window.

The interface is very clean, but not fancy. There are a lot of features included that you will never use. I just ran the setup wizard and it worked straight away. A nice feature is that you can control it by SMS from anywhere. I have set it up to send me an SMS when data use hits a certain level. It has all the anoraky things you could possibly want if you are so technically inclined - VPNs and security etc ...

It has a proper SIM slot which enables changing SIM cards easily and on the fly without having to get inside it.

All in all I am very pleased, and I am expecting years of good service without worrying about cooking exploding batteries.