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Is my ZTE MU5120 firmware crippled?

5GAllDayLong

Casual Member
I bought a ZTE MU5120 5G portable wifi hotspot at what I thought was a bargain at around £140 via a mobile carrier (although unlocked) in Thailand and have subequently used it successfully in both Thailand and the UK and it's been pretty good.

But recently I tried a Thai 4G data only SIM on a network that only uses 2300 MHz LTE 4G Band 40 (strange, I know) and the device couldn't get any connection whatsoever. Further investigation made me locate the band selection page in the ZTE's web interface with the results as below:

Screenshot 2024-10-24 232547.webp


Sure enough, no band 40, and it seems a fair few others are missing too.

According to the datasheet (link) this is a fraction of the bands that this device could theoretically support.

Is my device crippled by the carrier firmware? It's not the end of the world as I have had good use out of it in both countries but it's a shame if it's artificially limited.

Does my thinking seem correct here and does anyone know whether there's a way around this?

Thanks!
 
See https://github.com/githubxbox/ZTE-MU5001-BROWSER-HACK
This is similar to what people use with ZTE MF286D.
It is probably also possible to enable the COM port and then enable the bands missing in the GUI via the terminal.
Thanks, I had already seen this but haven't played with it too much. I'll do some further reading.

There seems to be considerably less info about the MU5120 compared to the MU5001 but it looks like they have a lot of similarities.
 
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No N78, might aswell throw it in the bin if you're a 3 user.
Funnily enough I was using it with 3 in the UK and had acceptable speeds, ostensibly on 5G when I used it in two locations.

When I tried it in the Uxbridge area I was getting >100Mbps download, if I recall correctly. Not sure if that indicates that things are actually better than first thought or whether I just got lucky.

In the other location I get around 60 - 70Mbps download.

I've got a TP Link Archer NX200 5G router on the way so will use the Three SIM and compare it with this when back I'm back in the UK.
 
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