As a Christmas gift, I purchased a TP-Link Archer MR600 LTE/4G router to a close relative to use at his vacation home.
The radio conditions there are a bit challenging, with a concrete house on the northern side of a ridge, 1.3 km from a base station. The metal reinforcement bars in the concrete act as interferers, cancelling out 4G signals.
The router supports several LTE bands, including the coverage bands (8 and 20) and the capacity bands (3 and 7). The former bands have lower frequencies, which gives bigger coverage but lower performance and are suitable for rural areas. The latter bands have higher frequencies which gives smaller coverage but higher performance and are suitable for urban areas.
I tested the modem in my house in Åkarp with satisfactory results (RSRP: -100 dBm for Band 3 and 7). In the summer house, the signal was barely detectable.
I found a discussion on TP Link's forum where another user had the same issue. The support told that there was a firmware version that supported band selection, and I installed that on the router. After that, I was able to register to band 8.
A 4G router that doesn't allow the user to select band is a quite lousy router. Fortunately, it was possible to overcome that with another firmware, but that shouldn't be necessary.
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