Quectel EG800Z-CN (EG800ZCN10LA) — What You Need To Know Before You Buy

We have sample units of the Quectel EG800Z LTE Cat 1 bis module. These are the China regional variant (-CN), not the European variant (-EU) that is the normal choice for Nigeria. The chip is identical. The radio front-end is not. Here is exactly what that changes.

What it supports

Max 10 Mbps down / 5 Mbps up. Single antenna. LGA, 17.7 × 15.8 mm.

What this means on Nigerian networks

Works:

• Airtel and 9mobile — both run LTE on B3 (1800 MHz). Full normal service.
• MTN — works on its B3 (1800 MHz) layer, which is widely deployed in Lagos, Abuja and other major cities.
• Spectranet / SWIFT — B40 (2300 MHz) is supported.

Does not work:

• MTN B20 (800 MHz) — this is MTN's deep-coverage layer. It is what carries signal indoors, in dense buildings, and outside the cities. This module cannot see it.
• Glo B28 (700 MHz) — Glo's main LTE coverage band. Not supported. Glo will be unreliable.
• B7 (2600 MHz) — MTN and Glo capacity band. Not supported.

No 2G fallback. If LTE drops out at your site, the module goes offline. It will not fall back to GSM/GPRS the way many older M2M modules do.

Buy these if

• Your device sits in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt or another major city
• You are on an Airtel or 9mobile SIM, or MTN in a confirmed-1800 area
• It is a fixed installation where you can test signal once and leave it
• You are prototyping, developing firmware, or building a demo unit — the AT command set, drivers and QuecOpen SDK are identical to the EU variant, so anything you build here ports straight over

Do not buy these if

• You are deploying outside major cities or across mixed/unknown locations
• Your fleet uses MTN or Glo SIMs and depends on rural or in-building coverage
• You need 2G fallback for reliability
• You are shipping a commercial product to NCC type approval — these carry Chinese certification (SRRC/CCC), not CE/RED, which makes the approval paperwork harder

Our recommendation

For development, prototyping and urban fixed installs, these are the same module and we're happy to sell them to you.

For production fleets going out across Nigeria, buy the EG800Z-EU instead. It adds B7, B20 and B28 and covers every LTE band any Nigerian operator runs. We can source it — talk to us and we'll quote it.

This part is being replaced in our line by the EG915U-EU, which adds 2G fallback on top of full Nigerian band coverage. Once current stock is gone, that is what we will carry.