Suddenly Unable to Stream on Twitch

[Vaellyth]

Hello there VZW community, hope you're all doing well.

I'd like to preface this post with one thing: I understand that ethernet is ideal, & streaming via a non-hardwired connection is not recommended. I began streaming simply for fun w/friends, and had no connection issues for several months, so I kept doing it. If I could get a hardwired modem out here, I would!

Anyway, the issue at hand: up until about 10 days ago, I could consistently stream to Twitch via OBS with a bitrate of about 4500-5000kb/s. Connection indicator was always green, and I'd have maybe 1% dropped frames overall at the end of a 5 hour stream.

However, now, when I start up the stream, the bitrate is good for about 3 seconds before it immediately plummets to around 2000-2500kb/s, sometimes all the way to zero. I'm losing more than 60% of my frames within the first minute of streaming and it just gets worse. This results in lag, buffering, & growing latency between myself and my viewers: up to a 15 minute delay. I did not change anything before this started happening. I know it's not caused by hardware, because I can open up OBS stats and see that my CPU and GPU are hardly being touched.

When I run speed tests, I get a solid 6-7MB/s upload speed, which should be adequate for a 4500-5000kb/s bitrate, especially since I shut everything else down while streaming. But OBS setup wizard and the Twitch Test tool both show all my connections as very poor, with bitrates between 900-2500kb/s.

I tried power cycling the LTE Router and all the devices it's connected to multiple times. I logged into the router itself and performed a factory reset through the control panel. I experimented with using 2.4G and 5G consecutively and separately. I tried unplugging or disconnecting every other device (smart TVS, game consoles) from the router during stream. I went through the steps of releasing and renewing IP information on Windows. I even tried connecting to servers in Mexico, Texas, Washington, Colorado, etc. just to see if it was a routing issue... ( I'm located in the greater Tucson area.) I also did some tests while hooked up to my phone's Mobile Hotspot and got the same results, so I'm inclined to think it's an infrastructure issue.

Nothing has worked, and I'm starting to feel a bit insane. If I have to quit streaming for the time being, so be it; but why was I able to stream consistently for several months, only to have it fall apart now? Is the infrastructure being worked on? Has the routing changed? While looking for solutions, I've read that Twitch servers are pretty poor in general, but again...that doesn't explain months of successful streams. I just want to be sure I've exhausted every possibility before throwing in the towel.

I'm just about out of options, so any input, insight, advice, etc. is much appreciated. Thank you in advance, and thanks for stopping by and reading this wall of text. :') Have a good day!