I now have a 4g dongle to my liking which I have been able to connect using nmcli and using wdm-cdc0 as the interface.
This gives the internet connection, however unlike with the older huawei 3g dongle I had which used only ttyUSB interface for both gsm and internet, this one seems to not be able to access gsm mmcli commands which I presume is due to the different interface type.
I did somehow run these commands with the device once but I haven't been able to do it again now I have qmi mode active. I don't know how I did it before so am unable to repeat.
I saw
this article from the archwiki however it seems to only talk about using qmicli as the sole connection method. I am already connecting successfully using network manager profile and would like to keep using it as I manage other non mobile connections with it. There is no mention of qmicli being used in connection with network manager.
So how can I keep using network manager and somehow also have access to gsm functionality? I am presuming I have to switch modes but not sure how to achieve that in a streamlined fashion.