CHAT Internet question

Leela

Veteran Member
We live in Santa Cruz County on the left coast. We have noticed so many van conversions with older people (like us) staying at the beaches here, or at least on the freeway. I have tried to get reserve a spot at Seacliff for about 2 months and can't ever get one. Our internet is awful but I don't want to spend $100 a month for internet. We have a booster and have also tried to hook it up directly to the telephone lines and that are antiquated. Suggestions?
 

Roy Hobbs

Contributing Member
Have you tried using your cell phone as a mobile internet hot spot. Works great when internet service is slow. Uses cell phone towers for data.
 

Dobbin

Faithful Steed
Have you tried using your cell phone as a mobile internet hot spot. Works great when internet service is slow. Uses cell phone towers for data.
Owner and his son did this for a while. Son had the plan and everyone else in the house had their own cell phone which could do "data" - except for Owner who doesn't want to become reliant upon a cell phone for living life.

Owner would use his wife's "hot spot." It worked "ok" for most run of the mill downloading pages of Internet. But for streaming and VOIP (voice transmission) the connection became "glitchy" with circle frozen frames and missed words.

It may depend on your cell. Here in coastal Cow Hampshire, the cell service is not like land-line at all, with even regular cell calls "dropped" about 5 percent of the time. A one-way conversation is not uncommon "Can you hear me now?"

Now, finally, there is some competition between ISPs - for a long time it was ComCast only. Now there are at least two more providers with Consolidated Communications the price leader. Competition IS driving down pricing. Slowly.

Owner is about $30 a month with 30 speed (whatever that is) Not the best speed but rarely "circles" on streaming.

Not surprisingly, streaming is "worst" between the hours of 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Owner says "Bandwidth Issues."

Dobbin
 

WFK

Senior Something
Every smartphone user should download one or two Speed Test Apps.
That provides a first assessment about signal at location.

Then, every user of a Hotspot with such phone should know his monthly allowance (GigaBytes) for such use and monitor it.
Exceeding that limit can prove very expensive. Most data consuming are videos of any kind, while reading texts are much lower. (News and Weather-live- are videos.) This is "Text."
 

Cardinal

Chickministrator
_______________
Every smartphone user should download one or two Speed Test Apps.
That provides a first assessment about signal at location.

Then, every user of a Hotspot with such phone should know his monthly allowance (GigaBytes) for such use and monitor it.
Exceeding that limit can prove very expensive. Most data consuming are videos of any kind, while reading texts are much lower. (News and Weather-live- are videos.) This is "Text."
I watch movies using my phone as a hot spot and I saved money when I ditched Hughesnet, even if I did have to buy more gigs for my phone. It's still overall cheaper and Verizon doesn't throttle me.
 

marsofold

Veteran Member
We are looking into using my AT&T business account for our home internet via hotspot. Our AT&T business account gets us 100 Gigabytes/month of unthrottled hotspot access for $92/month. I know of no other plan from any company over 30 GB/month.
 

Ambros

Veteran Member
You're stuck between a rock and a hard place... Wireless of some flavor(LTE Hotspot, PTP wireless, sattelite) are your only real options when you don't have a hardline. Most LTE style(mobile carrier and usually the cheapest) do have soft data caps that slow you down after so much. Sattelite is the most expensive and also have data caps but is coming down in price thanks to SpaceX doing Starlink. I think eventually starlink will be the go-to for mobile and rural internet and I think the price will definitely get lower as time progresses
 

Parakeet

Senior Member
We're full time RVers. I did extensive research for how to get internet on the road on a budget prior to hitting the road

I found the best resource for information is the You Tube channel Mobile Internet Resource Center.

We use our cell phone data, exclusively, for internet. Our carrier is Visible, which is a subsidiary of Verizon. The cost is $40.00 a month for truly unlimited everything and includes hot spot for one device. We joined a party pay group (search Visible Party Pay on Reddit) which dropped our monthly bill to $25/mo. There, truly, are no data caps and I think we use around 30 gigs a month between Netflix, YouTube and general net surfing. We also have a cheap AT & T plan through Cricket Wireless as a second backup, but so far, the Visible plan is far superior. We've been using this set-up for four months and have no complaints.

As far as coverage, we mostly stay on the west side of the US. With all of the new towers going up, and Verizon vying to hold the top place in coverage, we rarely have trouble getting service, but there are camping apps (ie. Free roam) that are a great resource for finding coverage in remote areas.

I'd be happy to answer any other questions that you might have.

One more thing to add. When we lived in a sticks and bricks, our monthly internet bill was just under $100/mo and it wasn't uncommon for our service to go down. I much prefer reliable internet we have now and only pay $25.00/mo.
 
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WFK

Senior Something
I have switched to T-Mobile unlimited Internet $60/month and a wireless router supplied.
Had no cable or fiber, just ATT DSL. They strictly limited monthly data allotment to 100GB which made TV streaming impossible (1TB needed by observation.)
This is relatively new and T-Mobile jacked up the price since I learned about it. Not available everywhere, lack of towers.
Google for details and availability. Finally I have fast internet (40-70 Mbps) and can stream over same router.
 

Dennis Olson

Chief Curmudgeon
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Elon Musk’s StarNet (I think that’s what it’s called) is functional now. Might look into it.
 

Leela

Veteran Member
We have worse cell phone reception here than sat TV. I have to log in to use the stuff at work and it's just about worthless. Also paying 60 bucks a month for DH with an ATT cell phone account. We live in a technology hole. Sometimes I want to invite someone to put up a cell tower on our highest point. How could I do that?
 

Tex88

Veteran Member
We have worse cell phone reception here than sat TV. I have to log in to use the stuff at work and it's just about worthless. Also paying 60 bucks a month for DH with an ATT cell phone account. We live in a technology hole. Sometimes I want to invite someone to put up a cell tower on our highest point. How could I do that?

 

Sportsman

Veteran Member
Right now Starlink is $99 per month with a $500 equipment purchase up front.
Download limits are reasonable. But, when I RV, I have hot spots from Verizon, AT&T, and T-mobile. AT&T and Verizon are unlimited, T-mobile has a with carryover (it's only used for security monitoring and is only $25/month)
I also recommend checking the Mobile Internet Resource Center on youtube. I joined their paid group when I got back in to RVing and the annual fee has more than paid for itself with Internet cost savings. Lots of free mobile Internet info on their web site.
 

bethshaya

God has a plan, Trust it!
The Mobile Internet Resource Center is THE place to go to find what you need for RV internet.

We're in the planning stages of going full time RV, and have found them to be a great resource! They also will alert you of deals that are great for internet providers with on the go connections
 

bethshaya

God has a plan, Trust it!
Also, this app is helpful to find coverage in your area. If you are planted for a time in that location, you can find out places that you can move to get better reception for the carrier you do have. It is a great resource to look at when planning your next stop.

 

happyface78

Contributing Member
For home, I've been using T-Mobile's home internet product. Not the greatest, but gives me decent enough speeds with no data caps and stable price of $50/month with autopay (got that price locked in due to ordering before they hiked it to $60/month with autopay). Beats the heck out of Cox internet with its ever-changing prices, crap data cap, and working when it wanted to.

For mobile times, I use a Visible Wireless phone with unlimited hot-spot. Can only tether one device at a time, but thats plenty for what I do. And its dirt cheap at $25/month with no data caps. Speeds are slow, but anywhere I've gone that had Verizon towers (the parent of Visible), I have service.
 
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