I'm thinking at getting a hotspot for our motorhome so we can securely do email, banking, etc. Will be used for Lower 48 states.

What are your experiences and recommendations?

quote:

Originally posted by heathtx:
I'm thinking at getting a hotspot for our motorhome so we can securely do email, banking, etc. Will be used for Lower 48 states.

What are your experiences and recommendations?

I just went to buy a new hotspot for our RV. After visiting several stores, I found out that hotspots are kind of being phased out because phone hotspots work just fine. I just got a cheap contract from ATT for a Samsung phone. It works better than my hotspot ever did. It's $60.00 compared to the $40.00 monthly I was paying. That's the only downside.

I have a Verizon Jetpack® MiFi® 8800L that I use when I travel. It uses Verizon's phone/data network (which in my opinion has the best service throughout the country) and allows me to set up a hotspot wherever I am. It's quite secure (a 4-to-8 digit PIN you create will protect the SIM card, and you can use a Personal Unblocking Key to unblock it after three incorrect attempts to enter the PIN have been tried).

You can have multiple devices attached to it, and you can also block devices from attaching to it. You can share files and folders over your your networks. Yes, that's plural: you can set up a guest network in addition to your primary.

Basically, I find it a full-function network router, except that it uses the telephone system for its network.

quote:

Originally posted by fpuhan:
I have a Verizon Jetpack® MiFi® 8800L that I use when I travel.

The same one I have, and no complaints.
My wife and I have iPhones and at home we have a regular router and even a landline, but I like a little redundancy in my life for important things.

quote:

Originally posted by enidpd804:

phone hotspots work just fine.

That depends on who you buy your service from.

I have had phone service in which hotspot was not a feature that was offered.

quote:

Originally posted by heathtx:
I'm thinking at getting a hotspot for our motorhome so we can securely do email, banking, etc. Will be used for Lower 48 states.

What are your experiences and recommendations?

TMobile was offering a free 30 day trial on their hotspot. I tried it not for the hotspot cababilities, but to check TMobile reception before switching our cell package. Worked just fine. I don't know if it's still available.

As usual, V-Tail speaks the truth.

For example one of Verizon's "Unlimited" plans only allows 10GB of mobile hotspot. I'm using a Verizon Prepaid plan that gives me 8GB per month plus a bonus of 7GB for a total of 15GB. All of that is available for hotspot/tethering at 4glte speeds. It costs me $50 a month which is much less than an "Unlimited" plan.

When RVing, I connect my phone to my computer with a USB cable and then select USB tethering on my phone. I find it more reliable than Wifi tethering.

I use a hot spot when I head to the sunshine state for a couple of months. It seems to be unpredictable from one day to the next. One day my wife’s laptop works ok. Other days she keeps getting booted off or getting intermittent service. This is an ATT plan. (50 G data). None of the carriers will let me buy a short duration plan.

I’m using a hotspot from unlimited4glte.com. No limit no speed throttling. It’s our sole internet for our house. Works pretty good. $75/month. We need 2 for our house. But one would work for your needs. Just make sure you pick the device with wireless.

I’ve bought two hardware hotspot devices in the past. But they’re going the way of the buggy whip. Nowadays, the sole Internet connection for my laptop is my iPhone with Sprint service. 50 GB/month, no throttling. That’s the way forward.

I use a Netgear Nighthawk 5g and service from OTR Mobile. Unlimited internet (I used 115 gigs last month) and only $60 a month. 8PM and I'm getting 23mps. Enough for streaming the Sugar Bowl in HD! I'll also mention I have it set up with my Apple Time Capsule as the router but it allows up to 20 devices.

We full time in our Motorhome and I hotspot using my phone S7 Samsung with AT&T unlimited data plan my IPad, and computer it works well with email and browsing. My next step will be a 5G. I had tMobile but where we are during the summer it put me in data roam mode and that did not work for us. So we switched to AT&T because it is on the same network since we had just bought phones. I am looking at possibly switching back to Verizon somewhere down the road.

About 2 years ago, I posted on here about AT&T Mobley car connected plan, unlimited LTE data for $20 a month, postpaid, directly thru AT&T. I pay about $23.85 a month after taxes.

I am still using that now, putting the Mobley SIM into the Netgear MR1100v2 hotspot WiFi router. It even roams on AT&T partners where there is no AT&T tower available.

You can still get this plan, but you must secure a Mobley device IMEI first and call AT&T and talk to a rep that knows about this plan.

We use this:

https://unlimited4glte.com/

It is somebody reselling AT&T service. It is really unlimited and 4G. Allegedly a grandfathered SIM. We pay monthly and have no contract. We are overall fairly pleased although their billing, being a small, likely home-based business, can be a pain.

We use this service for our home internet because it's this or 3 Mb DSL (we usually get about 30 Mb download speeds with this). We use over 100 GB of data a month with no issues. I think an advantage of something like this is you could dump your home internet and use it in both places.

quote:

Originally posted by saigonsmuggler:
About 2 years ago, I posted on here about AT&T Mobley car connected plan, unlimited LTE data for $20 a month, postpaid, directly thru AT&T. I pay about $23.85 a month after taxes.

I am still using that now, putting the Mobley SIM into the Netgear MR1100v2 hotspot WiFi router. It even roams on AT&T partners where there is no AT&T tower available.

You can still get this plan, but you must secure a Mobley device IMEI first and call AT&T and talk to a rep that knows about this plan.

Is this the Harman Spark the AT&T website has listed? Does the Spark do the same thing?

Yes but the Harman Spark has new logic to detect whether you're using it out of the car or not, thus making it harder to move the SIM to another device.

Best bet is still acquiring an existing Mobley IMEI and activate the CC plan with it. They say that when you call AT&T, if rep doesn't know of this $20 unlimited data plan, just simply hang up and call again until you get a knowledgeable rep. One rep I'd talked to even admonished me that I should know better that AT&T would never have an unlimited data plan for only $20 a month.. LOL

Our cell phones used to be with AT&T and we switched to Cricket Wireless.

Not only did our bill drop dramatically, it only costs an extra $10/month to have a hot spot for one of the lines. All 4 of our phones have unlimited talk/data/texting and with the one hot spot our bill is $110/month including all taxes/fees.

Even better news is that Cricket uses AT&T towers so the coverage is nationwide.

quote:

Originally posted by DaBigBR:
We use this:

https://unlimited4glte.com/

It is somebody reselling AT&T service. It is really unlimited and 4G. Allegedly a grandfathered SIM. We pay monthly and have no contract. We are overall fairly pleased although their billing, being a small, likely home-based business, can be a pain.

We use this service for our home internet because it's this or 3 Mb DSL (we usually get about 30 Mb download speeds with this). We use over 100 GB of data a month with no issues. I think an advantage of something like this is you could dump your home internet and use it in both places.

Yeah I think these companies activated a bunch of the Mobley unlimited LTE plan for $20 a month when it was widely and easily obtainable, then resell them for $75 monthly a line.

I only know about Verizon. In that case the performance of an actual verizon hot spot (jetpack) will dwarf using your phone (iphone 6,7 or 11). This I have tested quite a bit.
Now what you pay is a plan issue and may be relevant to your situation.

I have a Verizon mifi hotspot for work and it works well. If I were you I would just add the WiFi tethering option to your current phone. It may likely be cheaper and less devices. Only downside is you will need to keep it plugged in as it eats battery pretty quickly.