Internet pretty much everywhere via T-Mobile

[92landyacht]

Just picked up a new T-Mobile 5G hotspot device, refurbished, for just under $40. Connected it to my Roku device ($38 open box item) and was streaming Yellowstone within 20 minutes.

The 50G prepaid plan is $50 and should last me at least a few episodes. General internet browsing uses even less bandwidth. Amaizing how technology has evolved. Even picked up a second hotspot just in case this one craps out or I need to extend my data usage another 50G.

[Wayne&Sam]

As long as there is strong 5G T-Mobile cell coverage.

[92landyacht]

Check your area and you'll find that most have strong T-Mobile. Not many options in very remote areas other than SAT.

[CRH]

I have T Mobile and often have a signal when others don't. I use my phone to mobile hotspot to my TV to watch Netflix in my trailer.

[ETroup]

I have a T-Mobile and AT&T SIMs in my PepLink MAX Transit cellular router. Normally can get one a signal from one or the other.

[92landyacht]

Yep, it's amazing how far 5G has progressed in such a short time. Most areas now have coverage and 4G/4G LTE is slowly being phased out.

I did a fair amount of research before I decided to go with T-Mobile. Right now they offer the best coverage for where I travel to and they had the best pay as you go prepaid plan. When I need service, I just load up the SIM for the month and away I go. If I'm off for the month I just don't pay anything.

You do have to be fairly conservative on how you use your data, but it is manageable. Don't believe the "Unlimited" plans as they only offer so much high speed data and then revert to 3G or even less for the remainder.

[92landyacht]

Originally Posted by CRH

I have T Mobile and often have a signal when others don't. I use my phone to mobile hotspot to my TV to watch Netflix in my trailer.

Using the phone was an option but, at least with my phone, using it as a hotspot wouldn't allow me to use it as a phone at the same time. It also ate into my data. With the standalone hotspot device it fixed both issues. I only need to pay when using it. I'm on a prepaid plan that's month to month with no contract. If I'm not needing it, then I just don't pay anything that month.

[DCPAS]

I have been looking at T-Mobile hotspots. The reviews of them on T-Mobile's website are brutal which is giving me pause. Which one do you have?

Completely separately, does anyone have any comment on T-Mobile coverage more west? Particularly in western rural areas?

[uncle_bob]

Hi

Those "coverage maps" you see on the internet are nice, but often useless for working out the real coverage situation. The problem is not specific to any one carrier. It's mainly because they can't / don't / won't do a map with enough resolution.

We have phones from all three main carriers. Indeed there are places that T Mobile does quite well. There are also a lot of places they come in dead last ( = little or no coverage) relative to the other two big guys.

Bottom line: There are a lot of places that you only can get coverage from one carrier.

Bob

[wrhnco68]

Originally Posted by Wayne&Sam

As long as there is strong 5G T-Mobile cell coverage.

Interestingly, I got a new 5g Samsung cellphone and when our landline home internet service was disrupted, tried to use my cellphone as a hotspot. Not so good for data even though I had decent voice call service.... On the "What do I have to lose?" plan, I tried the T-Mobile Home Internet service. It was FAR better than using the cellphone, regularly exceeding 25Mbps.

Obviously, the TMobile Home Internet is not applicable for travel but, in my experience, the only way to see if a particular device works in any location is to try it. In some places my mobile TMobile Franklin hotspot works better than my phone. Go figger. And that's just TMobile. Add verizon to the decision matrix and things probably get more complex.

[SilverPal2]

We are full time travelers and run a business everyday. We use 3 services to have reliable coverage tmobile is best in the east, Verizon is best in the west and ATT fills in the gaps. Obviously Starlink will become a better alternative in the future.

[KCurtis]

I am sitting in a campground in Cannonville near Bryce Canyon in Utah right now. I have no cell phone connection at all in this campsite. When we drive about 4 miles into town we get 1 bar on AT&T, but still no t-mobile signal. I am about to update my iPhone and I think I am going to Verizon. My wife will have AT&T and the trailer will have T-Mobile. Hopefully that will give us the best coverage as we travel across this country.

[skyguyscott]

As someone old enough to remember the days when the output of computers were punchcards, I have watched with amusement, the evolution of how people interact with these machines. It seems ever since the computer started offering read outs on a CRT screen, all people have really wanted to do with computer. Technology is watch movies, rather than say, fill out a spreadsheet, do computational analysis, word processing, or any of the things computers were actually invented to do— and this is despite the fact that other technologies that were actually invented to display movies, such as over the air television broadcast, VHS and DVD players, data storage drives, et.al., all still exist, still work well, are way cheaper and usually work better than cellular or satellite technology.

Sometimes I think if I were to describe traditional television broadcast as a technology that enabled real time, high definition video and audio transmission worldwide and for no monthly subscription fees or complex data plans, using existing infrastructure that effectively covered nearly the entire country, with tons of existing content, already produced and ready for distribution, people would herald it as the greatest thing ever.

[Vlamgat]

Originally Posted by ETroup

I have a T-Mobile and AT&T SIMs in my PepLink MAX Transit cellular router. Normally can get one a signal from one or the other.

But like you, I need both. I usually find a better urban signal from T-mobile but a much better rural one from ATT. In fact despite their claims to the contrary, I find T-mobile virtually disappears once 5 miles (as the crow flies) from an Interstate.

[92landyacht]

Originally Posted by DCPAS

I have been looking at T-Mobile hotspots. The reviews of them on T-Mobile's website are brutal which is giving me pause. Which one do you have?

My choice of hotspot device was partially cost driven. If cost was not of consideration I probably would have gone with the Netgear Nighthawk M6 Pro 5G WiFi 6 Mobile Hotspot Router. The problem is that they cost around $700 new for the base model and $900 for the Pro model. "Refurbished" I've seen the Pro come in at $370.

The one I got was a Quanta D53 T-Mobile branded hotspot. Retail, they're $198 but there are quite a few of them "refurbished" on eBay and Amazon for around $40. I figured that, for a $40 investment, it was worth a shot. I also discovered that many of the issues associated with this device were related to an initial software bug that seems to have been corrected. There are also some settings that need to be changed from default to make it work better.

Initially they only have the 5Ghz band turned on so 2.4Ghz devices won't connect. Easily turned on in the admin app via a browser. There's also an annoying power save feature that will disconnect the device if there's no activity for 10 minutes. Also easily switch to "always on". The last issue is related to the default profile. It only allows IPv6 protocol but there are many devices that need to have IPv4 enabled as well. Roku devices are one of them. Creating a second profile and enabling IPv4v6 solves the problem.

I don't have a lot of time on the system yet but will have a trip planned in early June to test it out. It's east coast but a little rural near Lake Lanier GA.

Eventually the Starlink system will be mature enough to make it more usable. Cost will still be a little high at $150/Mo plus initial equipment cost.

No matter what direction you go in, I would strongly discourage going with a device that only supports 4G LTE. Those get much slower speeds and 4G will become outdated in a very short time. 5G is just so much more efficient for the carriers. Higher bandwidth benefits the end user but also benefits the carriers.

[92landyacht]

Originally Posted by Vlamgat

But like you, I need both. I usually find a better urban signal from T-mobile but a much better rural one from ATT. In fact despite their claims to the contrary, I find T-mobile virtually disappears once 5 miles (as the crow flies) from an Interstate.

My house is quite a few files from any Interstate, but I still get good signal strength (typically 4 or 5 bars 5G service). I think it depends on population density and usage. Check the T-Mobile coverage map and you'd be surprised what service they have on the east cost. I spend most of my time on the East Coast, so it works for me. Anyone thinking of using a mobile hotspot should investigate what works best for them at the locations they expect to travel to.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

Who gets coverage where is a very convoluted issue. The first layer is "who won which auction". The rights to put up gear here or there went to folks based on bids they placed. In a lot of low population areas, odd groups of folks won those auctions. They then try to do a deal with the various major carriers.

Next layer is geography. Out in the flatlands covering for many miles with a single tower is do-able. It may not be smart (for various reasons) but it can be done. Get into rugged terrain with lots of deep valleys and that's no longer true. A lot of cute campgrounds are down in a valley ....

As noted above population density (of paying customers) matters. If they start drilling oil wells in your area ... here come the cell towers. Otherwise that same area might not have many folks who depends on cell ... thus no coverage.

The next layer is accessibility and power. If you are far enough out that power grid is far far away, that matters. If the only reasonable access is by helicopter, that matters as well. Getting data *out* of that cell tower requires some sort of backhaul network (fiber or microwave). All of this can be worked out for enough money. Can you still put in a site with these issues? Sure, but it will cost a lot.

At this point we just have a signal. It may or may not be what you are after for streaming Netflix. Again, it comes back to budget ....

Bob

[Mollysdad]

I called T-mobile to ask about Hotspots.
The lady who answered didn't know what I was talking about. When I said, "You sell them" she hung up on me.
If their customer service is so bad for new customers, think how bad it is for old customers.
The phone tree is only interested in selling you a new phone with a plan.

[pcskier]

With my Verizon unlimited data plan, hotspot data using the phone is limited to 50 gig per month, then it throttles very low. Streaming to a Roku or Apple TV box will eat that data in no time.

50G is plenty for me to just use hotspot to connect to my laptop for web browsing and email. With a decent amount of usage, I find that I use about 1 G per day.

For streaming, I use the streaming apps on my phone using unlimited high speed phone data, hooking up my phone to my TV via a dongle that connects phone to HDMI cable.

This is my strategy as a full timer.

Where I am staying, every third Rig now has a Starlink dish outside and they are getting 100+ Mbps download speeds.

[pcskier]

Originally Posted by skyguyscott

As someone old enough to remember the days when the output of computers were punchcards, I have watched with amusement, the evolution of how people interact with these machines. It seems ever since the computer started offering read outs on a CRT screen, all people have really wanted to do with computer. Technology is watch movies, rather than say, fill out a spreadsheet, do computational analysis, word processing, or any of the things computers were actually invented to do— and this is despite the fact that other technologies that were actually invented to display movies, such as over the air television broadcast, VHS and DVD players, data storage drives, et.al., all still exist, still work well, are way cheaper and usually work better than cellular or satellite technology.



Sometimes I think if I were to describe traditional television broadcast as a technology that enabled real time, high definition video and audio transmission worldwide and for no monthly subscription fees or complex data plans, using existing infrastructure that effectively covered nearly the entire country, with tons of existing content, already produced and ready for distribution, people would herald it as the greatest thing ever.

Actually it was the ‘input’ of computers that were punch cards.

And that free HD tv you mention (over the air) is far from ‘free’. Ten minutes of mind-numbing commercials for every thirty minutes of programming is the ‘cost.’ Literally 1/3 of the time spent OTA is commercials. And you can’t watch what you want, when you want. Decades ago, people ‘did’ herald It as the greatest thing either.

I have not watched OTA tv or cable since 2015, and never seeing a other ad (and being able to save another minute or two skipping the program ‘intro’ sequence, has been extremely liberating.