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Ask Slashdot: LTE Hotspot As Sole Cellular Connection?
New submitter iamacat writes I am thinking of canceling my regular voice plan and using an LTE hotspot for all my voice and data needs. One big draw is ability to easily use multiple devices without expensive additional lines or constantly swapping SIMs. So I can have an ultra compact Android phone and an iPod touch and operate whichever has the apps I feel like using. Or, if I anticipate needing more screen real estate, I can bring only a Nexus 7 or a laptop and still be able to make and receive VoIP calls. When I am home or at work, I would be within range of regular WiFi and not need to eat into the data plan or battery life of the hotspot.
Has anyone done something similar? Did the setup work well? Which devices and VoIP services did you end up using? How about software for automatic WiFi handoffs between the hotspot and regular home/work networks?
Has anyone done something similar? Did the setup work well? Which devices and VoIP services did you end up using? How about software for automatic WiFi handoffs between the hotspot and regular home/work networks?
I considered doing what you're suggesting a little while ago. I'm the iOS ecosystem though, so this may not apply to Android, but the biggest problem I found with this is if you're using a hotspot for your data, that not all your devices will remain connected all the time - they will likely connect periodically to download email or receive push notifications, but they're not 24x7 connected via Wi-Fi. As such, if you're relying on a VoIP app to handle incoming calls, you may miss some.
Again, this was my experience with iOS a little while back - some jailbreak tweaks helped but killed battery life.
Try it, write an article about it and submit it here. Maybe someone would like to read it.
I haven't found portable hotspots to be reliable enough for voice in the past, but YMMV.
Why not just get a voice+data plan and use the phone as the hotspot for all your other devices?
If you don't need to receive calls, you can control use pretty well and maybe make it work for slightly less money.
Speaking from personal experience while traveling though, it is really a pain, especially for a prolonged period of time. If you have a specific need to use multiple devices for non overlapping functions (laptop, phone, tablet) where the functions really can't be done on a single device then the MiFi is cheaper than getting three SIMs. The only time I broke down and went this route in the last 10 years was in Sydney, where the hotel charged around $25 for wifi, and I only had one Australian SIM card that would work.
Convenience or cost...
Make sure that your LTE hotspot has enough battery life to survive few hours between the hotspots. Also... it will reduce battery life of your android/iOS devices, as wifi needs more power than GSM. And you'll probably not be able to do useful voice calls in areas where there's only GSM available.
been doing this for years with several laptops and desktops (sometimes all at once) on unlimited data plan, works great for skype etc.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
It will work if you have consistent high-speed data wherever you need to use VOIP.
In reality, from my experience, coverage is very spotty for LTE or even 3G, and frustrating. I always had a backup basic bar phone not too far away. Services to take the place of standard voice are easy to come by, it's the affordable, stable, durable, and reliable mobile data plan that aren't just there yet. Mobile data in the ways you describe is not yet for the masses.
Heya. I actually did this with Verizon, back in 2012. I was seventeen shades of paranoid back then about the whole NSA scandal (with reason), so I bought my sisters old Galaxy S2, removed the SIM, and piggy-backed off my VZ hotspot. I was using Callcentric as my VoIP provider.
I would say that the idea was nice, but that it could have worked out better. Maybe it was that I was using Verizon, but the call quality was like a rollercoaster. I had bounceback issues, echoes, and some automated phone systems wouldn't recognize my DTMF tones. It's an idea I'd like to visit again, in the future, but I think the LTE nets aren't the best bet for VoIP. At least, not yet. I also ran into issues where my hotspot would hibernate, or just drain in no time. You should also take into account how fast your WiFi drains your phone, and how often the interface suspends.
If you can get past all that, give it a whirl. I'd like to try this again one day, myself. My suggestion is to avoid using Verizon as a test bed.
Hope this helps. :)
- Asura
Having misread the title this seemed relevant, but it may still be of tangential interest: Relish.net are offering 4G as a replacement for ADSL, in London.
Might make sense if you're ok with the data caps, which aren't that bad.
By LTE bridge, I mean some device that can take a SIM and that has an Ethernet port for connecting your own wireless router? Something designed to be used in a "production" setting where reliability of the LAN side of connectivity needs to be high.
I've not used a MiFi(TM) or other portable hotspot, but on every iPhone with tethering I've used (up to 5S) the wireless portion of it leaves something to be desired. No wireless signal showing up without toggling tethering on/off a second time, loss of wireless with inactivity and of course the signal range leaves something to be desired due to the limited antenna of a cell phone.
And then there's the general lack of configurability relative to even the dumbest wireless router.
I figure somebody must make something like this for industrial/commercial use.
I won't comment on the inherent limits of relative to data caps, since that will get beat to death here but that's the other side of the coin.
But here around (Austria in Europe), we have providers that actually offer such services: An hotspot device hooked on LTE and a quite generous data plan. The device itself is not supposed to be mobile (needs a wall socket for power), but all the other components are there: see this or that.
But this could end up costing you more money as you will consume data like a person buying supplies for an impending disaster. Since data is capped and overages are horribly expensive, the OP would do well to rethink his strategy.
I use a LTE hotspot as my primary internet at home. If you are in Australia and don't use a large amount of data (I have 12GB) it is definitely better than the adsl 2+ offerings.
I was also thinking of making the switch and only having the LTE connection for all my voice and data needs.
Your Mileage Will Vary depending on where you are located; but I use 4G and 3G connections here in Scotland and in other parts of Europe and I never use WiFi hotspots.
1. Everything Everywhere Kite (a Huawei mifi device that looks like an iphone 4s)
2: unlocked Huawei E3276 with an external antenna
3: backup USB Huawei E353 devices (also with a CRC9 antenna connector)
All work with my Linux distro (Fedora) natively. So my EE contract allows VOIP (in plain) but the O2 contract does not. So I also have a bunch of SIM cards that also helps if I am in a zone with poor coverage for a particular operator. Maxes out at about 50 Mbs in good 4G areas but bear in mind that the latency is often a lot higher (10x) than copper connections and will make VOIP a bit laggier than you'd expect, even with a high bandwidth connection.
"One big draw is ability to easily use multiple devices without expensive additional lines or constantly swapping SIMs."
Why not simply get a multi-SIM contract? You pay for just one common data contract, but can use multiple (up to 3..5) SIMs that seamlessly share this contract. Easier to manage, easier to use, perfect when you want to rely on data transmission for multiple devices, as in your case.
If you do choose to go this route, I would still keep a backup prepaid phone with you in order to send/receive traditional calls and SMS. It doesn't have to be a fancy phone or have a lot of minutes; just be sure to keep something around in the events where VoIP and cell data are not expected (i.e., emergencies).
The keyboard?! How quaint!
In all seriousness: if you don't have an unlimited data plan, you're probably going to blow your data allowance, unless by some miracle you've found a provider that values 1 GB of LTE at an order of magnitude (or more) less than $10 per GB.
If you had an unlimited data plan, you would ideally be able to use the Hotspot feature that's built into nearly every smartphone these days, and forego the hotspot. On Verizon it's an extra $30/mo for hotspot tethering on a stock firmware for phones that aren't rooted, but totally worth it for the benefit you get. This is my primary (only) Internet connection. You could make yours the same if you had unlimited data. It's not new or far-fetched at all.
In fact, if the carriers *did* reduce the amortized cost of 1 GB of data transfer on LTE by a factor of 10 or more, I'd be willing to bet that we would see many millions of people signing up for *limited* data plans on the order of 100 - 150 GB and tethering through their phones or using a hotspot as their primary internet connection. Right now it's simply too much money to get "limited" data plans -- on Verizon XLTE with the MORE plan, you can get like 100 GB for $700/month. It's still way too much money for too little data. Until and unless the prices become somewhat reasonable, so it "only" costs you $2 to watch that Netflix video instead of $20, we will mostly see unlimited data plans as the only users of LTE as their primary connection.
Both on Android and iOS, the phone can be your hotspot, sharing the Internet using BT or WiFi.
Why would you want an extra LTE box ? To carry more cr*p around ?
If you put in a data-only SIM, if that is your plan, you can do that.
Here in Denmark, plans with 5 hours talk + 8 GB monthly data is around $15/mo, $3 extra for LTE, which brings the speed up to 65/25 Mbit/s typical. Unlimited talk + 100GB/mo data is $43/mo, or $35 for data only SIM. So not really worth it to drop the voice and SMS texting part yet. Remember you will los SMS texting if you drop voice plans. Then it will be iMessage or whatever you use only.
I've had a Verizon 4G LTE hotspot as my sole home internet for the last year. It is the only type of service available where I currently live.
It is expensive and unreliable.
I live in a rural area. I am using an external LTE antenna on the device. I can see that the LTE signal is moderate to good where I am; the problems I am having do not seem to be LTE signal related.
The device itself is about as reliable as other consumer level networking gear -- meaning you need to power cycle it now and then to make it start working again. It has a remote web admin interface, with no way to remotely reboot it. You have to physically touch the thing to power cycle it.
I don't know what's available where you are, but here, Verizon charges me for every byte that goes through that LTE connection, in both directions. I think they're overcharging me, but I have no realistic power to do anything about that, because they are Verizon and I am not. Overages are excessively expensive. My bill for last month was $250. We watch no streaming videos at my house -- not even youtube.
The device stops responding to pings from certain nodes on my internal network, causing all kinds of networking fun. DNS queries randomly fail during logical browsing sessions. I've investigated all of this thoroughly with tcpdump and other tools. This happens on clients of multiple types - OSX, WinRT, Windows, OpenBSD.
So near as I can tell, the box itself is just shit. There have been 2 or 3 firmware updates for it in the year that I've depended on it for my internet. None of them have improved the symptoms I describe.
It's a Pantech MHS291LVW
The entire time I've had it, I've been researching how to replace it with something that isn't Verizon. I'm nearly done with that plan; I'll be backhauling a nearby DSL service back to my site using a 3.5 mile p2p wireless link. I'm paying to upgrade the site infrastructure and wiring at both ends of the link. I am spending thousands of dollars to do this.
My neighbors also have Verizon LTE service. They have the VZN Home Broadband service, where Verizon will mount an antenna at your site and do the install themselves, and the CPE has 4 switched Ethernet ports in addition to WiFi. They haven't complained about the reliability as much, but the price is still too high.
You can only get that hardware from Verizon in my area if you agree to a 3 year contract. I didn't and won't ever agree to any contract with any US mobile operator, so, I couldn't get the VZN home broadband hardware, which may be more reliable than the Hotspot hardware.
They are not power users; they are a young family with ipads for their kids. They recently shared with me that they just had an $800 monthly bill.
If you have any wired broadband choice available to you, take it.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Been there, tried that. I had an "unlimited data plan" and was terminated due to high data use. I told them I was using it for work and transmitting embeeded linux kernel source code.. that didn't help.
No wireless carrier allows unlimited, even if they claim they do.
Missed it by THAT much.
I am not sure if you are in the US or not. Metro PCS has a decent plan for 65 bucks a month with 2.5 gigs of mobile hotspot data and unlimited for everything else.
Uh-oh, Seagate is trouble.
Told ya.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Some hardware makers do a better job with mobile hotspots than others.
I formerly had a droid 4 that I used with foxfi as a wi-fi hotspot and now I use an lg g3 that has a built in mobile hotspot. both of these would provide a reliable wi-fi connection all day to my laptop and tablet and neither was an extra charge from verizon.
I have had 2 samsung tablets and the mobile hot spot function on both have consistently crapped out after about a half hour and I would have to restart the tablet to get it back. the first one was 3g and the second 4g. The 4g was worse in that it would drop the internet connection for itself about every couple of days and I would have to restart it also. Needless to say I won't buy another samsung anything ( I've had trouble with other samsung products) and I am kicking myself for the second tablet when I should've learned from the first one.
If the pantech is not reliable, is there another brand you could use? Or do as others have suggested and use a phone as a hotspot.
WiFi calling is Republic Wireless's business model. There cut would be $5/mo. which would be the VoIP portion, and using an AT&T hotspot like the Straight Talk one you'd be targeting 1G @ $15/mo. Disclaimer: none, but I am biased because I use this setup.
Traditionally mobile phone networks worked as follows
SMS (at least with GSM) goes on the control channel, so if the phone can associate with the network it can almost certainly get a SMS through.
Voice calls need data channels but those data channels are circuit switched and have priority over packet data. So provided you are outdoors (indoors multipath can screw stuff up) you can usually get an intelligable voice call through..
Packet data gets the capacity left over after circuit switched stuff (mostly voice, circuit switched data also exists in theory but is rarely used in practice) has taken the slots it needs. If a cell has capacity problems then it is packet data service that will bear the brunt of the problem. On the plus side web browsing, email etc are much more tolerant of jitter/loss than voice calls are so they sometimes work acceptablly indoors when voice call quality becomes unacceptablly poor.
By trying to run VOIP over packet data services you are giving yourself the worst of both worlds, the low priority of packet data services with the jitter/loss intolerance of voice communication.
Now with LTE they are moving away from circuit switching but I would still expect voice calls to have priority over generic packet data service. Also many areas don't have LTE coverage.
Your proposal may work if you live your whole life in an area with good uncongested LTE coverage. If you want to remain in communication in areas that don't have those things then forget about it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Keep in mind, most of the US carriers block SIP over their LTE hotspots. So if you're depending on this for voice, you're going to have problems.
I also have a similar setup. Dovado Tiny converts a USB stick into a wifi access point and / or ethernet. Something to watch for, at least in Australia, is that unless you pay extra for "business grade" wireless access you are NATed onto a 10.x.x.x network of the carrier of choice meaning no publically visible IP address. VOIP outgoing can work but not incoming. Setting up a VPN can fix some problems with IP addresses and ports buts its not trivial. The Dovado Tiny can forward just data from particular IP addresses on your network through the PPTP tunnel to a personal VPN. As always unpredictable latency on the data side of wireless networks can make VOIP unusually laggy at times. Also recomend a Yagi on a tripodm, with Open Signal on your phone so you where to point it. Good luck.
T-mobile has a $30 unlimited data, unlimited text and 100min voice. http://www.walmart.com/ip/Tmob... I don't think even those tablet/data only plans can beat that. at least not for unlimited data.
You can keep an active account with PagePlus for $30/year. Since you won't be using it most of the time, you won't have any trouble running out of minutes. But when you find yourself in a place where LTE isn't available or is overloaded or whatever, you can still use Verizon's network for voice (and even some 3G data). Use Google Voice to send all of your calls to that number as well as your VOIP accounts. FWIW, this is what I've done for about four years.
Your best bet would be to use Google Hangouts. Once you sign up with Google Voice, you will receive a Google Voice number. Hangouts app on both iOS and Android allows both incoming and outgoing calls. Its quite reliable. Voice quality is good compared to several VOIP providers I used. I had to rely on this when I was in Vermont this summer where reception for AT&T was pretty much non-existent for much of the countryside.
Just started facing this issue myself. My girlfriend and I just bought a boat to live on and we're moored up at the corner of Chesapeake and Patuxent. The marina provides wifi, but it's apparently too dim and far away for me to even see, let alone attach to. The marina across the creek looks to be much better equipped. I can see maybe 7 APs over there, but only two are open. Our various ARM-based devices can't see them, but two full-size laptops can on occasion connect. At our last apartment we had a dual radio Netgear router. With an hour or so of effort (my ddwrt skills aren't what they used to be) I managed to connect the 2.4GHz radio to one of those open APs and use the 5GHz radio here on the boat, all routed through. Everything we have can connect that way except her aging HP laptop. It works and moves frames with reasonable expediency about 50% of the time. Obviously a much larger antenna and bigger radio should be enough to get us over that hump. I have a Ubiquiti M2 set up at my parents' farm. Works great, probably get another one. Just sort of spent all my money getting this far.
As others suggested, we were doing a lot of tethering in the beginning and it worked fine. We also both had regular cellphones until I dropped mine in the bay. Knew that was coming... I was angry with myself for several seconds before realising I had a useful opportunity on my hands. I'm the sysadmin for a small high-revenue business in Alexandria and my employer is always looking for new and interesting ways to do things with technology. As such, part of my job is to make myself the guinea pig for stuff. So I bought a Nexus 7, got a SIP app, and attached it to our VoIP service. I had played with it before and had trouble making it fly on a daily basis but this time I was prepared to commit for a while. I tried it for a day using the wifi bridge I made, but that worked quite poorly. I'm sure the Ubiquiti will help out with that but that'll take a minute. Verizon has great service here - tower's probably only about a mile away as the RF flies. Went over to the store and got the cheapest Jetpack thingy they had. Can't remember, Ellipsis maybe? It's LTE-only. It's only been about six weeks but I've never been disappointed in its performance. Most of the time it just sits plugged in, but it's good for about six hours on a charge. When I leave the boat, I take it with me and my N7 receives calls and they generally sound fine. It's goofy, to be sure, but it is part of my job to test such things. Been wanting an N7 for a while anyway.
In fairness, I don't actually field a lot of phone calls. Most of my professional communication happens over email. Also, I have no idea how E911 services work in such a scenario. Since I'm using my employer's VoIP service, I'm pretty sure it would pass our office address which is over an hour from where I actually am. Google Voice, Skype, maybe those offer something else, haven't really looked into it. Girlfriend hasn't dropped her phone in the drink yet, so I'm not that worried. Also, isn't there something about unserviced phones calling 911 and any tower that receives it has to place the call no matter what?
Sorry, what was the question? Oh yeah, can you use a wifi hotspot for all internet access? Sure, you can, for at least six weeks a free hotspot apparently won't break. But aside from slight discrepancies in pricing (at least with Verizon), I don't see any significant advantage over tethering to a regular phone. It's been a good ride and I've learned far more than I ever cared to about how SIP works, but I probably have my eye on the new Nexus 6 sometime early next year. My job occasionally requires me to work very quickly on short notice, so having a solid internet connection is essential to me. With the gear that I have, wifi isn't typically good enough for an emergency. But as long as I'm in coverage, I don't remember cellular service ever letting me down. Sure, bandwidth costs, so we're not watching a lot of Netflix anymore. TV rots your
We still have no cable/dsl service near our house. My current setup is a Pantech uml295 4G usb modem, plugged into a cradelpoint mbr95 router, using a 20gb monthly plan from millenicom. They use Verizon's network, its the strongest where we live. They do throttle the speeds though, I get about 250-300k per second max, if I swap in a real verizon sim, I get around 750-1000k downloads. No problem with voip, we use vonage for our home phone and wifi calling on our tmobile phones.
I just moved into a new house and haven't yet started Internet service because I have lots of construction going on and am not sure where the cable modem will eventually go (part of the construction is networking the house, and I haven't decided where the network cabinet will go). So in the meantime I'm using the hotspot feature on my Nexus 5 for LTE internet. I get about 5-10 Mbps down, 3-5 Mbps up at this location (500 feet further uphill at the sandwich shop it's 30/9 Mbps, sigh).
My service is with Sprint which typically has spotty LTE service, but fortunately my new home is well covered. Sprint also teamed up with Google so my Sprint number is also my Google Voice number. This means I can make Google Voice calls over LTE via the Hangouts app (Google moved Voice to Hangouts a couple months ago). The app still needs a lot of work (e.g. doesn't integrate with the contacts directory yet) but call quality has been stellar - nearly indistinguishable from when I'm on wifi. I'm actually surprised how well it works considering it's going over a cellular data connection. I mention all this because Sprint is the network most MVNOs use by a huge margin. Since their LTE network is certainly capable of VoIP, any problems you encounter with it are likely to be due to the MVNO blocking VoIP.
Latency has been pretty good too. Speedtest.net reports my ping times between 40-45 ms. I occasionally play GW2 over this connection, and generally I haven't noticed any more lag than on a wired connection. Occasionally there's a hiccup like you'll sometimes get over wifi, but its infrequent enough that it hasn't degraded the gaming experience. Overall it's been pretty indistinguishable from FIOS (what I had before the move), and better than the cable internet (I had Time Warner before FIOS, with 150-250 ms ping times).
I'm on an unlimited data plan, so conceivably I could go on doing this forever. The main issue I'm running into (one you shouldn't encounter with a dedicated hotspot) is that my LTE disconnects when there's an incoming call. There's some obscure reason I don't recall at the moment for Sprint and Verizon's phones not being able to do voice calls and LTE simultaneously, even though they could do it in theory. Voice calls go over the CDMA radio while LTE goes over the LTE radio. Unfortunately since my phone is designed to be, well, a phone, I haven't figured out a way to disable CDMA so I can receive the incoming calls over Google Voice. The regular phone dialier and Hangouts both ring when I get an incoming call, but the regular phone dialer locks out the phone preventing me from switching to answer the call via Hangouts (I'm not even sure that would work since it seems to disconnect LTE the moment the phone rings).
If you plan to do this with a hotspot, make sure you can cancel the contract if there's poor service at your house. A tenant at the building I manage opted for LTE Internet (because Verizon DSL there sucks). The building is within their LTE coverage area, and I get a good LTE signal from the roof. But at ground level his hotspot defaults back to 3G and he gets terrible Internet speeds. Unfortunately he got excited and ordered this a month before he moved in, so was outside the cancellation period by the time he moved in and discovered this problem. But I would check first to see if you can use your phone as a hotspot and just beef up the data on your plan.
You won't get data service everywhere you go whereas you do still get text+voice.
I *DO* this, I live in a van, and travel the country. Verizon is the best service provider for such a thing, we used to recommend Millenicom (a reseller of Verizon), but Verizon just bought them. The problem is data caps. it gets expensive to buy that much data! You will also find, some towers are super slow even if you have 4 BAR LTE signal, tho it's fairly rare, it does happen. If you are a big text/SMS person on data only plans you generally can't SMS, so you have to use 3rd party services to text, lots of sites that communicate via SMS (banks, two-factor authentication sites, etc) can't talk to 3rd party SMS services like twilio etc. They get confused and no text ever shows up. Verizon also gives you free tethering, and just uses your normal data allotment, it's not a special thing. That said Verizon is *EXPENSIVE*. I use OpenVBX thru Twilio for everything voice/SMS related, it works ok, it's the best solution I've found that's cheap.
Three.co.uk Unlimited 4g rules!! 50GB download on my phone last month.
25 - 50 MBit download, and 10 - 25Mbit upload.
- Happy 4G user in the the UK.
If memory serves, the $30/mo Walmart plan includes only 5GB of LTE data per month, after which you are throttled. Just in case that is important to anyone.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I use google voice and the "voice dialer app" along with multiple burner $25 LGMS770 phones to make AND receive calls. Before that we went through google's voice XMPP and "talkatone". The problem you will run into is "echoing" due to port restrictions. But in concept using google voice (app for SMS and desktop for initial setup) and the new "voice dialer" works amazingly for VOIP and FREE as-long as you open ports, or the app is natively on the burner phone, or google does something about it. When we used "talkatone" it would never echo regardless of port restrictions.
Get two plans from two providers, plug their modems/MiFi units into a CradlePoint. You now have reliability, redundancy and capacity. You can do load-balancing, fail-over, whatever you like. Its what I use for disaster preparedness. It is commonly used in Emergency Operations Centers. (Note, I have no affiliation with CradlePoint.) Sprint also offers a Netgear almost equivalent.
Get two plans from two providers, plug their modems/MiFi units into a CradlePoint. You now have reliability, redundancy and capacity. You can do load-balancing, fail-over, whatever you like. Its what I use for disaster preparedness. It is commonly used in Emergency Operations Centers. (Note, I have no affiliation with CradlePoint.) Sprint also offers a Netgear almost equivalent. Works very well and handles routing properly. (oops, was not logged in when I posted the first time)
I tried this a couple years ago with a MiFi from Verizon. Didn't find a VIOP app that worked well enough, the delays while talking were off-putting.. I tried Skype [I paid for Skype that gave me a phone number and let me get incoming calls] and a couple others.
As for the MiFi, battery time is only a couple hours. And anytime I take it out of a service area [which is common for me], I have to pull the battery and let it re-connect to a tower to get back online. I won't renew when my contract ends soon.
Freedompop + ipkall + zoiper + Google voice
...but as I use 200 gigabyte a months, i can find no efficient solution.
I pay for a virgin mobile hotspot (no contract) and I only buy regular cell phone service on occasion... MagicJack "works" but I hear so many complaints from the people I call that "you're breaking up", poor sound quality etc.
there is no reason why you can't have your phone as a hotspot.
case in point - my galaxy s3 running cyanogenmod on the cricket (att lte) network. $55 provides unlimited talk, text and 10 gb of LTE
my setup is aweeeesome