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?

Comments

"Always on" may be a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:"Always on" may be a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd highly recommend NOT doing this unless you have some magical "unmetered" LTE plan.

1) Operating system updates tend to come in at around half a gig, twice a month, regardless of the device.
2) Software updates on top of OS updates tend to needlessly update to add features (not just fix bugs) and you have to take all the updates or none of them. (As an example, the "Simpsons Tapped out" game is over 1GB, and you can't continue to play it without updating it every week.

Assuming there is free WiFi in your immediate area in which to use instead of LTE, you could push those updates off to the WiFi end, but where there's free WiFi there's usually 50 other people on it.

The other problem with going LTE fulltime for your internet needs is that the latency is often worse than DSL, and about on-par with Cable, but not everywhere has good LTE speeds. Like where I live I can easily get 75Mb down and 30up, which is FAR superior to what the cable and DSL providers offer, but since they only offer at most 3GB cap, it would be burned up in about one day of normal use. I take that back, the largest cap offered is 30GB which comes in at 190$ for that part of the plan (on top of 60$ per device) So 250$/mo for 30GB, nuh uh. I can get both Cable and xDSL's 400GB caps for that price.

Re:"Always on" may be a lie

[mattack2]

If you're on iOS, you do realize you can turn OFF automatic app updates, right? (I don't remember for sure if the default is on or off.. Settings->General->Background App Refresh. There's a global on/off, plus you can turn on/off each app.)

not reliable enough

[silfen]

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?

Re:not reliable enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much this.

Nokia Lumina 521: $50->Comes with T-Mobile SIM.

$30 prepaid minutes card later and you have a cheap mobile phone which has GPS navigation, voice calls, incredible battery life, and the ability to do Wifi Tethering for you Chromebook/Laptop/Android/iPad/whatever. It's windows phone so you won't be tempted to kill your battery with stupid apps and you can use your Android/Apple devices for non-essential playtime.

Windows Phone has a good enough web browser: you'll probably find yourself leaving your other devices at home except for rare occasions. Whatsapp and google hangouts are the only apps I miss, and I can wifi tether my chromebook if I want to do a google hangout.

Depends on if you want to get calls...

[aaarrrgggh]

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...

Battery life

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Battery life

[Mr D from 63]

Good points on battery life. Having the hotspot and the device constantly connected to each other, and monitoring the internet for incoming calls probably will run the batteries down quickly on both devices. Mobile hotspots (I've used a Huawei 3G with great results) will often 'sleep' when not used for a certain period as well, so that should be considered.

As for VOIP service, Vonage ($$) has a nice feature that allows you to share your number between your home phone and mobile devices, and voicemail email alerts, which might be handy in such a setup.

You can stop auto updates on Android devices for the most part, but switching back and forth to auto/manual or manually implementing updates is a bit inconvenient.

cell BB and wifi

[ihtoit]

been doing this for years with several laptops and desktops (sometimes all at once) on unlimited data plan, works great for skype etc.

I did the same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:I did the same thing

[Overzeetop]

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.

That's true of VoIP riding on both DSL and Cable internet connections (both wired and wireless) as well. I've had VoIP for my home and office line for almost 3 years, and in the beginning we definitely had issues with both quality and DTMF. I still have issues with DTMF occasionally, and echos and call quality (esp. outgoing) less frequently.

Re:I did the same thing

[asimons04]

I use GrooveIP on my Android phone, and call quality is pretty decent and no issues with DTMF. Even works fairly well on a high-latency satellite connection when I figured it would fail completely, although with a bit of a delay. As for the other DTMF issues, try setting the option for it to "inband" or something like that. That has worked for me in the past.

Do they make high-quality LTE bridges?

[swb]

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.

Re:Do they make high-quality LTE bridges?

[swb]

I can't say I find a USB dongle to be really what I would call "production quality" since it uses the same low-end equipment they would sell you at the cell phone store for use with your laptop.

I was thinking more along the lines of a device either purpose-built for this with a LTE modem built-in or some kind of a WIC card like you'd use in a Cisco router. Something you might use in an ATM, security system or in a networking environment like a construction site where wired internet wasn't an option but reliability was a high priority..

Re:Do they make high-quality LTE bridges?

[Phiro69]

Digi International Inc. makes a line of routers called the Digi Transport that have 2g/3g/4g/lte options. They aren't really positioned for home users, they are a bit high end/commercial/industrial. You can find them via google or here's a link to the Digi store. http://store.digi.com/index.cf...

I don't know where you live (I assume the U.S.).

[Sique]

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.

I do this - but with multiple 4G contracts

[rapiddescent]

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.

Just use the keyboard...!

[allquixotic]

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.

The phone is your hotspot

[terminal.dk]

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.

Don't

[bmajik]

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.

Re:Don't

[pla]

It is expensive and unreliable.

The combined 4G/802.11 hotspots you get from the cell carriers pretty much suck across the board.

Get a Cradlepoint router and a compatible USB 4G modem (under $100 total). It takes the USB in from the modem, and gives you 4 ethernet ports plus WiFi, and knows enough to reset the stupid 4G modem when it has its hourly crash. Net result, near perfect uptime, weather aside. Oh, and and use a 6ft USB cable to move the modem a bit away from the router if you plan to use the WiFi feature of it - People have reported the two interfere with each other and greatly reduce the performance of each unless you separate them by a few feet.

That said, yes, still expensive. But like you, I have no alternatives, so if I need to pay for it, it may as well work.

Re: Don't

[mrycar]

I live in a rural area, but with access to lte. My config consists of Cradlepoint router, with 2 lte modem's connected , one from Verizon, the other from AT&T, used to also have sprint as well, but canned it due to them never upgrading speed of their networks. Connection speed varies from 22mbps to 44mbps via speedtest.net. I have two external antennas attached to the modem, which gives me solid 5 bar signals,

Latency varies constantly, 15-60ms variance.

Good news am have access, quick, semi reliable
Bad news, expensive $300/mo per carrier for 30gb per carrier per month, despite being set up highly available the lte modems hang frequently, yes the Cradlepoint resets and the system fails over to the other carrier, but it never fails that that both will fail at the same time when I need it the most. Those fails require a rest of modem, which can be done by the web interface. Latency varies heavily, 15ms-60ms.

As expensive as it is, it is a tremendous improvement over satellite based Internet. Prior to lte, I installed Hughes commercial internet service at my house. (Not the wimpy personal service, the big 1 meter dish based system). Satellite is an absolute last resort solution.

Voice over the lte, is great until a modem decides to mess up, then it goes from bad to dropped. Movies are capable to stream, but some services like Netflix, Hulu, do better recover than others. Gaming is non-existent. The latency varies too much, first person shooter become first person target.

Main issue is the obscene pricing. Att is cheaper than Verizon, but neither will deal on more than 50gb per month usage.

Most LTE Hotspots Block SIP

[wizzy403]

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.

Meh for t-mobile

[funkymonkjay]

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.

Google Hangouts

[webminer]

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.

Ive been doing that for years

[bobjr94]

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'm doing that right now

[Solandri]

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.