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Ask Slashdot: Unlimited Data Plan For Seniors?
New submitter hejman08 writes with a question probably faced by many whose parents, grandparents, and other relatives rely on them for tech support and advice, specifically one about finding an appropriate data plan for his grandmother, of whom he writes: She is on her own plan through Verizon with 1GB of data, and she literally blows through it in three days or less every month, then complains about having nothing to do. They have Wi-Fi at her senior center, but only in specific rooms, and she has bad ankles and knees so she wants to stay home. Internet service would cost 80 a month to add where she lives. What I am wondering, is if any of the genius slashdotters out there know of a plan that- regardless of cost of phone, which we could manage as a gift to her, once- would allow her to have at least 300 minutes, 250 texts, and truly unlimited data (as in none of that Unlimited* stuff that is out there where they drop you to caveman speeds within a gig of usage), all for the price of less than say, 65 a month? The big 4 carriers don't seem to have anything that would work for her. What would you recommend? (I might start with a signal repeater in a utility closet, myself, or some clandestine CAT5 from a friendly neighbor's place.)
If speed isnt an issue: Try Straight Talk. $45 prepaid Available at Walmart http://www.walmart.com/ip/1544...
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. -- FDR
It's $80/mo.. you can't get anything near unlimited for that.
Be glad you're not in Canada.
..don't panic
...than the $65 you already stated you are willing to spend to get her internet in her room.
Enough said.
The idea of anyone's grandmother literally blowing anything is disturbing.
Is everything that uses a lot of bandwidth necessarily "junk"? For example, normal use of YouTube or other video-heavy sites eats bandwidth. Is YouTube necessarily "junk"?
I know I am gonna get beat up here, but did you check into a bundle with cable TV service? Maybe she already has cable, and could upgrade? I use cable service here just for internet and they offer phone too. Forget about cellular companies, unless you can use somebody like T-Mobile?
Internet service would cost 80 a month to add where she lives
Uhh what? Normally where I'm at paying over $50/month for internet means you're getting ripped off.
Unlimited text/talk/data
http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-p...
1GB in 3 days is around 10GB/month.
Cricket prepaid is $60 for 10GB of high speed data with fallback to slow speeds if you exceed it (so she can still email you, but can't watch video). You can choose to pay $10/GB for extra data.
The least you can do is give us a ballpark location so we can look at a coverage map. Sprint or T-Mobile have have deals going with unlimited data.
Personally I'd go with Sprint, but I know their coverage can be spotty in certain places, though it has gotten a lot better since I signed up for it 5 years ago.
T-Mobile.. $80/mo Truly unlimited: http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/individual.html
Sprint - $60/mo Truly unlimited ($50/mo is you get iPhone 6): http://www.sprint.com/landings/datashare/index.html?INTNAV=ATG:HE:UnlimitedPlan&view=unlimitedtalk
Of course you need to know if they have good service at the Center. I had 'unlimited slow Sprint' that more often than not just didn't work and switched to T-Mobile on a 2.5 Gig per line plan. Even when over the cap the experience is better than Sprint's pre-LTE network.
LOL @ Straight Talk. Your data just stops working at the cap with Straight Talk.
"Internet service would cost 80 a month to add where she lives" - You are not going to find any truly unlimited service for anywhere even remotely approaching that.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
the sneaky caveman-speed ones they put on their "unlimited" data plans for mobile. Your Government Inaction (tm) is finally getting around to this.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Based on my limited experience, the telecom and internet at these assisted living and nursing facilities is inhumanely bad.
We are in an era where someone with no technical knowledge should be able video chat with their grandchildren. Incoming calls just requires touching a screen which is easier than picking-up a phone. Making outgoing calls is easier than dialing a telephone since there are no phone numbers: you just get a list of people on the screen, with their picture, and you touch the picture to call them. Yet everyone treats this as though it requires a computer science degree.
I tried to set this up for my wife's great grandmother, but the otherwise modern facility had no Wifi and no 3G. We could barely get a cell signal of any kind in her room. The only internet in the facility was on a few dedicated computers. Cell reception was just fine outside though.
Is this experience typical?
Great place for mesh. Just find some old guy at the center that used to work at Cisco.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Since there is wifi but only in specific rooms, maybe this will work:
http://www.engeniustech.com/in...
I have an older version of one of these and mounted a bigger antenna on this. On Holidays I take this along and receive wifi points 2 miles away. Possibly she could receive the available wifi.
Mine works well in both Windows and Linux, don't know about the newer ones
---
That's a lot of naughty bits of David Hasselhoff.
https://www.metropcs.com/cell-plans/plans/details/GSM60.html
I'm curious why an internet connection costs $80/mo. Is that the care facility upcharging, or is that what the ISP charges? Seems like someone is ripping off the elderly.
Except her neighbor might complain wifi will interfere with his pacemaker or something and the senior center will be too paranoid of lawsuits to do anything.
I suggest a clandestine repeater or boosted antenna. Pringles cans work wonders.
since she's blowing through 1GB in 3 days. For at-home internet, 10GB is nothing. Comcast's notorious data cap is 250GB or 300GB.
She may really like HD porn.
load "linux",8,1
I would look for a device that looks/feels like a regular cellphone phone but uses voip. Hopefully it would use a free service like Google Voice.
Then just buy her the internet access for her room.
Yes, I know that is $15 more than your maximum amount to spend but I doubt you are going to find unlimited data for less anyway. Then you can even give her a tablet or laptop if she is up to learning to use it.
find an android device that can be rooted, and start blacklisting advertising sites in the hosts file. I literally cut my data usage in half doing this. Make sure the device is set to connect to wireless whenever possible, and look around for municipal wifi or wimax where available. Unlimited data is $100 or more depending on how reliable and fast you'd like it, whereas skype and a tablet connected to $80 per month internet is still much more preferable. Find out exactly how much data she uses, calculate overages for various carriers, and compare this to total usage with a wireless connection. If you're a slashdotter with some tech skills, why not speak with the management and see if they'd be willing to expand wireless connectivity to other rooms in exchange for installation and configuration on your part (I once did this with an apartment complex i lived in.)
Good people go to bed earlier.
25EUR/month.
Only cap is the LTE is throttled to 50Mbps, and price doesn't include foreign calls or SMS.
But I guess you/your grandmother don't live in their service area, as pretty much evey carrier here has a similar offer, and its impossible to miss the ads.
What are the real costs for the home extending its wifi to another resident? Or for extending it to them all?
Why don't you directly solve the problem and help them improve their Wifi coverage? It could be as simple as buying something more modern with more power and some repeaters. At least see if they would let you investigate it. A few hundred dollars might side step the mobile and make all of the residents live easier.
Maybe some local company would donate services or equipment to help you do this. Talk to their ISP. Who knows until you beg?
Since she obviously uses her Verizon data and has a good connection, you could do an AoL (Assumption of Liability) from a grandfathered unlimited data plan. People are selling the plans on various forums, ebay, craigslist, etc. A lot of people have recently been giving them away on macforums and the like since the new iPhone came out.
Though I personally would look into using a repeater as suggested in the summary.
$30 per mo. 300 minutes, unlimited data and text. That is the best deal I could find.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Get a good wifi extender and attach it to the "free wifi" there and have it re broadcast to her room. A decent AP that can do it with external antennas and a high gain patch antenna should do the trick.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You can already get an adblocking hosts file that installs easily as an app. and it blocks ALL ad's on the device... Makes it a breath of fresh air.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I would just go in for the extra $15 from $65.
But if you want to go on the cheap side, t-mobile's prepaid phone plans currently has something similar to what you asked for.
$30/month
100 min talk
unlimited text
unlimited data, first 5 gigs are unthrottled.
Maybe you could figure out a way to pay $60 for 10 gigs of unthrottled, or some sort of pay as you go data plan with them.
That sounds like service from a cable company.
If she has Comcast in here area perhaps she can qualify for Internet Essentials? $10 per month broadband service to low income families.
If not what about DSL?
If you are in a decent sized city, MetroPCS. They have BYOD, so any unlocked GSM (AT&T or TMobile) device will work.
For $60 (taxes, fees included) you get unlimited calling, texting and 4G data. In the D/FW area I usually average 10 Mbps download speeds on my N4 (that only has HSPA+), my wife can gets 15-20Mbps with her MotoX (4GLTE).
If you are using it as a hotspot though, hotspot costs an extra $5 per month, and that is limited to 2.5 GB per month 4G. The phone would still get unlimited though.
Can you find her a better way to get to the senior center? Staying at home entertaining yourself on the Internet is possibly not the best lifestyle. Spending time around other people and possibly participating in some of the other activities, not to mention getting out of the house may all be better for her. Then again, depending on her age/health it may not much matter.
While I'm not familiar with the logistics of taking over someone's plan, I regularly see people selling their accounts on eBay. So you pay $200-300 for the account which has a grandfathered unlimited plan AND you have to buy a phone. That said, I used 15GB last month on my unlimited plan (which I've had for years, I did not eBay it) and I just buy last year's phone. Of course, there is talks of Verizon throttling Unlimited customers (of course there is also an article talking about FCC involvement in throttling) so buying an Unlimited plan is not without risks!
My recommendation would be a directional antenna and a neighbor with an open access point.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-p...
$50 = 1 GB data, unlimited talk and text. NO OVERAGE CHARGES -- they just throttle you after you hit your limit. Isn't that nicer than being throttled at some mystery point by another carrier?
$60 = 3 GB. $70 = 5 GB. $80 = unlimited, and since they're honest about the other stuff, I'm *almost* inclined to believe them. Feel like experimenting? Sign up and post the results in a couple months.
Do the math: if she goes through 1 GB in 2-3 days, she needs 10-15 GB per month. Either pay for a lot of cellular data, or pay for Internet access in her room. I don't know why you're expecting to get 10 GB of data at a price no one offers. Are they all dicks for putting limits on what they call "unlimited" service? OF COURSE. Take your argument to the FCC, the FTC, and the supreme court if you want, it's not gonna do you any good. At best, you'll get them to stop calling it "unlimited" but they'll still charge THE EXACT SAME THING THEY'RE CURRENTLY CHARGING.
The best thing to do, of course, would be to pay for internet access to her room, then give her an AP and charge a discounted rate to a couple neighboring rooms. :D
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
... who thinks they are entitled to unlimited usage is naive. And wrong. ... who thinks they can get unlimited usage without paying a high price is a fool. And wrong. ... who doesn't read the contract to find out what 'unlimited' really means is just damn lazy. And probably a little bit of both of the above.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
OP clearly stated that she doesn't want to go to the senior center for internet - she wants to stay home.
Black Wireless - blackwireless.com - They're an AT&T MVNO. LTE isn't supported, but HSPA+ is, and I've seen that exceed 10mbps. Have been using them nearly a year with no problems, though I am not on the unlimited data plan myself. I spoke with customer service and they claim that unlimited data really is unlimited data.
I came here to post about MVNOs. I don't have any mod points, but this is definitely the way to go for single lines. I haven't used Black, but MVNOs are generally reasonable to deal with.
I think you are misguided.
The idea for mobile data is mobility. If she has trouble getting around, then a mobile phone should not be her internet connection. If she is not mobile why a mobile phone? Does she also have a home phone? You are already paying $50 per month for her cell phone - does she have cable tv too? I can't believe you can't get her internet for less then $80/month.
Drop the cell phone, get internet for her, and some other texting method. You could even get her an Obi110 and google voice number for free phone calls (after the cost of the Obi) . She can even port her cell number to GV and use that for texting. She doesn't need a cell phone if she doesn't go out.
Any type of fee opposes the notion of free speech quite literally. if we have a constitution that assures free speech and then turn around and allow private companies to regulate the flow of speech we have a meaningless Bill Of Rights. Think of a short wave radio and a user that simply gabs all the time. We have never had laws that suggest that we can shut the guy down due to the air waves being limited and public property as well. So if we have a private company that can throttle free speech we are creating an uber class which somehow has more rights than the public at large. It is one thing to allow companies to install cables for transfer of speech for a fee but it is quite another issue when a private company is allowed to throttle content or the amount of speech that flows on the line. Concepts such as equality before the law are trashed when one entity has more rights than anyone else regardless of the needs or considerations of a corporation.
Your parents and grandparents took care of everything for you when you were growing up. $80 is a small price to pay to make grandma happy. You owe it to her.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Na, pretty simple, however you bring the wifi to the room, just turn the antenna power down so it doesn't cover 3 rooms over if there is an issue a neighbor and his pacemaker "or something." Most stock firmware on wifi routers and such has that capability.
That is correct. A failed assumption that mine would be the first, and last post - which would have scored Insightful had it actually been first and only post, since he's searching for rocking-horse shit, as the ensuing discussion shows!
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
One time cost for you, with the senior center paying for the wifi service.
I've got the tmobile plan "unlimited" plan. It's not bad for unlimited data and browsing, but I don't think any wireless service with speed enough for quality video really gives unlimited bandwidth, at least in the US. Wireless and netflix really isn't economical for providers.
If you have a neighbor willing to let you share internet, that would be the best. You may work something out that you split the bill or something. My grandma wanted internet but couldn't afford the DSL connection. My aunt lived close by and said that grandma could share her internet if we could get it to her. I was going to run a straight CAT5 cable from my aunt's router to an AP at my grandma's, but it was about 400 feet of open field and I didn't feel like trenching a cable that far. I thought about doing a point to point wireless, but the only equipment I had on hand was more suited to 5-6 km and would have been overkill here. My grandpa had three out buildings along the way between the houses, with the furthest only 50-100 ft from my aunt's house; they were all wired with electricity. What I ended up using was an old wireless bridge I had laying around that was originally sold as an Xbox accessory to hook it to a wireless network. I hooked it up in my grandpa's furthest shed where it would pick up my aunt's wifi (about 50 ft from their house), hooked it to an ethernet to powerline adapter to send the ethernet signals over the existing electrical lines to the companion device in the house. From there, I connected an old wireless router in access point mode so she could hook up her laptop and iPad. The only thing I had to buy was the powerline adapters, about $100, but they haven't had any problems in their 3 years in operation.
Now I understand why you are an Anonymous Coward. The original question was out of love for his grandmother. It's obvious you're oblivious about love, or caring for others. If you thought this was funny, you're mentally sick!