Anybody using fixed cellular for home internet?

[My Old Tools]

If so, who are you using? How is the service? Do you stream Netflix, others? T-Mobile is now un-rating streaming from most major providers, meaning it doesn't count in your bandwidth ceiling, but it is for mobile devices. Anybody use it for home WIFI? We are moving to an area where cellular is about the only option with decent throughput. The local fixed wireless provider is 1 Mb on a good day and unreliable. No cable or DSL.

 

[gungatim]

I'm in the same boat. I have wifi on my iphone but get nailed everymonth at work for going over, and I never stream...

now that I have a new truck with wifi built in, I've been buying the 10g per month plan from onstar. it is MUCH faster than Verizon on my phone. I have to run to a repeater then the shop, but it works pretty good.

I've left the key on and killed the battery 3 times now so I need to figure out a way to keep the battery charging while it's on, maybe an on board charger with 110 plug from HF...

 

[paranoid56]

I'm in the same boat. I have wifi on my iphone but get nailed everymonth at work for going over, and I never stream...

now that I have a new truck with wifi built in, I've been buying the 10g per month plan from onstar. it is MUCH faster than Verizon on my phone. I have to run to a repeater then the shop, but it works pretty good.

I've left the key on and killed the battery 3 times now so I need to figure out a way to keep the battery charging while it's on, maybe an on board charger with 110 plug from HF...

or setup a secondary deep cycle battery just for that then you would never worry about killing the main

 

[Kaizen]

I'm in the same boat. I have wifi on my iphone but get nailed everymonth at work for going over, and I never stream...

now that I have a new truck with wifi built in, I've been buying the 10g per month plan from onstar. it is MUCH faster than Verizon on my phone. I have to run to a repeater then the shop, but it works pretty good.

I've left the key on and killed the battery 3 times now so I need to figure out a way to keep the battery charging while it's on, maybe an on board charger with 110 plug from HF...

do you know how onstar works? I mean are they connecting through their own satelites? how much is their 10g plans a month? They don't have their own wire or antenna network so wonder how they do it.

 

[theoldwizard1]

My mother-in-law had it for several years. Cost kept going up (I think because of all the advertising eating up bandwidth). She dropped it.

 

[wasfuzz]

I have it, they have several towers (relay sites) in the area, all on farmers grain bin legs. For the low end service we pay $99.00 for 3 months. We stream amazon prime and have no issues, except when the power goes out at the towers, as they are not battery backup-ed, I quess. Prior to them we had a cell internet thru Verizon (they bought out a local cell company) it also was good - till the shut it off - not enough customers they said.

 

[gungatim]

do you know how onstar works? I mean are they connecting through their own satelites? how much is their 10g plans a month? They don't have their own wire or antenna network so wonder how they do it.

$40 per math for 10 gigs, not sure what it goes through but it's faster and gets better service than Verizon or sprint

 

[ishiboo]

OnStar is AT&T.

It used to be Verizon, which ***** as everywhere I've been Verizon has better coverage.

 

[Empty Pockets]

I live so far into farm country, my only internet is through my cell phone. It tends to get expensive

 

[Catadj78]

I use the hotspot on my phone for internet at our house. 80-100 gigs a month. Stream YouTube, Netflix etc

 

[manwithtools]

I live so far into farm country, my only internet is through my cell phone. It tends to get expensive

Same here, It's my only choice for internet. No streaming or videos and I still barley stay under data limits in a month. We are 40 gigs across 5 lines with my home 4g router being the only primary internet connection. The other lines are just phones so they use less data.

 

[manwithtools]

I use the hotspot on my phone for internet at our house. 80-100 gigs a month. Stream YouTube, Netflix etc

What does that cost you and is it Verizon? I only ask because Version is all that works at my house. I'm in the boonies on a reservoir in a valley.

 

[greasyfingers01]

We can't get cable/Internet at our new house. The cable line is on our property 1000' feet from the house on the corner. The cable company won't even talk to me about running a line even if I pay for it.

So we use T Mobile hotspot. 10gb a month for $50, free streaming from Netflix, Hulu, amazon prime, YouTube, and about 20 other services. I love it! Not even interested in the cable company anymore. Before I moved to the new place, I cut the cable but kept internet. They were charging me $110 a month for 10mb/sec. They are the only provider out here.

The only problem is when someone is watching TV, our phones have some issues connecting but the laptop doesn't. It's probably too much demand on one hotspot. I've been meaning to go in to a t mobile store and see if I can put 2 boxes on one plan to prevent that without doubling our bill. Look at the t mobile coverage map to see how the signal is in your area.

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[mrycar]

I live in the country, not much for internet options, but have cobbled up a solution with diversity and reliable service. My primary internet is through a USB LTE modem from ATT. It averages around 22mbps, peaks at 44mbs and has a soft cap at 30GB, and hard cap at 50GB. 30Gb costs around $250/mo with cell phone service included. 50GB=500 a month, only pay that when go over 30GB cap. Anything over 50GB, is very expensive, and varies.

running this solution, streaming movies, had me hitting $1k+ a month bills since went over 50GB cap.

To offset the utilization, I have a DSL line running at .348-1.5/mbs. The noise in the line due to running well beyond recommended distance, make this line, something a human doesn't want to use; but it provides a data stream that permits my OS system upgrades, and device upgrades to occur without a problem. when weather is good, it can support youtube video streaming. I also use it to pre-download movies that know would want to watch over weekend via amazon, directv, or itunes. $29/mo via frontier.

Using this solution, i now haven't passed my 50GB cap since I implemented it. Internet/cell bill has dropped to $$279.

To augment the service, I also have Verizon and Onstar. Network connectivity.

System is managed automatically with 2 cradlepoint routers, and has ganging/bonding capability. Routing rules are in place to segment traffic over dsl for upgrades, IoT traffic, and batch downloads. (rules are based on destination sites, with a QoS code set manually when overriding rules for faster downloads), System has Autofailover, from primaries to secondaries and can failover to augmented connections should i want to.

So yes can stream
Speeds: ATT via usb 44peak/22Average
ATT via Phone 70/40
Verizon via phone 77/40
Onstar 20/12
Dsl 1.5/.348

 

[pinoyesv6]

I have fixed cellular as a backup connection at my home. I have a phone that it tethered via usb to my ASUS router. If my cable connection goes down, the cellular connection kicks in and when the cable connection comes back up the cellular connection goes back to standby mode.

I've done fixed cellular for others with unlimited plans. 3GStore is a great source for a cellular router so you don't need a phone, there are some that will do wifi for you as well, the Cradlepoint brand is what I use. The newer cradlepoints aren't vendor specific so I can stick an at&t sim card in it one day and the next a verizon sim and it will still work.

Run a speed test on your phone and you can see what kind of numbers you can get. Do it in several places in your house since some places get better reception. If you want to go all out, look up where the cellular tower is for your carrier and get a directional antenna that you can aim towards it.

If you do have an unlimited plan, be wary of what device you use, verizon for example is cutting back on people who are using their unlimited plans in 4g routers as those plans are meant to be used for phones and not routers. This is one of the reasons why I am using a phone for my backup connection opposed to a cradlepoint.

 

[BillK]

Ross,
I use a T Mobile hotspot at my shop. My only other options are DSL and Comcast which is too much money for what I need. The T Mobile does everything I need as far as internet goes but I don't do any streaming other than a You Tube video once in a while. It works fine for me.

 

[ishiboo]

We can't get cable/Internet at our new house. The cable line is on our property 1000' feet from the house on the corner. The cable company won't even talk to me about running a line even if I pay for it.

So we use T Mobile hotspot. 10gb a month for $50, free streaming from Netflix, Hulu, amazon prime, YouTube, and about 20 other services. I love it! Not even interested in the cable company anymore. Before I moved to the new place, I cut the cable but kept internet. They were charging me $110 a month for 10mb/sec. They are the only provider out here.

The only problem is when someone is watching TV, our phones have some issues connecting but the laptop doesn't. It's probably too much demand on one hotspot. I've been meaning to go in to a t mobile store and see if I can put 2 boxes on one plan to prevent that without doubling our bill. Look at the t mobile coverage map to see how the signal is in your area.

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Must be nice... I'd take cable in a second, would never get by with 10gb.

Take a look at my thread here... doing P2P WiFi over 1000' is no issue, if T-Mobile ever becomes a problem.

 

[PugetDude]

Cut the internet cord and went with a Verizon Jetpack yesterday...after running them in parallel for a month. Time will tell, but so far so good.

 

[BellyUpFish]

Currently trying to decide what to do here. Comcast won't come down our street..

Right now it's cellular only, not sure I want to pay for satellite internet and paying for capped data just really chaps me....


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[Catadj78]

What does that cost you and is it Verizon? I only ask because Version is all that works at my house. I'm in the boonies on a reservoir in a valley.

Yes, Verizon. I think it's right at 300 a month. But that's with 3 cells, house phone, insurance etc. I'm on the old unlimited data plan though

 

[reader2580]

now that I have a new truck with wifi built in, I've been buying the 10g per month plan from onstar. it is MUCH faster than Verizon on my phone. I have to run to a repeater then the shop, but it works pretty good.

Onstar uses AT&T for service. It might be that AT&T is simply faster in your area. Onstar has an advantage because it has a bigger antenna than a phone and might have a more powerful transmitter too.

I don't know anyone who uses cellular Internet at home and does video streaming unless they happen to have an old Verizon unlimited plan still.

 

[djbmw]

When we bought our property, we knew that internet options would be limited. For our family, internet is a MUST, and we use a LOT of bandwidth (over 300 GB/month), so cell internet would be cost prohibitive. Satellite internet is **** no matter where you are, there's no hard-line broadband here.....
SO... I figured that a Wimax/Point-to-point system was the only option.

We have an 80 ft. tower that has two access points on it - one is a paid service via a crappy WISP service that connects to another access point 7.8 km away. We typically see 20-25 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up and are capped at 500 Gb/month for $120 Canadian. This service utilizes a private frequency spectrum - I've tested it up to 20km distance and we still get a stable connection (although much weaker).

I also have consumer grade gear (ubiquity networks) on the tower that offers me a point-to-point to a commercial business that's offered to share a portion of their fiber connection with me. They are located approximately 4.5 km away. The only downside to this setup is there is a fair bit of signal noise from time to time since it uses the 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands and the management/maintenance (as well as initial cost) of the gear was all on my shoulders.

If you NEED broadband internet and lots of Bandwidth, you might want to explore a point-to-point option (but plan to spend $$ and time getting it all set up!).

OLD PIC before the Ubiquity gear was installed:

 

[greasyfingers01]

Must be nice... I'd take cable in a second, would never get by with 10gb.

Take a look at my thread here... doing P2P WiFi over 1000' is no issue, if T-Mobile ever becomes a problem.

What must be nice?

I thought 10 gigs wouldn't be enough but once you figure all the data hogs don't count towards your allotted data, it works out. 10 gigs is for basic Web page browsing, all video services we use, and Pandora is free. I will add that we have 12 gigs for our 2 phones but that's because we both use our phones a lot when we're at work. The t mobile hotspot plans go upto 28 gigs for $120 iirc. Plus they have roll over data for upto a year

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[BellyUpFish]

What must be nice?

I thought 10 gigs wouldn't be enough but once you figure all the data hogs don't count towards your allotted data, it works out. 10 gigs is for basic Web page browsing, all video services we use, and Pandora is free. I will add that we have 12 gigs for our 2 phones but that's because we both use our phones a lot when we're at work. The t mobile hotspot plans go upto 28 gigs for $120 iirc. Plus they have roll over data for upto a year

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Wait, your 10gb T-Mobile hotspot doesn't count if you're YouTubing, Priming or NetFlixing?

Do you have to have a phone plan with them?

 

[greasyfingers01]

Correct and no I don't have a phone through them. Only the little black box. They call it "binge on"

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[BellyUpFish]

Correct and no I don't have a phone through them. Only the little black box. They call it "binge on"

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Excellent. Going to have to talk to them tomorrow and see if I can get signal at my house.

 

[greasyfingers01]

You can see the signal strength on their coverage map online

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[gungatim]

LGR!

 

[My Old Tools]

We are <1 mile off an interstate hiway and have 3 cell towers line of sight from the deck, ATT (66 Mb/s), Verizon and T-Mobile which I haven't tested yet. T-mobile is the most attractive with the unrated streaming. We also have a fixed wireless operator within a mile, but they only sell 1 Mb/s service and don't guarantee that. I think I'll get a T-Mobile sim and a 4G WIFI router and try out the T-Mobile One plan. It is supposed to be unlimited with unrated streaming. I'll pay the $25 extra a month for HD streaming. They say they will slow you down after 26 Gb a month or something, but if streaming is really unrated, that shouldn't be a problem.

 

[djbmw]

We also have a fixed wireless operator within a mile, but they only sell 1 Mb/s service and don't guarantee that.

Do you know where the fixed wireless/wisp is getting their internet from (where the backhaul originates from)? If the tower is a repeater tower, then you'll have to do some investigating - if the tower is the source of wired broadband you might be able to negotiate with the tower/land owner and/or whoever is supplying the main line.

Here in Canada, cellular internet data is cost prohibitive for typical internet usage and the 'unlimited' plans are actually capped. If you're able to tap into truly unlimited cellular internet (or a plan that suits your needs) at a cost effective price, then that's your winning ticket!

 

[NUTTSGT]

Interesting thread guys. Luckily, we have TWC with Roadruner in our area. AS much as I hate their costs and having to call back every year to borker a deal for a better rate, I guess it's stillbetter than what some of you guys have and we don't have a cap either.

My parents on the other hand have a small telecom provider which offers phone, internet and TV. I'm not sure what their speed is and them being them, I doubt they know what it is either. They also have an antenna for the TV and it's reception is ****. I believ I need to make a trip over to their provider and inquire what they can get and what the cost is for their location.