Mobile Hotspot/ Mi-Fi

Hello Friends! Just wondering if anyone has any recommendations for mobile hotspots/ Mi-Fi with really good coverage, especially in remote areas. We would probably connect 2 laptops and 2 phones to it. Thank you for any information!

P.S. We are in the U.S.

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Could you tell me more about what a ā€˜hotspots/ Mi-Fā€™, I can do some research on it for you.

I have also wondered what mobile hotspots people are using out on the road. It would be nice to know which carrier had the most data/coverage with the best price. Ours easy to look up the numbers, but personal experience speaks volumes. Please, any one who can, chime in.

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The TracFone Smartphone option is $23.75 for two months, on auto-refill. It comes with a small amount of data. additional is $10 per GB which works well for my highly variable mobile use.

Best news in this space in a long time is Telstraā€¦ yes nomads I said Telstra. New BYO phone package $69 per month unlimited data. You can hotspot to tablets and laptop. Only 40 gig is really fast and then they slow you a bit. But we all know Telstra is known for there coverage. So this might be the way to gošŸ‘

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I personally use Verizon, pay 105 dollars a month, and I have unlimited data/hotspot/streaming. Thereā€™s different plans within their unlimited plans so you can kinda tweak it to your needs. And the only reason Iā€™ve stayed with them is their great coverage. Not alllllways the best in remote areas, but generally great overall

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Are you tethering off of a phone, or off of a hotspot?

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My daily phone is used as a hotspot

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Sorry silly meā€¦ Telstra is an Australian option. Should have realized mi-fi is an American thingšŸ‘

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Thanks for the info.! That is a pretty good deal. How is the coverage on it in more remote areas? I think we are planning on using Google Fi network. We were more wondering about having something to connect our laptops to. Any ideas for that?

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It is so you can connect your laptop to wi-fi and use the internet and I know it uses data. I am not a techie but that is the general idea.

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Thank you for the clarification! I had never heard of Telstra and now I know why ahaha! But if we make it out that way that is good to know!

Thank you for the information! I think we are leaning towards Verizon because of their coverage and different options.

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We would like to use a hotspot instead of our phones.

We need this topic to cover every different part of the world (maybe a nice sticky wiki article to keep updated?).
We are in Europe and choose hippocket WiFi. Is a French company that now use the free roaming option in the EU to let omyou use mobile data pretty much everywhere in Europe.
After almost 2 months, has been ā€˜okā€™ we had some issue and sometime the speed was shit due to some technical issue (they give you some fallback extra sim tho, so we just needed to wait for them to activate a new sim, although if we would have an urgent need we would have been offline no chance).
My best bet in Europe is to do A LOT of research on top up plans (or contracts if you stay long) across all countries and actually go to the country with the best deal (so far I think 3Drei in Austria) get yourself a SIM card, buy yourself a WiFi dongle (mifi) and get going. Also a local backup sim could help. Really depends how much you need internet. We work online so we couldnā€™t play around too much.

Another problem is: watch your data! When your phone is connected to the WiFi dongle it thinks your home and start backing up all your stuff and burning a lot of data, disable all automatic use of internet or you going to have to top up very often!

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I just made your post into a wiki, feel free to start organizing all the information from the topic by editing your post.

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@HenryCooper will that wiki post be collaborative? Not sure I have the time to keep it updated by myself!

Yea your right. Start a new topic with a nice title and intro about this. Then send me a PM and I will make it a wiki for you. And yes everyone will be able to engage with it.

But this way more people would see it, engage with it, and add information to it.
Instead of having it buried in the replies of this topic.

Im rather ā€œcheapā€ in this area ā€¦ and as a blogger I need data ā€¦ so normally park myself up at Starbucks or McDs and use their connection :wink: . Here in NZ if you sign up to Spark (the old Telecom) you can get unlimited free access near their public phone boxes. Link to map here . Not sure of the range but you often see people squatting outside these with their device ā€¦ even in the rain lol

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