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We are looking into some options for a mobile wifi/hotspot. We would not use it often and my husband was thinking there was something where we could turn it on or off, rather than commit to say a week of use or a month, when we might only use it once every 5 days or something similar.
We are having a baby soon and the hospital does not have wifi, which is why we started looking. It'd be nice to use our laptop/ipad while we are in the hospital for a couple days. And we thought, while we were at it, say we take a short road trip, we could have our older daughter watch netflix on the ipad while we're driving, however, I know the issue with that might be how much data we use.
So far, the cheapest no contract thing I can find is T-Mobiles hotspot which is 100 bucks, with plans as low as 10/week for 100mb.
Again, my concern with this is that we'd be committing to a whole week at a time, and then would be restricted to the 100mb, which isn't much, especially if we're doing more than checking e-mail, ie using netflix.
I was hoping for input and recommendations. Does anyone know of an option that would suit us well? Is it more frustrating and far fetched to be able to find something we could use on a trip as I mentioned? Using a cellphone company rather than satellite, the connection will probably come in and out on us I imagine, so maybe we just want to get something that will do us for a few days when the baby is born, then we can sell it back off. If we do that with the t-mobile, we could either get a used hotspot and then get most of our money back when we sell it, making it about 30 bucks to have internet while we're there.
After doing some more research, I would like to pass this by some people and see if I'm figuring this correctly.
I found a site, TruConnect, which offers the mobile wifi device (connect up to 5 devices) for 100 dollars.
It works like a prepaid thing on your credit card and offers 3G internet. There is 5 dollars a month for the service, then it simply charges you 4cents per mb.
So I'm trying to figure out, if we use the internet a lot, netflix and MLB.tv and things, how many GB are we using a month? If we are crazy and use 100GB a month (100gb per month would be high, even for a couple hours of netflix most days, right?), then at 4cents a mb - does that not come to about 41 dollars, and then the monthly fee, so approx 46 dollars a month for internet that is mobile. Does that sound right? Because that would be cheaper than what we're paying now for just our home internet. So what would the speed of a 3g mobile hotspot be compared to our home internet? Most of the time when I test our current speed, I'm getting approx 20mbps But as long as things can stream well I don't think quite that speed is necessary. We've been happy with about half that, 10mbps.
I guess we're considering that getting this tru connect could be cheaper than continuing with our current home provider, and would be just as good, and we could take it with us when we travel. Am I doing my math right? Is it too good to be true? Input would be appreciated!!!
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