We bought a lakehouse in a remote location that is not serviced by cable. I’ve searched around for other solutions but they leave a lot to be desired. The satellite internet companies are very expensive and restrictive.
Our neighbor uses his cell phone as a mobile hotspot. This would be a plan, but I only get one bar out there. I’ve already sent off for a Samsung 2U01 signal booster. I bought it via Verizon for $250 because it has a 14 day return policy. If it doesn’t increase the bars to 3 or 4, I’ll ship it back.
Anywho, assuming the booster works, how much data do you estimate we’d need in order to access my work and do occasional internet browsing? We’ll be there approximately 6 days per month. I could resist downloading movies.
Also, we get our cable at my primary residence through Time Warner Cable. They offer a service called Time Warner 2 Go, which allows TW customers to access most cable channels via the internet. If I went this route, how much data would you estimate that I’d need to stream a max of 15 hours of tv per month? I currently have 4 Gbs, and we never use even 1 Gb per month. I can increase my data to 6 gb for $48.60 or 12 for $68.00. But at either of these rates, satellite tv might ultimately be cheaper.
Another option for me would be to switch to DirecTV for my primary residence and pay $500 for a Wingard, which would allow me to take one of my receivers from home to the lakehouse. That ultimately might be the cheapest route but I’m hesitant to switch to DirecTV because they require a 2 year contract and I’m afraid that the signal will be poor out at the lakehouse, which would defeat the purpose of switching. And I’d probably still keep cable internet connection because the alternative, fioptics, has gotten really poor reviews from my friends.
How much data – you should call your current internet provider and ask them to give you an estimate of your monthly average over the past few months, to get an idea. It varies too much from household to household to really tell. If you’re browsing sites like the SDMB, it uses almost no bandwidth. If you look at image-heavy news sites and such, it adds up quickly. Browsers like to “pre-load” other webpages too, so sometimes they’ll fetch other links behind the scenes. And Windows/OSX will also consume a lot of bandwidth in updates.
Video uses a LOT and you will rapidly exceed data caps. About 1 GB per hour low-res, up to 3 GB per hour for high-res/HD stuff. Would not recommend this. Just get Netflix by mail (DVDs, imagine that) instead.
You MIGHT – probably not, but at least consider it – be able to get a better overall deal by using a service like Speedify (http://speedify.com/) that can combine multiple internet connections into one and distribute them according to various rules, maybe using a 4G hotspot to load webpages and such (because it’s quicker) and satellite to bulk-download movies.
I assume your phone will tell you how much data you use - why don’t you one day set it up as a hotspot and record data used before and after, if this statistic is available. OTOH, previous posters are right - DO NOT use hotspot for video, even for extended you-tube, even for an hour, unless you have that elusive unlimited data plan.
Also look into ad blockers. These stupid picture-teaser ads on SD here probably use a lot of the total bandwidth of the site.
(By comparison, a typical MP4 decent quality movie download - 2 hours, 1 GB or more…)
Get a nice TV antenna so you can watch other-the-air television.
You can download movies onto a flash drive/portable drive and take that out there every time you go.
And as stated for the newer movies you can get Netflix by mail–DVDs.
Thus just use your hotspot for accessing your work, browsing and email.
We have 15 gb, and almost always use all of it. And we never stream video. Maybe 15 minutes total of YouTube videos per month. We do Netflix by mail, and have never watched much TV, so we don’t miss it too much.
I actually bought a nice antenna at an auction for $20, but when I plugged our address into antennaweb.org, it told me that the only channel I’d be able to pick up over the air is some CW station, even if I mounted it above 30 feet. We’re about 60 miles from Cincinnati and about 75 miles from Columbus.
(The address is on the southeast end of Rocky Fork Lake in lovely Hillsboro, OH).
Thanks for the feedback. I’m going to see how my cell phone signal works this weekend. After that, I can determine whether or not I’m going to suck it up and pay for satellite.
I haven’t used it yet but Amazon prime video allows one to download the show to watch offline. Cable adaptors and wireless connections are available to play android and apple phones/tablets on a HDTV.
So for your TV fix it may be possible to download what you want and watch it offline later, which would save you the GB usage of the mobile hotspot for TV.
I guess it really depends on what these terms mean to you. Is accessing your work syncing occasional text email? Transferring large files back and forth? Running remote desktop 8 hours a day, 6 days per month?
What about occasional internet browsing? As long as it’s primarily text sites like the SDMB, almost nothing. But if your browsing is a lot of animated GIFs of football highlights and audio, that can eat up a fair amount of bandwidth. My best recommendation is: keep your bandwidth at 4 GB and closely watch how much you use over being there a couple of days. Extrapolate it out and see if you need more. If you do, it’s always easy to upgrade to a bigger data plan.
I’ve tethered my laptop to my cell phone for internet access while traveling. Off the top of my head, I think I used a few hundred MB per day for a few hours of ordinary email access and web browsing. That perhaps includes a few image heavy web pages and short Youtube clips, but no really heavy video streaming.
You bought a microcell device that works using high speed internet to get better cell phone reception so you can use the phone as a hotspot to get high speed internet?
Another thing to check is whether that location is actually served by your carrier directly, or some partner. I go up to a remote place in Maine and although my phone still says it’s on “AT&T”, I’m actually roaming on another local carrier and, since I’m roaming, by unlimited data plan doesn’t work. AT&T actually threatens to cut off my domestic roaming data after something absurdly low, like 250MB.
The microcell you mentioned is useless, as the other guys says. That takes high speed internet, IE cable or DSL usually, and gives you the ability to better make calls and text. You would just use Wifi with the microcell for internet.
I didn’t realize that the device worked through your internet. I thought it worked like an antenna to get better reception from the nearest cell phone tower. I guess it will be going straight back to Verizon.
Thanks for the information. This place is at the fringe of a smallish town, but I had no idea I was on the edge of civilization until I tried to get internet service.
FYI, this was the device the Verizon Chat person recommended after I told her that I was only getting one bar, and needed a stronger signal as my cell phone was my only way of connecting to the internet.
I spent a bit of time looking into mobile phone signal issues recently. My experience is going to be different for a few reasons - one, I’m in Australia - but much of the technical aspects will overlap and may help.
It is possible to get high speed Internet access over mobile cells at a distance with some effort. But as noted - if you are a heavy user expect to pay big time for data. But people who need it for work related things typically don’t watch lots of TV over it, and legitimate usage can turn out to be quite modest.
Here in Oz, data is available over 3G and 4G from what boils down to 3 carriers, and a mess of resellers, most of whom resell one of the three carriers. Things get messy quickly. The frequencies used can vary all over the place depending upon the carrier, what they have installed near you, and the particular regulatory regime. You need to find out the location of any nearby cell towers, and discover who has capability on them, what protocol and what frequency bands. This can guide your next step. The lower the frequency band the better if you don’t have line of sight to the tower.
If there is any signal at all that a mobile phone can work over, you almost certainly can set up a fixed antenna to point to the cell tower, and get good signal. The better the signal the higher your speed will be. The higher you get the antenna the better the signal. The precise antenna is determined by the exact frequency band you will be using. If you have 4G using two cross polarised antennas can near double your speed. You simply cable the antennae (with low loss coax) to a cellular modem. You can either pay up for a second cell connection, or put the sim from your cell phone into the modem when you are there (this may make making calls a bit difficult.)
It needn’t be an expensive exercise, but will involve work.
You can look into adding a cellular repeater to the system - which will boost cell reception in your house directly using the antennae installed above. However, the legal and technical issues here are a bit fraught, and you would want to check with your mobile phone provider about this. Some simple repeaters do not play well, whereas others are designed to work sensibly in the network. Further, the precise repeater matters depending upon provider and frequency band used. This can become significantly more expensive.
An update of sorts: I immediately returned, unopened, the signal booster that the Verizon rep had recommended for me, the one that required an internet connection. in order to make my phone a hot spot…because I had no internet connection. They credited all but a $35 “restocking fee.”
I chatted with them online to have the restocking fee waived, since it was their recommendation.
At first the agent was friendly, then the conversation deteriorated when he informed me that he wouldn’t refund the restocking fee. He kept telling me over and over again that they needed to check the merchandise to make sure that it was still usable., and that basically I should be happy with this policy because it protected the next consumer who’d end up with that booster. As if I gave a rat’s ass about the next customer. He just wouldn’t accept the fact that I was misled by them and that they should eat the restocking fee. Not only that but that $10 I paid to return the stupid thing.
When I told him that I’d dispute it, he told me that I could do what I wanted, but if I didn’t pay the fee, then Verizon would charge me a penalty and interest. Then I told him that I’d dispute the charge with my credit card company. He said that it didn’t matter what my credit card company did, because Verizon was going to expect me to pay.
Seeing that I was getting nowhere with the idiot, I disconnected, and called CS from my phone. The rep immediately understood the problem and credited me $35.