I was using Internet with my local phone company. I decided to check into a hotspot to save money. I spent 45 minutes researching Verizon and talking with a rep. I told him that my son does a lot of gaming and me and my wife surf the Internet. He said I would have no problems with the 5GB plan at 50 dollars. I signed up and got rid of the phone company. Verizon only gives you 14 days to try it before your contract is in full force. Within 20 days I was already over the 5 limit. I spoke to several customer service reps trying to get out of this and all they would do is refer me to the higher plan. Thus the dilemma, pay 170 dollar cancellation fee and go back to phone company or limit my sons gaming. Here we are 3 months later and I decided to go with the 8GB plan until my contract expires. Had I been given accurate info from the beginning, I would have never switched. Tracking data usage and being afraid to go over has been a stressor that I just don't need. I am very disappointed in Verizon.
By the way, he also told me that the hotspot would be able to broadcast in the entire house. Not true as well. The hotspot has to be within a couple of rooms to work.
the hotspot range will depend on the device broadcasting the signal. in your average home, it "should" cover most of the house. i know that if i place my phone in my bedroom and activate it, it covers the entire home and part of our yard outside (3 bedroom, 2 story, 1500 sq foot house). of course, factors like building material of the home, placement of the hotspot, etc, etc factor in to the range. he SHOULD NOT have told you 5 gigs would cover a gamer for online use. the fact is that these folks are sales people and will tell you what they need to to sell a device or service. even at 8 gigs, i suspect you run close to, or go over that often times. i would likely pay the early termination fee and go back to the phone company. it's just my opinion, but i believe these mobile plans were never intended to completely replace your home internet. we stream netflix, pandora, spotify, and game, and use email at our house. there's not a mobile plan that's even compares to a cable or other phone company provider.
Sorry you were told inaccurate info on your Mobile hotspot.
Its almost impossible for a VZW sales rep to accurately guess what a users real data usage is like. That particular rep may have been speaking form his own data consumption habits but he did not likely understand what yours were like. I would have told you to take it home for a week and test it out. You can monitor your usage from a few different techniques and quickly build up an accurate picture of your true data habits. From what I hear if you were watching it more closely you would have been able to identify that your habits outweigh the usefulness of your data plan and could have gotten out early without fees while on the 14 day trial.
The most common range on a mobile hotspot device like the MiFi 4620L is about 50 feet, you would have to have a pretty small house to be completely covered.
Using a Mobile Hotspot device as a permanent always on home internet connection requires great discipline. It's so very easy to relax and get nailed with a huge overage, that's just the way wireless ISP's and tiered data plans work now a days. I would agree with AZ and cancel my hotspot plan in order to go back to the old wire ISP. Hotspots may be a good in home replacement plan for a cable one day, but they are not there yet. All it takes is one overage bill of of a few extra GB and all your savings will be lost.
Your wrong gaming doesn't take up alot gigs. Like on PS3 i play call of duty black ops, And only use 24 mb an hour. Why do people still think gaming take alot of BW lol.
what takes up the most bandwith on gamins is updates or voic comms
1 update could be 1gb, or more, ive seen em over 2
gamin in itself does not use alot of data.
and surfing can be a hog. if you stream vids or music you will eat into it
3 people and 5gb is a disaster waiting to happen
a) who is wrong
b) who said gaming takes up a lot of gigs?
c) how do you know how much someone may be gaming? if the OP's son does "a lot" of gaming at 24 mb's per hour, that could easily hit 100mb's per day (maybe 200 if his kid is up all night on the weekends). so you can easily hit 3 gigs per month....just with the gaming. throw in ANY streaming, browsing, emails, etc....and you're well over 5 gigs.
scott21 wrote:
Your wrong gaming doesn't take up alot gigs. Like on PS3 i play call of duty black ops, And only use 24 mb an hour. Why do people still think gaming take alot of BW lol.
Maybe he uses an XBOX. That can easily use 2-3 times what you claim to use. Also even at 24 MB an hour 4 hours day of gaming is close to 3 GB a month. Not to mention maybe he kid downloaded demos. Those can exceed 2 GB.
Why people think they can replace a regular internet connection with mobile is beyond me. 8 GB a month? Heck we exceed 8 GB DAILY. And were not heavy users. Also gaming could use a lot of bandwidth if his kid games a lot. Also maybe was downloading demos. Demos typically exceed 1 GB sometimes even 2 GB. Also downloading DLC can use up a lot of data. My son traded in some of his XBOX games at Gamestop and Got $70 in Steam cards. Steam had a summer sale and my son bought 10 games. Those 10 games exceeded 65 GB. No way he could have downloaded that on mobile.
Also if his computers have automatic updates on that can use up a lot of bandwidth. Even if it's off he will eventually HAVE to update his computer and he eat up all his data for that month.
My advice is if you have access to REAL internet keep it. If you can't get real internet and you're in a 4G area I suggest getting Verizon's HomeFusion instead of using regular mobile. You can get 10 GB for $60 a month and up to 30 GB for $120 a month. Which is cheaper than using Share Everything. You still have to watch what you use but you could do SOME video streaming and gaming. And the overages on HomeFusion are $10 per GB vs $15 per GB on Share Everything.
If you insist on using mobile internet as a regular connection then all you can do just surf. No watching online videos. No Youtube, no Netflix, nothing. Just check e-mail, pay bills, check the weather and sports scores. That's about it.
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