In this edition of we will give you options for taking your broadband with you to the summer vacation house. Plus: how do you choose 4G LTE service anyway?
Who wants to be stuck in a stuffy office all summer? Thanks to 4G LTE service and mobile tethering, you don't have to. These technologies enable professionals to work from anywhere even from a lounge chair at the beach.
In this edition we offer a reader advice on the best options for telecommuting from a vacation home. Thanks to improved wireless data access and new shared data plans from the biggest wireless providers, subscribers can turn their smartphones into mobile hotspots.
This makes getting occasional wireless data access for laptops, tablets, and other Wi-Fi-enabled devices easy and affordable. MiFis on inexpensive prepaid plans can also offer a great alternative for high-speed wireless Internet access. Even though these wireless options are likely too pricey to be your main source of broadband all year long, they offer an ideal solution for short term or intermittent use.
Also in this column, I advise another reader on how to determine which 4G LTE service will work best in his area.
One wireless option for your vacation needs: a MiFi device like the Verizon Jetpack.
There are some low-cost options available. For instance, Freedom Pop is a good alternative to service from one of the four big carriers. It's biggest benefit is that it's inexpensive. If you can keep usage to less than 500MB a month, the service is free. If you want to use more than 500MB of data per month, you can pay for it. The 2GB service is $18 a month and for 4GB of data per month it's $29 a month. With the premiere service you can also rollover any unused data. And if you are willing to participate in offers and promote the FreedomPop brand on social media, you can earn even more free data usage. The company also offers a promotion to new subscribers who can get 2GB of data for free during the first month of service.
Again keep in mind that you must buy the hotspot at full price. The newest one, which offers 4G LTE service, is $200. But older models, which may not offer access to the fastest available wireless networks, cost $40. Once you pay for the device, you can pay for the service as you go. There's no contract or obligation to use the service, nor is there a daily fee for being subscribed to the service.
The only downside is that Freedom Pop uses Sprint's network to offer service. It actually uses Wi-Fi when that's available, and then Sprint's network when it's not. This isn't a huge problem if you are in an area where you get Sprint coverage, but if you aren't, then you won't get access at all.
The bottom line:
If you know you can already get 4G LTE access on your smartphone, just use the tethering and portable hotspot feature on your smartphone. (You can find this under settings on most Android phones.) This will use the bucket of data that you are already subscribed to under your data plan. If you think you are going to be using a lot of data from the lake house, you might want to consider bumping up your monthly usage cap for the months you'll be at the cabin. It will cost you more money, but you can always reduce your data package at the end of the summer when you don't expect to use so much data.
Even though wireless data is more expensive on a per bit basis than a traditional broadband connection, using your smartphone's data plan may actually cost you less in the long run since you only need the service a couple of months out of the year. This means you won't have the year-round expense of a landline broadband connection. What's more, using your smartphone instead of subscribing to a separate MiFi service will also allow you to use the service whenever you want without carrying around another device or signing up for a service.
