It has recently become feasible to use Page Plus cellular, on the Verizon network, for temporary data use. They have a new plan called The Fifty Five. For $55 a month it provides unlimited voice and texts, and a gigabyte of data. I switched over to this plan for a month on the road and will switch back to the lower cost plan when the month is up. You of course have to be careful that the phone you use can be tethered to a laptop. I'm lucky that my old LG clunker can. The data on my phone is 1x, not lightning fast but very usable.