GMandJM wrote:
The tablet-as-a-hotspot idea is growing on me. Does yours require a long-term contract or can you do pay-as-you-go?
I got mine on sale for $99 with a 2 year contract. Fortunately the monthly fees for tablets are smaller than for cell phones. I'm paying $10 a month for their line access fee or whatever they call it plus $30 a month for 4GB of data allowance. $40 a month is not bad. I think cell phone plans start at $70 a month.
You can get tablets on a pay as you go plan. They have a much smaller list of tablets you can purchase for that plan. You could probably also pick up a used tablet with Verizon access that is no longer under contact from somebody and then set up pay as you go access for it.
Pay as you go is convenient if you only use a device for a small number of months during the year. It can also be a bit of a pain. They set up an account for you and a "phone" number, you pay for whatever amount of data you want to put on the device for the next month, then you can use it. If you don't use the device again for (I think) 90 days after that setup, the account and number get deleted and you have to go through that whole process again the next time. You need internet access to register the device, so you have to have another way of accessing the internet to complete that setup (wifi or something).
Correction: The account gets deleted 90 days after the data expires, not after registration.
