Mobile Hotspot, T-Mobile, anyone use?

Well, time did tell. The T-Mobile sucked all the way across the country.

It worked at home (mid-Michigan) and the first night in Illinois. The rest of the way from (either on the road or stopped) Iowa to Montana and back to Minnesota, no coverage. Worthless thing.

I strongly recommend against, if you plan to use in upper central States.

Thanks for the input everyone. We ended up going with the T-Mobile because of time constraints. I would have gone Freedom Pop route, but it was 2 to 3 weeks to get the hotspot and we are leaving in less than a week.

Hooked up, tried it, works, ready to go. Price was much better than Verizon. For the little we will use it, I hope the coverage is good enough. Time will tell.

I am using the T-Mobile 4G Mobile MiFi from Walmart and I'm pleased with the
coverage and cost to operate. As indicated pay as you go , $25/30 days/ 1.5 gig
or $35/60 days/3.5 gig. We only activate when on trips into the US which are
generally for up to 60 days and so is just right for us.

T-Mob, Verizon, and AT&T have no coverage where I live. I have Sprint and just call in before a trip and turn on the hotspot feature on my cell phone, then call and turn it off when I get back home. So far Sprint has worked where we go. I would look and see who provides coverage where you go. What good is a hotspot when you are not in a service area?

I have Freedom Pop have not used it a lot but think it will be ok. Sprint works most places I camp and it is cheap.

to OP --- This is the only thing that counts. You need to figure out where you'll be going and which services provide adequate coverage there, THEN go looking at pricing.

wa8yxm wrote:
I use T-Mobile myself, Coverage is not as good as Verizon but... And this is important.. T-moblie seems to cover the places I need it.

I use T-Mobile myself, Coverage is not as good as Verizon but... And this is important.. T-moblie seems to cover the places I need it. I have five RV parks I frequent, 3 have park wide Wi-Fi, 2 of them it's good.

One it is "ok" but not what I'd call good (Posting from there on that system)

Two have no wi-fi but T-moble is 4G in those parks (Greased lightening)

Now where I am now I'm told Verizon is fast. But.. the park though not fast is fast enough.. And I talked to the park manager about a method to get better internet in the park at negative cost not low, not no, but NEGATIVE cost. If her higher ups go for it (The decision is way above her pay grade) I'm gonna be real happy.

I use Internet On The Go from Walmart. About $80 for the unit. What I like is that the prepaid data does not expire. I only use it occasionally (mostly traveling to and from AZ) so I don't like to keep buying data.

Coverage is provided by Sprint which is somewhat limited though.

X2 on Verizon. Bought the MyFi unit and then went on the $50 for 5 Gb plan. We use about that much each month as we do a lot of business usage. We can also suspend the plan when we're not travelling. I think you'll find that the cheaper plans offer less coverage. If you don't travel much and plan to use it only where your provider happens to be (mostly bigger cities), you may be fine. We wanted something with max national coverage. Before you leap, cheack the coverage maps.

Freedom pop looks very interesting. And at $5/month for our usage needs, it really fits my pocketbook. Apparently I can cancel at any time (winter) and start up again in the spring when I would want it on the road.

I looked up their coverage and it seems better than T-Mobile.

Verizon is just to rich for my blood.