StraightTalk Hotspot Experience
We took a longish trip this summer, traveling from Florida to Washington State and back stopping at the sights along the way. We put about 15k miles on our TV, much less on the trailer.
Here's my experience using the StraightTalk Hotspot UMX.
Don't bother with it.
It operates on the Verizon network so coverage should have been as good as it gets. In reality, coverage is quite poor especially in the western US and anywhere away from cities, which is where we camp. Cellular service was pretty poor in many areas too so it's no surprise that the hotspot coverage was also poor since it uses the cellular networks. Cellular companies should be required by law to provide at least 3G service everywhere for the money they suck out of users.
StraightTalk customer service gets an ok for helping me connect from time to time (the system assumes that you're using cell towers near your home address) but gets an overall poor since they never replaced my bad hotspot device. The unit quit working altogether (no lights despite extended charging, on/off and reboot cycles) after 3 months sporadic use. ST service said they would send a return box and when they received my broken unit they would send a new one. The return box never arrived despite two reps on two different calls saying they would send it.
We lost about 2 gig of service due to the unit failure plus the cost of the failed unit so about $100 altogether. This is not a lot but it hurts our retiree level budget.
When the unit worked and we could connect, it was slow and consumed service like crazy. We were using it to check email and post text messages to Facebook with maybe once a month doing a few minor banking transactions. It was very expensive at $40 for 4gig that lasted about 2 weeks of sporadic use. We used wifi where we could or our smartphones over cell mostly.
Also their billing practices are medieval. You pay for 4 gig but it expires in 60 days. The automatic renewal only operates on the 60 day expiration so if you consume the 4 gig before 60 days, it does not automatically renew. Dumb. If you run out of bytes your service stops until you refresh it manually. They should be required to choose one billing scheme or the other. Either sell me 4 gig or sell me 60 days not some arcane combination based on who knows what.
For our use of the internet we found we were better off going to a McDonald's once in while and using their wifi. It was far faster and we were seldom needing service for more than 30 minutes anyway. Plus I got my occasional breakfast burrito.
We had hoped that the cell networks and the hotspot would be a more secure way of doing some kinds of internet transactions like banking. However, https is probably secure enough even when using a public wifi system provided that you're not in a major city like New York or Seattle. Also we so seldom do that kind of sensitive transaction that the odds are in our favor that no crook is using a network sniffer on our system at the time we're online and establishing a connection to our bank from out in Burns, Oregon.
Conclusion, we won't be using a hotspot for our internet service. Our Android phones provide better service for less cost. Given the generally poor cell coverage in the western US there's no advantage to using a hotspot. I can live with the small screen.
Here's my experience using the StraightTalk Hotspot UMX.
Don't bother with it.
It operates on the Verizon network so coverage should have been as good as it gets. In reality, coverage is quite poor especially in the western US and anywhere away from cities, which is where we camp. Cellular service was pretty poor in many areas too so it's no surprise that the hotspot coverage was also poor since it uses the cellular networks. Cellular companies should be required by law to provide at least 3G service everywhere for the money they suck out of users.
StraightTalk customer service gets an ok for helping me connect from time to time (the system assumes that you're using cell towers near your home address) but gets an overall poor since they never replaced my bad hotspot device. The unit quit working altogether (no lights despite extended charging, on/off and reboot cycles) after 3 months sporadic use. ST service said they would send a return box and when they received my broken unit they would send a new one. The return box never arrived despite two reps on two different calls saying they would send it.
We lost about 2 gig of service due to the unit failure plus the cost of the failed unit so about $100 altogether. This is not a lot but it hurts our retiree level budget.
When the unit worked and we could connect, it was slow and consumed service like crazy. We were using it to check email and post text messages to Facebook with maybe once a month doing a few minor banking transactions. It was very expensive at $40 for 4gig that lasted about 2 weeks of sporadic use. We used wifi where we could or our smartphones over cell mostly.
Also their billing practices are medieval. You pay for 4 gig but it expires in 60 days. The automatic renewal only operates on the 60 day expiration so if you consume the 4 gig before 60 days, it does not automatically renew. Dumb. If you run out of bytes your service stops until you refresh it manually. They should be required to choose one billing scheme or the other. Either sell me 4 gig or sell me 60 days not some arcane combination based on who knows what.
For our use of the internet we found we were better off going to a McDonald's once in while and using their wifi. It was far faster and we were seldom needing service for more than 30 minutes anyway. Plus I got my occasional breakfast burrito.
We had hoped that the cell networks and the hotspot would be a more secure way of doing some kinds of internet transactions like banking. However, https is probably secure enough even when using a public wifi system provided that you're not in a major city like New York or Seattle. Also we so seldom do that kind of sensitive transaction that the odds are in our favor that no crook is using a network sniffer on our system at the time we're online and establishing a connection to our bank from out in Burns, Oregon.
Conclusion, we won't be using a hotspot for our internet service. Our Android phones provide better service for less cost. Given the generally poor cell coverage in the western US there's no advantage to using a hotspot. I can live with the small screen.
