OT Anyone got Karma? (wifi)

Den onsdag den 2. december 2015 kl. 22.13.45 UTC+1 skrev George Herold:

afaict it is just a cellphone with a wifi hotspot

-Lasse

Never tried that but I found out that comcast is putting wifi hotspots all over the place - you can get a couple of free hours a month if that's all you need or sign up for paid service ($59/month IIRC). I'm about 1000 feet from one and I get a pretty consistent 25 mbps. It's keyed to your mac address so you can't jump from computer to computer.

Put in your location to see if you're near one:

Anybody near you have cable or DSL internet? A couple people I know are just too far to get either of these. But, they have neighbors within line of sight who DO have some kind internet. So, they got some wifi routers, and put one at the neighbor's place and one at theirs, and got pairs of wi- fi antennas, mounted and aimed for best signal. They have been using this setup for a couple years, I think. Mostly reliable, once in a while you have to tweak the antenna aim after a big storm.

Jon

Huh, interesting.. Smokey's Bar and Grill has one... But I think it's about 800' from my house to the road, and a few miles to Smokey's... (their pizza is OK, and they have Guinness!) I'm kinda on the edge of cell phone service too. Anyway the speed is slower, but it's cheaper and unlimited. Two kids and wife (kids listed first 'cause they use more.) we blow through 1G/ day in no time.... everyone is limited. (which might be a good thing... but it's basically a requirement for school these days.)

George H.

Hmmm, well there is cable down the bottom of my hill, and my sons friend half way up the hill have cable. I don't think there is any line of sight. (and don't tell my son this idea... ;^)

George H.

On Wed, 2 Dec 2015 13:13:38 -0800 (PST), George Herold Gave us:

Try Exede

Ouch! What sort of limits do you have? All you can eat 3/4G phone data

Assuming that you use at least 7GB pcm and ideally less than 20GB tethered to stay inside the unfair usage rules and surcharges. There is a strict limit on how much you can tether to non-phones and Mifis.

In the UK it is reaching the stage where out in the country a high gain antenna and a 3G Mifi with a phased pair of permanently mounted yagis can be easily competitive with fixed line (and trounce satellite).

The only snag is if too many people start to do it then the backhaul will saturate and you will be no better off. I use 3G with an aerial sometimes when I need speeds that my fixed line ADSL cannot support.

It might be a bit more cunning than that - stealing airtime off whatever free wifi hotspots are around if available.

And I doubt it can magic a cellphone connection out of "thin air" in regions without 3G coverage and running over 2G r 2.5G is *PAINFUL*.

Well my kids blow through 1 G/ day so that's the $150/ month plan, about double what I pay now.

George H.

llite or cell phone.

t a much

Hi Martin, I'm an idiot when it comes to cell phones so...(be gentle) We get 1 G of download a day. Sometimes that is all gone by the time I get home from work. (youtube videos mostly I think.)

I'm not sure what tether means?

Yeah well if the signal strength is low then I may be back here asking about antenna's.

George H.

I have experience living without Internet, it sucks big time. We finally were covered by a WISP provider. That's not too bad, but it often gives marginal rates. I think this is due to congestion, but the provider can often fix it he says by resetting something.

This provider seems to have a reasonable plan at $50/month. But the coverage sucks. Where I am I see a number of very small cells with fingers of coverage. Unfortunately, right by my place the fingers are all over the water, lol. I know cell phone coverage is marginal for all the vendors, so likely this would not work well. How is the coverage for you?

Not having a data cap is *huge*. The question is how fast will it work? "Up to 5 Mbps" is not 5 Mbps. I had "up to 2 Mbps" with Comcast in my other house once. I hardly got 1 Mbps. I tried to get them to make it work better but they claimed it was "Internet congestion". Lol I dropped my plan back to 256 kbps and got *exactly* that, 256 kbps max speed. 5 Mbps will let you do pretty much anything you want if it stays near that. I would be worried you might see high congestion days with barely 1 Mbps.

The $10/GB plan is *terribly* expensive. I would have paid $3000 last month.

That's just a cellular hot spot. You can get those directly from the cellular provider. They work, but the cost of data and monthly service charges are rather high. A mobile hotspot makes lots of sense if you're moving around and need internet anywhere you go, but less sense if you're in a fixed location, such as at home. I would stay with your current satellite internet provider (Hughesnet or Exede).

There are other alternatives for wireless such as a WISP (wireless internet service provider). For example, locally: and plenty of small WISP service providers servicing communities or apartment buildings. They're usually a bit difficult to find, but if you look around, you should be able to find something. Try to avoid resellers of someone else's service. Bug me if you need help.

Area code 14082, when I click on the coverage map where my house sits is listed as good. But it cuts out right up the road... at the top of a local hill. So I'm a little worried about the signal strength.

Grin, yeah it's the no data cap that perked my sons interest. Also the Hughesnet satellite service is kinda slow on the upload. With a big delay. (No surprise it's a long way up to the satellite.) But the delay will sometimes cause web-sites to complain. (The good thing about the delay is that my son can't play any of these MMO games.)

Oh my, did you add an extra zero in there? We use ~30 GB/month. (and getting worse as everyone gets more devices.)

George H.

It is clear you didn't actually read about the plan. This is a third party who sells their service with terms and condition they create, not the cell vendors. They have a plan which says there are *no* data restrictions and they say there is *no* contract. Yes, I know, there has to be terms and conditions of some sort... but the web page doesn't supply that.

So the only restriction may be the 5 Mbps max rate.

Given unlimited data for $50 a month, the rest of your comments are not valid. This is a game changer for many I think.

OK. That is moderately high usage then. You probably won't get away with less than two mobile data contracts assuming UK like rules. I suspect US semi-monopoly pricing is somewhat more gouging than ours.

The pricing model and some aspects of mobile telephony are entirely different in the USA. I was amazed how hard it was to buy a SIM over there recently. In the UK every supermarket and corner shop has a rack

(only good for 2 months but potentially useful if you don't get hooked)

It is currently the best priced deal for bulk data.

Tethering is using the data allowance from your phone on other computer like devices basically it behaves as a mobile hotspot. I generally do this first and then use a sacrificial 3G 3GB PAYG SIM Mifi if necessary.

You can usually only tether a certain amount of your data allowance - the rest has to be used on the smart phone itself. Annoyingly they can tell and will cut you off/throttle back to useless if you try to cheat.

I am careful when mobile not to watch unnecessary videos. YMMV

The outdoor ones from Solwise in the UK aren't too bad. You can get cheap yagis from China but I haven't had much luck with them.

I expect a lot of their gear is of US origin. I am experimenting with a dual CL9 socketed Hauwei E5377 at present - awaiting rounduits...

Rick mentioned Wisp too, I'll sic my son on it. (a quick search found nothing for my area code

George H.

d:

tellite or cell phone.

plan

at a much

mo)

e.

.

I never heard of Sims's but a quick search found them at $20/ GB. (again too much for me.)

It's not clear there is anywhere to plug an antenna into the Karma thing.

George H.

That is for one of the optimal moderate use contracts. If you buy PAYG

Three. Also they have a 123 deal for a mixture of minutes/texts/data but

I tend to buy up data SIMs when they are heavily discounted.

In the UK some come with introductory data offers at a very good price eg 3GB over 90days or 12GB over a year. The prices have go less good now :(

This is the best 3G/4G Mifi I have found so far with external antenna sockets. My old 3G only E5330 is getting to the end of its useful life.

Unfortunately it does need a workable mobile signal and some of the places I visit are remote enough not to have any :(

I looked into Excede before we convinced AT&T to run fiber from the street to our house. Their customer service is apparently worse than AT&Ts and Comcast put together - perhaps even on the illegal side. I decided I'd put up with DSL, longer, than even try them.

You're right, I didn't read the plan. Sorry(tm). I was more interested in the equipment and the cellular provider used by the Karma MVNO (multi-vendor network operator). Kinda looks like Sprint, but I'm not sure. What happened around here (Santa Cruz, CA) is that Sprint oversold the unlimited plans with an insufficient number of towers. Their system far from saturated, but the data speeds are fairly slow. New bands are a big help but only for those users with the very latest hardware. The major vendors (VZW, Sprint, AT&T, etc) tend to keep the new stuff for themselves and delay giving the MVNO's access to the latest stuff.

Ah, foundit. It's Sprint: New buzzword: "Social Bandwidth".

Unlimited data sure sounds like a great deal. We'll see how well it plays. Verizon currently has only about 1% of its customers on unlimited data plans and is doing everything it can to get rid of them.

I'm late (as usual). Later...