No Internet Options try this (Volcano: house, neighborhood, buying)

[838454]

Being technically challenged myself this looks interesting for those with no internet or DSL options currently. For those of you more savy than myself you might already be aware of this. but for myself it was a first for me. When I saw this I thought of Open D who said he only had wireless connections in Volcano
How the Biggest Data Users Avoid Paying Carriers - WSJ

[Three Wolves In Snow]

Originally Posted by 838454

Being technically challenged myself this looks interesting for those with no internet or DSL options currently. For those of you more savy than myself you might already be aware of this. but for myself it was a first for me. When I saw this I thought of Open D who said he only had wireless connections in Volcano
How the Biggest Data Users Avoid Paying Carriers - WSJ

Yeah, this isn't new, but the article points out a good reason why this type of thing is going to be harder for people to use in the future: the idiots who abuse it.

I am on my laptop all day. I work on it, I game on it, I watch a ton of videos and I still manage, at the highest, only 80GB a month. That's a lot, and again, it's all. day. (except sleeping), that I'm on this thing. How these people are racking up 2000GB a month means that it's not just them using it, and even if the entire family used it, that's still difficult to attain. Watching a movie every night, listening to live radio (Panda), watching YouTube for 10 hours a day, gaming every single day for hours....even if the entire family did that, it's still going to be hard to use 2000 a month. So they are definitely doing something that is going to ruin it for everyone.

If you choose to use your phone as a hot spot, be careful. That data can add up pretty fast, (although 2000 won't be that easy), but even an 80GB/mo plan can be expensive...even if you use a group plan. Once you get done paying for all the bs the companies throw in there, you could make a luxury car payment with the money that you spent.

Additionally, those "unlimited" data plans...read the fine print. I know for a fact that one extremely well known, highly used carrier will start slowing you down to a crawl if you use over 5GB a month in your "unlimited" plan. Sure, you can still use data, sure, you don't get charged for using all the data that you need, but you will see your service slow down to an insanity inducing crawl. It is not difficult at all to use 5GB a month, especially if you are using your phone as a hot spot.

Most people who don't have access will say, "I just want to use it once in awhile, check my email, check the weather, do some online bill paying..." but it always starts out that way. Eventually, they start "checking" other things, and then they start "checking" more things, and then more....and before you know it, you're plowing through data.

I used to work for a carrier, and I had to have these conversations with a LOT of consumers. Frankly, if I had no access to internet, I'd go use a hotspot somewhere like a McD's, or Starbucks, or where ever. I would not use my cell as a hotspot, even with the "cheats" they talked about.

[smarino]

I can't read the article w/o subscribing, apparently.

But we're thinking of buying a small tablet or notebook, just to use it for free at the locations the poster above mentioned. I see people all the time using theirs as a phone w/ webcam (guess you need skype for that) to talk to the folks back home when they're traveling, checking reservations, etc. I guess you could do all this on a smart phone too. Anything you can get for free from StarSucks or YukMcdonalds I am all for. They've been putting the shaft to us a long time w/ bad food and bad coffee, so it's time we got something back, but that's another story. And don't say "just go somewhere else then" because sometimes there is no somewhere else to go to.

[JLMorrison]

Interesting article--at least the paragraph I could read before the paywall. Stupid WSJ.

[terracore]

I can't read the article because I'm not a WSJ subscriber, but we suffered through 3 years of cellular-only internet via Verizon. The speeds and service I cannot complain about. We had a service called Home Fusion which has been rebranded under another name and at service initiation they sent somebody out to hook a cantenna to the side of our house to ensure good connectivity. Everything was great as far as speed and reliability was concerned. During and after Iselle when the power was out and landline phone and internet connections were down we had uninterrupted high-speed internet the whole time.

The problem was the COST and LIES. You can go to their web site and make your own judgements but originally $15/gig was doable until we had a spate of unexplained problems. During one 3-day period they said that we used 15 gigs when all of our equipment was off most of the time. The router was on an appliance timer that cut the power during our bed time and "somehow" we used 2 gigs of data when we were sleeping and the router had no electricity. It was then that we thought that there was something rotten in Puna and looked to the internet and there was a huge surge in people complaining Verizon was gouging them for data usage that was impossible given their circumstances. We were one of them. We tried complaining and they even sent us a data usage report showing that we were using a bunch of data that was absolutely impossible considering that our equipment didn't even have electricity flowing to it. Then I went to the Verizon store to try and get some answers and all they tried to do was sell me new equipment. This was ridiculous because they were saying we were using more data than was even possible within the given time frames and the speed limitations of 4G data.

We were at our wits end with a $300+/month data bill while barely powering up our devices for any length of time just long enough to check email etc. We weren't streaming movies or audio... just the bare minimum internet to send emails to mom etc. Then THIS happened:

Hawaiian Telcom Holdco, Inc. - News Release

In case that link stops working in the future, in a nutshell the local telephone company had to start offering broadband DSL internet service to our neighborhood again because the FCC gave them $400,000.00. Goodbye Verizon and your phantom data charges. In the 2 months since getting DSL we've used more data than the previous 2 years COMBINED with Verizon.... and we now pay only $24.13/month.... compared with HUNDREDS of dollars per month with Verizon.

If you are off grid / no internet: My recommendation is check non-cellular options like satellite etc. I actually liked Home Fusion for the two years or so until the IMPOSSIBLE bandwidth consumption started. Don't walk. Run. RUN AWAY FROM CELLULAR INTERNET OPTIONS if there is any way. ANY OTHER WAY to ditch them.

[ohmanon]

I was able to access the full WSJ article by copying the first paragraph and pasting into google search. The 1st result that appeared was titled "T-mobile Reaches Its Limit on Heavy Data Users - Wall.." Clicking the link brings up the entire article.

[davephan]

The Internet service providers need to stop using the term "unlimited", unless they really mean "unlimited".