New cat photos in post #23 (& stuck with slow internet)

DavidEF · 2019-01-04T22:19:01.000Z

raccoon city:

DavidEF:

nick779:

Is a 4g home hotspot not an option? Just curious as I have a few more rural friends that have better luck with a mains powered wifi modem that basically runs off of AT&Ts cell network.

I know I live in a different area, but in some places its significantly faster and even occasionally cheaper than satellite.

Yeah, if you have any 4G LTE available in your area, several cellular providers (at least all the major ones) have options for in-home cellular 4G LTE internet and even in-home cellular phone service. You can use any style wired-in (or wireless) home phone that you want.

I don’t know anything about that…

Does it matter which cell phone provider we have?

We get service through Consumer Cellular and Cricket.

Well, a quick look through the Cricket website doesn’t show any “home” devices. But, they do offer wifi hotspot service add-on for your phone for $10 a month. If you have high speed internet on your phone, it would allow you to use it as a wifi hotspot for other computers and devices. I think it’s a rip-off to have to pay to use that functionality, but most cellular providers do make you pay for it. There are some other caveats with the service as well, such as a requirement to already have the “unlimited” service plan on your phone, and a 10GB per month usage quota for the hotspot. Still, it might be cheaper and better than satellite internet!

Consumer cellular have both kinds of home connectivity devices available on their website (telephone and data are two different devices). But, I couldn’t find any mention of using wifi hotspot from your phone. So, to get home hotspot, you would have to get the device, which is $80 to purchase, and requires you to add another data line to your service plan.

In both cases, the hotspot feature would be completely portable, so you wouldn’t have to keep it at home. In the case of the Consumer Cellular device, the advantage is that you CAN leave it at home, or in a hotel room, or at a friend’s house, so other people can use it while you’re away.

raccoon · 2019-01-04T22:59:00.000Z

DavidEF:

Well, a quick look through the Cricket website doesn’t show any “home” devices. But, they do offer wifi hotspot service add-on for your phone for $10 a month. If you have high speed internet on your phone, it would allow you to use it as a wifi hotspot for other computers and devices. I think it’s a rip-off to have to pay to use that functionality, but most cellular providers do make you pay for it. There are some other caveats with the service as well, such as a requirement to already have the “unlimited” service plan on your phone, and a 10GB per month usage quota for the hotspot. Still, it might be cheaper and better than satellite internet!

Consumer cellular have both kinds of home connectivity devices available on their website (telephone and data are two different devices). But, I couldn’t find any mention of using wifi hotspot from your phone. So, to get home hotspot, you would have to get the device, which is $80 to purchase, and requires you to add another data line to your service plan.

In both cases, the hotspot feature would be completely portable, so you wouldn’t have to keep it at home. In the case of the Consumer Cellular device, the advantage is that you CAN leave it at home, or in a hotel room, or at a friend’s house, so other people can use it while you’re away.

Thank you for all that information.

If Consumer Cellular offered an unlimited data plan, that would work.

And the 10GB per month usage quota for the hotspot for Cricket is also no good.

I'll keep researching.

EDIT: Looks like we would have to switch to a different cell phone carrier to get a good deal.

DavidEF · 2019-01-04T23:40:11.000Z

How much internet traffic do you need? Consumer Cellular offers a 20GB plan. That’s not enough? I don’t think my family uses that much TOTAL, with our home internet service (including Wi-Fi to all our devices) PLUS our phone plan, which is only a paltry 1GB per month, shared among three phones! If you had 20GB per month, that would be about 667MB per day average, using it every single day of the month. Beyond that, they charge $5 per GB overage up to 30GB total for the month. So, $40 a month for the first 20GB, and another $50 for the next 10GB in the month. That does seem excessive, but again, I have to ask “How much internet traffic do you need?”

raccoon · 2019-01-05T00:04:10.000Z

We need an unlimited plan.

That's what we have now, but it's only unlimited from 3am to 8am.

That's when we do all of our downloading.

DavidEF · 2019-01-05T00:14:41.000Z

Maybe I just don’t want to know what “unlimited” stuff you’re downloading every day.

vwpieces · 2019-01-05T01:15:27.000Z

Only Unlimited 3am to 8am? Thats harsh. Shouldn’t be allowed to call that an unlimited plan at all. Unless that already built into all packages.
I now have cricket cell service once I got over the contract deals… when the “2 year free” phone packages faded away. Happy with my budget Chinese phones these days. And my last 2 made it longer than 2 years, the flagships of the day never survived this long.

I have moved (2 hours) to a more rural small town, but still got the same cable internet provider. However the same service here costs $20/month More. But it IS cable modem speeds, internet only. Haven’t had cable TV in 13 years. Never missed it either.
Got my 70+ years old Mom and Aunt off cable bout 5 years ago now. They don’t miss it either. Put computers in the living room on the TV’s and away they go. Caught on quick too. Aunts, garbage picked, Dell PC throws a fit a couple times a year with Memory faults. She watched me pull the mem out and reseat it a few times now she does it herself and keeps rolling.

At least your clear skies location don’t account for poor service. Satellite TV around here suffers on cloudy days let alone a snow blizzard, its useless.

raccoon · 2019-01-05T01:34:45.000Z

If there's a storm to the south of us, our Satellite TV or internet goes out.

Luckily that doesn't happen too often.

BlueSwordM · 2019-01-05T01:41:30.000Z

IMO, even when talking about phones, there should not be any data caps whatsoever.

Data doesn’t actually cost money for the ISPs. It’s actually throughput and not speed. However, since they are, putting it lightly, money hungry, they just make stupid data caps.

@DavidEF, do you download games, images, files, stream video from services like Netflix, watch TV online, etc.?

It will easily blow through a 20GB cap in a matter of days.

@raccoon city, have you thought about asking if the ISPs offer long range Wi-Fi? It’s very inexpensive (relatively) compared to laying fiber down, and can easily deliver data over a couple of kilometers, up to 20km.

chadvone · 2019-01-05T01:58:35.000Z

Few years back signed up for a prepaid unlimited 4G-3G plan. Rooted my Kyocera and turned it into wifi hot spot. It was fast enough for Netflix movies,and my laptop browsing.

I had it made until I hit the 100GB mark. They turned me off said I used to much. Really long call arguing about what unlimited means, they wouldn’t tell, but they turned it back on. Few days later I cracked the phone, babied it for another month before giving up. I tried to get the same plan but they said they never had that plan even tho I was on it for couple years. Now the prepaids go from 4G to I can’t load my weather app. I haven’t had a cell phone plan since then. But I still carry the phone with me.

DavidEF · 2019-01-05T02:15:19.000Z

BlueSwordM:

IMO, even when talking about phones, there should not be any data caps whatsoever.

Data doesn’t actually cost money for the ISPs. It’s actually throughput and not speed. However, since they are, putting it lightly, money hungry, they just make stupid data caps.

@DavidEF, do you download games, images, files, stream video from services like Netflix, watch TV online, etc.?

It will easily blow through a 20GB cap in a matter of days.

@raccoon city, have you thought about asking if the ISPs offer long range Wi-Fi? It’s very inexpensive (relatively) compared to laying fiber down, and can easily deliver data over a couple of kilometers, up to 20km.

My daughter is home schooled. She keeps either Youtube or Netflix going all day long (sometimes both) even while doing her school work. My wife watches a bit too. I watch as much Youtube as I can when I’m home, often staying up late into the night. Perhaps I’m using a lot more data than I realize. I should look it up some time.

As for the ISP’s, they sell us what WE value, not what THEY value. If the average consumer could even understand the difference between data volume versus throughput/bandwidth, then I’m sure things would be different. People are basically idiots, because they don’t care to know. They just want it to work. If the ISP tells them they ‘have to’ pay per GB, they just will do it. It is definitely a lot more profitable for the ISP’s that way.

raccoon · 2019-01-05T02:46:04.000Z

BlueSwordM:

@raccoon city, have you thought about asking if the ISPs offer long range Wi-Fi? It’s very inexpensive (relatively) compared to laying fiber down, and can easily deliver data over a couple of kilometers, up to 20km.

No, I haven't heard of long range Wi-Fi...

But when I look at what ISPs serve my area, it's only satellite internet and Spectrum.

And Spectrum said we were too far away from our closest neighbor that has Spectrum.

raccoon · 2019-01-05T02:51:34.000Z

Here are some photos of Simon.

He really looks and feels overweight, though he may have a good amount of muscle.

My mom and sister have a plan to help him lose weight.

If their plan to change his diet, and the hours he has access to food, doesn't work, they might go with my plan:

Limit how much food he gets per day.

My dog was overweight at one point, and I just gave him less and less food until we was a healthy weight.

Muto · 2019-01-05T02:58:31.000Z

Get Simon one of these and play with him every other day with it.
He will love it and lose some weight.

amazon.com

Amazon.com : Da Bird Single 3 Foot Pole Cat Toy with 2 Extra Guinea Feather...

Amazon.com : Da Bird Single 3 Foot Pole Cat Toy with 2 Extra Guinea Feather Refills : Pet Feather Toys : Pet Supplies

raccoon · 2019-01-05T03:02:35.000Z

I believe my sister has a similar toy for her cat, though it's not as nice as the one you linked.

I'll see if she wants to use it with Simon.

chadvone · 2019-01-05T03:59:38.000Z

Simon looks very happy at his current weight.

teacher · 2019-01-05T04:22:03.000Z

Muto:

Get Simon one of these and play with him every other day with it.
He will love it and lose some weight.
Amazon.com

Wow…. $20.98. Cats love things like that…. but at that price the seller must be in love with it. :person_facepalming: .
.

Joshk · 2019-01-05T04:34:39.000Z

Check out Ubiquiti’s powerful Wifi goodies. You don’t need some special ISP or anything, just a neighbor within 7 miles that’s willing to share with you.
I set my parents up with one of their routers and it was a simple process. (not what you need)
You would need 2 of what I think they call a bridge.

ui.com

Ubiquiti - Rethinking IT

Powerfully simple networking technology for organizations.

Someone doing it:

BlueSwordM · 2019-01-05T04:55:08.000Z

As always Linus delivers

Joshk · 2019-01-05T04:59:03.000Z

Yea he has interesting videos if you can tolerate all the fluff he crams in to up the watch-time. Though I did install that Ubiquiti I mentioned many years before I ever saw it on youtube, so Linus doesn’t get all the credit.

USA · 2019-01-05T08:34:33.000Z

wow, what a cute cat. Thanks for the pictures!