Smartphone as full time modem?

D

DellAxim

Gawd
Joined
Feb 14, 2003
Messages
999
I've got a little problem. I bought a house in a very rural area. Before I purchased, I did my due diligence and found that Centurylink offered DSL at the address. After closing, and trying to sign up for new service, the idiots at Centurylink refuse to give me service - even though the previous owner of my house had it, and all the neighbors have it. They claim they are "at capacity", but they have given several different excuses why. I really don't know why they won't take my money. To claim they are over their network capacity in this area is absurd, but given their BBB rating and what the neighbors say I don't want their service anyway.

Unfortunately, Idiotlink is (was) the only option for internet here. I am currently tethering to my Verizon phone, which is also the only carrier that gets a signal here. I work from home, and watch TV over the internet - I NEED always on internet. It doesn't need to be blazing fast, but it needs to be always on. I really do not want to go with satellite internet for a number of different reasons.


The problem I have is it's a PITA to turn on the hotspot on my phone every time I want to use the computer, and if I leave the house, the internet goes with me. I do not want to purchase a separate hotspot and plan to go with it, Verizon wants too much for too little. On the other hand, the 30gb/month plan my phone has is plenty, and when I go over and they cut it down to 600k it's OK for a short time.

If I add another line to my Verizon account, is it possible for me to setup another phone as a dedicated full time hotspot? It seems after a period of non usage the hotspot on my S7 just turns itself off. Can I prevent this from happening? Also, is there a router available that will allow me to tether via USB for internet? Or a router that can tether with WIFI from a dedicated phone? Somehow I need to be able to plug a phone into a normal ethernet router.
 
I don't know the answers to your question but I can tell you that using your phone as a tethering device for a long period of time gets it really hot. After 1 terabyte of tether data for a month on my phone several years ago, it was never the same: Constant flickering screen, poor performance, constant freezing and restarting.

So if you do get a phone dedicated for a full time modem, keep it as cool as it can. I hope you can solve your issue there, sucks to be without internet!
 
I've been leaving it on a wireless charger with a small fan pointed at it while I use it for internet - you are right, it does get very hot. With the fan it stays pretty cool. This is another reason why I want a dedicated phone for this - I can just get a cheap used one and not care about battery life.
 
They make cellular enabled routers with SIM slots in them so you can get a data-only SIM to put into the router and use that as a AP like you would any other router hooked to your ISP/modem. I would get one of those either from Amazon or Verizon directly and its own data plan for it if you can still stay within their data cap. Either that or just get a portable MiFi device from Verizon as well, which would definitely work better and more reliably than a phone.
 
T4rd said:
They make cellular enabled routers with SIM slots in them so you can get a data-only SIM to put into the router and use that as a AP like you would any other router hooked to your ISP/modem. I would get one of those either from Amazon or Verizon directly and its own data plan for it if you can still stay within their data cap. Either that or just get a portable MiFi device from Verizon as well, which would definitely work better and more reliably than a phone.
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I think you're missing the point. I do not want a "data plan". They charge significantly more for that than they do if I just add another phone line to my plan. They seem to think cellular data is like gold these days...but I'm allowed 30gb of tethering at full 4G speed with a phone. The same 30gb on a data only device is much more expensive. A 30gb hotspot plan is $185 per month! Or $55/month to add another line with 30gb tethering. Also, if I go over the 30gb, I can just swap in my regular phone and use some extra data from it - I don't use much data at all on the actual phone.
 
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DellAxim said:
I think you're missing the point. I do not want a "data plan". They charge more for that than they do if I just add another phone line to my plan. They seem to think cellular data is like gold these days...but I'm allowed 30gb of tethering at full 4G speed with a phone. The same 30gb on a data only device is much more expensive. Also, if I go over the 30gb, I can just swap in my regular phone and use some extra data from it - I don't use much data at all on the actual phone.
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It doesn't matter if the SIM is for a phone or a data-only device (MiFi, router, tablet, etc.), you can put the SIM into a data-only device like the ones I mentioned and it will work the same. The term "data plan" applies to both phones and those other devices, so it's not a mutually exclusive term for a phone or other device. You asked about setting up another line/phone on your account and that's all I was suggesting that you do with a dedicated router or MiFi. SIM cards aren't tied to a specific phone/device, so as long as you have an activated SIM from another phone or whatever, you can put it in a router/MiFI and have dedicated internet just the same without all the hassle of having a phone overheating, dying, turning off WiFi, or anything else.

I'm pretty sure my old Asus AC68-U router had a function too that allowed me to USB tether a phone to it to share internet to other devices (both wired and wireless), but I never tested it. Maybe look into their newer routers as well to see if they still do this and how it works. Maybe just buy one and take it back if it doesn't work out.
 
T4rd said:
It doesn't matter if the SIM is for a phone or a data-only device (MiFi, router, tablet, etc.), you can put the SIM into a data-only device like the ones I mentioned and it will work the same. The term "data plan" applies to both phones and those other devices, so it's not a mutually exclusive term for a phone or other device.
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Sounds like something Verizon would frown upon or be against the TOS. I have no idea why the ridiculous discrepancy in price, but if a phone plan cost $55, and a data plan cost $185 for exactly the same amount of data, I doubt just swapping cards is going to change that. They specifically separate "data only" devices and phones for a reason.
 
DellAxim said:
Sounds like something Verizon would frown upon or be against the TOS. I have no idea why the ridiculous discrepancy in price, but if a phone plan cost $55, and a data plan cost $185 for exactly the same amount of data, I doubt just swapping cards is going to change that. They specifically separate "data only" devices and phones for a reason.
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I sold my old unlimited data (phone) lines on Verizon a few years back to people who use these lines for camping in RVs and stuff for their internet solutions. They did exactly that and put my phone/data SIM into a MiFi or router and still use it to this day for internet (though Verizon has soft capped them at 100 GBs now last I heard). There were guys out there at the time that had a whole business around buying these legacy lines from people and then renting out these legacy unlimited data lines to these people going camping or out in rural areas like you.

I'm giving you a solution that has worked for countless others before you without any issues from Verizon whether it's frowned upon or against their TOS or not. If you choose not to believe it works or that you're somehow morally opposed to using a service you're still paying for in a manner that's not exactly the way they want you to use it despite it may not even being against their TOS or at the very least enforced, then that's on you man. ;)
 
T4rd said:
If you choose not to believe it works or that you're somehow morally opposed to using a service you're still paying for in a manner that's not exactly the way they want you to use it despite it may not even being against their TOS or at the very least enforced, then that's on you man. ;)
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Well, I'll have to look into it, but we're not talking about some old legacy unlimited plan. There has to be some reason they charge an extra $130/month for a hotspot vs a phone, and I'm sure they do what they can to enforce that. I honestly have no idea why there is such a huge price difference. That's as much as a car payment! If I have a "phone" which has never made a call or sent a text, but uses tons of data, that seems like it might raise an eyebrow.

As a side note, my current "unlimited" plan only allows 30gb of hotspot data, and 75gb of total phone data before they cap it at 600k. They know the difference between hotspot and on phone data usage.
 
DellAxim said:
Well, I'll have to look into it, but we're not talking about some old legacy unlimited plan. There has to be some reason they charge an extra $130/month for a hotspot vs a phone, and I'm sure they do what they can to enforce that. I honestly have no idea why there is such a huge price difference. That's as much as a car payment! If I have a "phone" which has never made a call or sent a text, but uses tons of data, that seems like it might raise an eyebrow.

As a side note, my current "unlimited" plan only allows 30gb of hotspot data, and 75gb of total phone data before they cap it at 600k. They know the difference between hotspot and on phone data usage.
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The SIMs work just the same whether they're on an old plan like that or their current ones, I promise you.

I'm surprised they're that much more as well TBH, as it seemed that Verizon has been more competitive lately with their service, but I guess that only applied to their phone plans, not data-only plans. I just looked them up and 100GBs is only $710/month! Lolz.. my old unlimited plan was running around $120/month I think after Verizon kept jacking the price up on that in order to try to force everyone off those plans, which is why I dropped/sold it at that time and switched to T-Mobile for less than half the price for nearly the same amount of service.

Another thing you could look into is what Verizon MVNOs are in your area and what plans they offer. The only trade-off with those is that their data is de-prioritized over Verizon's or speeds may be capped depending on the MVNO, but it's usually not noticeable to the end user.
 
Does anybody know if it's possible to use all of my allotted 75gb through the hotspot rather than splitting it up into 30gb hotspot and 75gb total for the phone? How do they even know the difference? I was with AT&T for years and it never mattered, data was data no matter how you used it. 75gb hotspot would be fantastic to have....
 
DellAxim said:
Does anybody know if it's possible to use all of my allotted 75gb through the hotspot rather than splitting it up into 30gb hotspot and 75gb total for the phone? How do they even know the difference? I was with AT&T for years and it never mattered, data was data no matter how you used it. 75gb hotspot would be fantastic to have....
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They know the difference if you're using a Verizon-branded phone because the firmware on it is Verizon specific and will report when you're tethering or not.

If you're using an non-Verizon unlocked phone that's just compatible with Verizon, it may not report this and only count as normal mobile data. At least this is how it worked back when I was on Verizon still, they may have changed their detection methods now. You could also get around it before by using a third-party tethering app (some of them advertised exactly this so it wouldn't count as tethering) from the Play store instead of the native hotspot/tethering option on the phone, but again, I'm not sure if this still works or not now. I would test one yourself to see if that's still the case.

Back when I was on Verizon, tethering wasn't included in their plans and was an add-on for like an extra $20-30/month which fortunately was still for unlimited data too on my old plan. But I got around that at the time by either using a third-party app or root/ROM'd my phones back then to unlock native tethering and hide it from the carrier, or towards the end there I used my Nexus 6P which was unlocked and I could tether fine off of it despite not having it on my plan using the native hotspot/USB tethering on the phone. Same deal with my friend who was also on Verizon's UDP with his unlocked Moto X Pure at the time.

Since Verizon includes at least a small amount of tethering on most or all of their plans now, they may have changed how they track it, so I'm not completely sure if those methods still work now or not.
 
Sell the house and move to a place that has fiber. I could never live in a place without broadband no matter how good the house was.
 
5150Joker said:
Sell the house and move to a place that has fiber. I could never live in a place without broadband no matter how good the house was.
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I'll take peace, privacy, great cost of living, and a beautiful view of the lake where my boat is parked from my bedroom over some shithole with fiber any day of the week. ;)

I live in a vacation town. The difference is I'm on vacation 365 days/year.
 
I been using my moto e4 for main internet for a very long time now with Verizon pre pay unlimited. Yea the only draw back is internet has to follow with me. I use pda.net app to tether all the internet, so its not like i get an extra bill every month. I am the mercy of tower congestion and or wether im being throttled. (im very fast at toggling airplane mode to get around this)
 
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T4rd said:
They know the difference if you're using a Verizon-branded phone because the firmware on it is Verizon specific and will report when you're tethering or not.

If you're using an non-Verizon unlocked phone that's just compatible with Verizon, it may not report this and only count as normal mobile data. At least this is how it worked back when I was on Verizon still, they may have changed their detection methods now. You could also get around it before by using a third-party tethering app (some of them advertised exactly this so it wouldn't count as tethering) from the Play store instead of the native hotspot/tethering option on the phone, but again, I'm not sure if this still works or not now. I would test one yourself to see if that's still the case.
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So what does that mean if I put a phone sim card into a non Verizon router? What is it reporting the data use as...hotspot...phone...other?
 
DellAxim said:
So what does that mean if I put a phone sim card into a non Verizon router? What is it reporting the data use as...hotspot...phone...other?
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A non-Verizon router probably wouldn't work because it doesn't have the hardware/band support to connect to the network. At least I'm not aware of any "unlocked" routers that are compatible with Verizon because typically their customers get them directly from Verizon, but they may exist. The data only gets flagged as tethering if the SIM is in a Verizon-specific phone (again YMMV now though - unlocked phones may report this now too) and the native tethering feature is enabled, because only a phone will report it as tethering. Any other device like a tablet, router, or MiFi will use the standard data on that plan that's assigned to that SIM.

You can test this easily too by taking your SIM out of your existing phone and put it into anything else, even another phone and it will work as long as it's compatible with Verizon's bands/network.
 
I have an unlimited iPad plan on a cell router. $35 unlimited thru att. Its great. The local company couldn't be bothered to try to fix my speed issues which was barely a connection and were idiots.
 
I would ask the nearest neighbor if you could split their bill and use a wifi extender to get always on if they are close enough.
 
Well, I tried an aftermarket tethering app and it definitely broke my 600k throttling, and doesn't seem to shut off after a period of non use. If I can get 75gb at full speed that would be fantastic! I am not able to find any LTE routers that work with Verizon, except of course Verizon branded routers which will probably enforce my limits. All the generic/industrial type routers with sim cards seem to use AT&T for some reason.

I could easily USB tether the phone to a computer and set that up as a router, but it seems like there should be a simpler way to do it - some kind of dedicated device I can plug the phone into. If I really have to I guess I'll just setup a low power PC for this.

I'll have to play with the new tethering app and see just how much data I can squeeze out of it. ;)
 
DellAxim said:
Well, I tried an aftermarket tethering app and it definitely broke my 600k throttling, and doesn't seem to shut off after a period of non use. If I can get 75gb at full speed that would be fantastic! I am not able to find any LTE routers that work with Verizon, except of course Verizon branded routers which will probably enforce my limits. All the generic/industrial type routers with sim cards seem to use AT&T for some reason.

I could easily USB tether the phone to a computer and set that up as a router, but it seems like there should be a simpler way to do it - some kind of dedicated device I can plug the phone into. If I really have to I guess I'll just setup a low power PC for this.

I'll have to play with the new tethering app and see just how much data I can squeeze out of it. ;)
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i use the usb route myself, but i try not to be overly picky about it. (and the phone stays charged) i can easily switch to wifi if it was really bothering me with pda.net app if i just wanted to run abound with the phone.;)
 
I don't really care how the phone connects - but I need it to output to a standard ethernet port so I can connect it to the rest of my network just like any other modem.
 
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