What do people here know about Mobile WiFi (MiFi) hotspots?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I am working at home now. I am teleworking.

Telework has been an option for years. Before the recent unpleasantness, I never did telework. There's a reason for that.

I live in an old house. I do not have cable TV. I watch TV over the air. My telephone service is provided via a twisted pair of copper wires. Verizon is my plain old telephone service (POTS) provider. I can have dialup or DSL. Anything more than that requires that I make changes to my existing infrastructure.

I did break down recently and buy an Apple iPhone 6S. It's a Tracfone. The only thing that makes it a Tracfone is the SIM. It is not locked, but I have been on Tracfone for years with no complaint.

To use a laptop, though, I’d have to have a cable run from the street to the house. Tracfone won't let me use the iPhone as a mobile hotspot. At that point, I’d have to take the connection into and through the house, either by running wires within the walls, or putting wireless base stations within range of where I wanted work. I'd also have to sign up for some sort of plan. I got tired of trying to look it up online, so I never got around to doing anything about it.

I had been wondering if there were an alternative to running wires or cable all over. Could I access some internet service provider in a wireless manner? It turns out that that is possible. I just didn’t know the right words to use at Google.

On that last Monday we were able to be in the building that is my place of work, I was handed my just-retired boss’s Verizon Jetpack, and I took that and my GFE (government-furnished equipment) Dell 5480 laptop home.

The jetpack is a mobile hotspot. It will find a Verizon antenna if there is one nearby and connect to that. No wires. I am close enough to a Verizon antenna that the system works just about glitch-free. There is usually a mid-day stretch when everyone is on the system, and it slows down, but that’s an issue with the workplace servers, not a Verizon issue.

The bill is being sent to my employer, and I can’t imagine what it must cost for the data going back and forth. The Verizon Jetpack I'm using runs on 4G or LTE. There are 5G devices, but they cost a fortune. I see there are home plans that use mobile hotspots.

This arrangement is working well for me, much better than I would have expected. I see Verizon has plans that rely on them. A little bit of data per month, not expensive at all. More data per month, a little higher cost. You know how that works.

I'd like to hear some thoughts from people here. Do you have any recommendations?

I wouldn't mind having a subscription TV account, but I suspect all that streaming would really run up a bill. Streaming online radio would use a lot less data, I'd imagine.

Thank you.