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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss Canada banning internal combustion engine cars, Musk’s social media threat, Kaspersky being banned by the FCC, Instagram’s feed, NASA opening Moon samples, mind reading AR glasses, and more.
Lynne in Trenton, South Carolina listens Online and asked: “Hey, guys. I live in a rural area of South Carolina. Many years ago, I had a hotspot through AT&T and it worked great. I got a couple of updated ones through them over the years, but of course, there was always a small added charge. Well, this last one quit on me. When I called for an updated one, whoever I was talking to didn’t even know about hotspots. I tried explaining to him and, oh my gosh, it was even pictured on my account. Lord have mercy. Seriously. He told me he could send me one for $500. I said, Are you kidding me? After that, I switched over to Consumer Cellular, but they don’t have hotspots either. My question is, why can’t I just buy a hotspot somewhere? They did that with my iPad. I put a SIM card in from Consumer Cellular into my iPad, and everything worked great. But I just want you all to help me and tell me where I can go buy a hotspot. Verizon doesn’t work here where I live, nor does T-Mobile, and I don’t even want to deal with AT&T. Bless your hearts if you can answer these questions, I know it’s not as big a technical question as maybe you normally have, but I need help. Thank you.”
Lynne, surprisingly finding a standalone hotspot is getting harder and harder. Maybe having hotspot data included in every smartphone plan in killing them.
Now you say T-Mobile and Verizon dont work at your house. So unfortunately, that leaves you with only one choice – AT&T, even though you said you dont want to deal with them. Those three are the only network providers. All others use their networks.
AT&T is only selling 3 models at the moment, the Netgear Nighthawk (this is the one that costs $500), an old style stick of the kind that youd plug into a laptop, and an in-car hotspot that looks like it plugs into an OBD2 port.
Outside of AT&T things don’t get much easier, everyone seems to be largely stepping away from standalone hotspot devices.
The exceptions are T-Mobile and Verizon’s 5G home internet, which look and act more or less like traditional modem/router combos, but unfortunately AT&T hasn’t jumped into that game. And, to be honest, if youre in a rural area, I wouldn;t hold your breath for 5G connectivity anyway.
Outside of AT&T’s official offerings the only other option seems to be to buy an older device through a site like Amazon or eBay. There are plenty of older model hotspots up for sale there but all are definitely not equal.
The hotspot device that AT&T is currently selling is a gigabit device, some of the ones you’ll see for sale online have bandwidth limits of as little as 100Mb/s, so depending on what you’re used to, that may be acceptable or not.
It’s also worth just going to AT&T’s website and trying to get the current device through there rather than via a rep, it’s currently listed for $250, not $500, and they’re offering to finance it $6.95/month for 36 months with 0% interest.
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