[Poll] LTE Tablet vs Tether off phone?

Haha this is me so far. Couple of days to go.

And thatā€™s me on wifi at home and mostly wifi at work :wink: You should have seen it when I was unlimited data and there was a delay in getting my home broadband connected when I moved house :innocent:

An interesting question!

I prefer to use tablets with my own LTE.

That has several reasons!
Firstly, I have a very good mobile phone contract, which has a second SIM included, on the other hand, I feel it is very convenient that I do not suck both devices empty / or ne dragging power bank must. I can empty the tablet and Iā€™m still reachable ā€¦ (my tablet bag only fits a cable and a small charger)

I have also often found that just in Bussines hotels impossible prices for Wi-Fi are required or the WLAN (if free) a 56k modem resembles :wink:

In addition, I can pass on my tablet to friends & family and does not have to stay in the immediate vicinity!

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I prefer wifi as I only have 3gb data to share with 3 people. We have only surpassed this once. My internet is through Shaw who has 80000 hotspots in our province. What this means is that I can register up to 6 devices and when I am near a hotspot I automatically connect to that (my) wifi with my registered device. Shaw sets up hotspots wherever they are needed and as long as you have an account you will auto connect within range. When I am driving I turn it off as I will pop in and out of wifi several times on my commute and it makes my gps unstable.

Who is that with?

I got 20gb data
Unlimited mins n texts (can all be used in Europe)
With a shiny new Sam S8 ā€¦ Ā£40 (GBP) per month.
On O2

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I just tether off my phone so my kids can use their ipads or tablets when we are on trips.

I have an LTE Samsung Galaxy Tab s3 and I love it.I bought this before I got unlimited internet again though (22gb then they trottle you, but I average 30gb and Iā€™ve never noticed slower speeds).

If I were making a tablet purchase today I wouldnā€™t get the LTE version for many of the reasons mentioned here. In the tech culture we live in, we always have our phones near us. It is our go-to #1 device. So, it makes sense given the ability to turn on the hotspot without even pulling the phone out of your pocket.

I really only use my tablet for work, when making public presentations and using the tablet for my notes/agenda. Other than that, it sits in my bag and $10 comes out each month LOL. Maybe I should use it more, but as a 26 year old, my phone is always more convenient to use.

My 1st phone would be almost as old as you! Hahahaha :astonished::older_man:

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My first phone was a Sanyo flip phone in 2006 LOL.

So via an employee of ATT I got a family discount 50% and ATT was competitive but they left ATT. I have used Straightalk which is a ATT MVNO ~$45/month about 3GB. Currently on T-Mobile family plan which they donā€™t sell 4 lines for $120+tax=$137 with 10GB/line and carries over unused and its proving sufficient. I know of the new ā€œoneā€ plans $160 with Netflix but it actually is worse for tethering, I phoned customer service, under the legacy plan I get to use my 10GB at LTE speeds tethered, under the latest plan its throttled for video so customer service said my tethering would be worse. They offered to let me move over to the new plan for a month and promise to let me roll back if bad but I didnā€™t see sufficient gain. $34 total cost per line with 10GB and stash to handle the odd busy month is working out good enough now.

The puzzle was the unfair disadvantage of a data line. When I moved to the T-Mobile family plan I had 3 lines for $120 ($40/month) and the family plan was 4 lines for the same $120/month so ā€œ4th line for freeā€. So I asked for a data line as at the time I had a LTE tablet. They said no it had to be a voice. So I put the voice line in a dual-sim phone and sold the tablet and bought a non-LTE tablet. The LTE tablet cost increase is small, in my last purchase it was $20. No the cost is the line which at $20/month would nearly triple the 2 year total cost of ownership of a LTE tablet. Given tethering was ā€œfreeā€ due to the weirdness of the plan offering, it put the nail in the LTE coffin. I can also LTE to ATT in dual-sim (work gives me ATT phone line for free) I can tether to ATT if I want too.

UK vs US. The size of the US is the same as the size of EU so USA carriers now let you roam for a similar number of people, but geographically larger. When visiting UK I use a dual-SIM phone with a Giffgaff 5 goodybag. T-Mobile US allows free unlimited 2G roaming so a dual-SIM phone with a local UK phone number and data for visits is a cheap combination.

Locked vs unlocked phones. In US and UK whenever I priced it, was cheaper to buy an unlocked phone separately and then pay for SIM-only plans. I know for @bobbleheaderman up in Canada its the opposite.

In USA on T-Mobile they have data capacity on limited plans but also a ā€œbinge onā€ where data used for a fairly long list of video and audio streaming services does not count to your limited data plan, which is why a limited plan works out ok as then its just for everything else. The unlimited plans cost more.

Snapshot of the most heavy user in our family

So you see via Binge-on it makes 10GB/month enough, if it were not for that theyā€™d be needing 30GB and then youā€™re talking a little more / month for unlimited (which is throttled >50GB in peak times in small print).

The limited plans allow LTE for tethering, the unlimited do not. So it makes sense to tether on limited plans.

T-Mobileā€™s problem is patchier coverage, not as good as ATT and many in forums are very tied to Verizon due to coverage.

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I never regretted the choice of buying an WiFi-only tablet. Luckily I have enough data on my cellphone plan to share with the tables whenever I use it. But, truth be told, about 85% of the time I use the tables I have access to WiFi - and about 70% of that time is on a trusted WiFi.

But I never used my tablet for data-heavy stuff when tethering from my phone - no long videos, for instance. I always wait for a WiFi connection for that.

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I use straight talk but in the verizon network since itā€™s the only phone service that works where I live, but in town all of them work. Straight talk is now 10Gb of data for just $45 and you can tether as needed. I have tethered to my comouter, tablet and two other phones without experiencing slow downs

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I considered an LTE tablet back when Tmobile had free data for life. I agree the only benefit of having LTE integrated is simplicity (for people who are extremely confused by technology), which is why it is hard to justify the cost, specially if it is recurring (monthly charge). I also question the ā€œconvenienceā€ of using it as a hotspot since they are bigger than a battery pack to keep the phone charged or a standalone hotspot.

Iā€™m with EE. Itā€™s better for us because we have a call centre in Merthyr and great signal because of it.
I pay Ā£46 a month. 25gb and free BT Sport on my phone :thumbsup:

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Iā€™m on net10 att towers. The service is spotty and slow where I am. The population boom is to much for our LTE towers. We spend a lot of time at slower speeds. In town it works great.

What prepaid company are you with that allows tethering?

Iā€™m with Cricket. Tethering is an extra $10 a month, but their Unlimited 2 plan is 4 lines for $100. I split it with some friends ($25 each), so even though tethering costs more, it is still much cheaper than I was paying for AT&T. And my service still worked great despite the large crowd at the Steelers game I went to this weekend.

I would say it really depends on the situation.

I have Project Fi and can get a Data-Only SIM for no additional cost that ties into my plan. Data is the same cost as it is for my phone, so it wouldnā€™t make a difference if I tether or used the LTE tablet.

An LTE tablet also makes sense if you donā€™t want to use up the battery on your phone (Tethering destroys battery life). It can also be a better connection as it skips the (WiFi) middleman.

Tethering (mobile hotspot) used to be viable on Verizonā€¦but that was when I had a fixed data plan (6GB shared). Once I moved to the ā€œnew unlimitedā€ plan, data is indeed unlimited BUT as far as tethering speed is concerned, itā€™s speed capped at a dismal 600kbps on any device that is tethered to the phone (at least on the lower-level plans):

ā€œAnd while Mobile Hotspot is unlimited, tethering speeds are capped at a maximum of 600kbps from the very first kilobyte of usage. The original Verizon Unlimited plan allows tethering at 4G LTE speeds for the first 10GB of data, with speeds reduced to 3G afterwards.ā€

I donā€™t know if other carriers are doing the same as Iā€™ve only been with Verizon (for 15 years or so).

That being said, my first iPad was a cellular model (iPad 3) but I never activated the service and always used it only on Wi-Fi. All other iPads I purchased from then on (iPad 4, iPad mini (1st gen), iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4) were Wi-Fi only.

For years, there were only 2 ways to tether data, ā€¦

1, have a three contract (UK)
2, some business tariffs allowed and rarely some UK networks did a family tariff that allowed tethering,

Generally, apart from those 2 exceptions, tethering wasnā€™t really done in the UKā€¦ Mind back in the day, you had dial up, you could use your tariff minutes to access internet by using your mobile as the modem.

Now, slowly but surely with networks allowing/selling larger data deals, they allow tethering.

Until THIS contract, I wouldnā€™t have considered tethering, as I only just had enough data for myself. Now I have 20gb monthly, I will tether with the Mrs when out if there is no WiFi nearby as she is on monthly tariff and doesnā€™t get a lot of data. To be fair, the vast majority of wifi-ing, is at home, on the home internet/WiFi deal.