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LTE Hotspot Tethering Performance?

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Not sure you would want to share a 3G link with more devices than just the car and console. This makes more sense when combined with a 4G/LTE upgrade of the cars cellular data connection. I think that is how Audi does it for their WiFi hotspot feature.

I can't believe providers can charge for tethering...what a rip. AT&T still does, Verizon can't. I'm gonna switch to Verizon.
 
There was a ruling that they can't charge for tethering. So they "fixed" that by only offering it with their most expensive data plan.

If you're talking about Verizon, you can tether with everything but their unlimited data plan. Which I think is fair.

AT&T is not required by law because they didn't buy the same spectrum Verizon did. This spectrum has restrictions which required shared access. When I signed up AT&T's mobile shared plan, you had to go with the loads of GB plan to get the tethering free. Now that isn't the case. Which means I have tethering after all. Woohoo!
 
Firmware 5.0

If you're talking about Verizon, you can tether with everything but their unlimited data plan. Which I think is fair.

AT&T is not required by law because they didn't buy the same spectrum Verizon did. This spectrum has restrictions which required shared access. When I signed up AT&T's mobile shared plan, you had to go with the loads of GB plan to get the tethering free. Now that isn't the case. Which means I have tethering after all. Woohoo!

I was clearly replying to a statement regarding AT&T, and I misremembered the time sequence. First, they charged $20 on top of their more expensive, but no longer unlimited 2GB data plan (see ATT iPhone Tethering: An Extra $20/Month—If You Abandon Unlimited Data ). Then they made it available at no cost only on their most expensive 5GB plan (which is what I was referring to). Last year they started their new data plans that include shared plans, and now they allow tethering on all plans (at least that's how I read it on Cell Phone Plans, Data Plans, Prepaid Plans, & Family Plans from AT&T ) But you still can't use it on older plans such as my grandfathered "unlimited" aka 2-3GB or so plan.

And you're right, the ruling was regarding Verizon which prompted the other providers to update their plans. And AT&T used to shaft their customers for tethering, but now that's history.
 
I'm paying for tethering on Verizon.

So am I, for $30/month. I also have a grandfathered unlimited 4G LTE data plan.

Hopefully by now everyone understands that mobile carrier billing plans are a dogs breakfast of all the previous plans that every subsidiary and acquired company has every offered. You just can't say definitively that AT&T does X, and Verizon does Y, for anything other than brand new customers. Even that is subject to change, promotions, and coercion ;-)
 
I haven't yet tried this in my Model S (I'm 5 weeks, 6 days out from a factory pickup - not that I'm counting...) but I recently purchased a Karma pay-as-you-go LTE hotspot. I've been quite happy with it and it does not lock me in to a monthly data contract.

Check out: Karma | The Pay-As-You-Go Mobile Wi-Fi Provider

It is tiny:

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It recharges using a micro-USB cable and the battery lasts about 8 hours or so. Reaches at least 5MB/sec download speeds in good coverage areas (uses the Sprint/Clear network, so there are definitely coverage gaps).

The concept is that you pre-purchase your data in chunks (if you buy 5 or 10 GB ahead of time the cost/GB drops to about $10/GB, pretty reasonable) and when you have it in your pocket at a public place and someone else uses it (it's visible to everyone as a Karma hotspot but your devices are kept separate - they can't see your laptop, for example), you get a 200MB credit for having 'shared' your bandwidth. They call it 'social bandwidth'. Obviously when you're driving no one will be tacking on to your Karma.

I have found this to more than pay for itself when traveling on business by avoiding the $15-20/night charge for internet at hotels, in good coverage areas the speed is often better than in-hotel wi-fi or the 'free' wifi in airports.

The device is $99 from their website or from Amazon

Coverage isn't complete, however - for example New Orleans (where I have a trip next week) isn't covered at all. They have a detailed coverage map on their website and you can zoom in to see if you'll be covered where you live and travel. I've found the map to be pretty accurate - i.e., no coverage at my home but coverage starts where the map says it should about 3 blocks away.

There are a few other pay-as-you-go hotspots on Amazon, I have no experience with the others. Pricing seems comparable.

When I get my Model S (5 weeks, 5.9 days out - not that I'm counting) I figure I will carry this in my pocket when I'm traveling in areas with good coverage and will see whether the increased latency of maps and internet is worth the $. Easy to turn on and off when needed.
 
I haven't yet tried this in my Model S (I'm 5 weeks, 6 days out from a factory pickup - not that I'm counting...) but I recently purchased a Karma pay-as-you-go LTE hotspot. I've been quite happy with it and it does not lock me in to a monthly data contract.

Check out: Karma | The Pay-As-You-Go Mobile Wi-Fi Provider

Their coverage is pretty good in major metro areas but not so great on the highways between cities or in smaller cities/towns, so it would be good if you are covered in the city where you drive mostly but not so good if you spend much time on the road or in smaller metros. Humorously, where I live in central Austin is right on the edge of a not covered island surrounded by coverage.
 
Wow, you guys get ripped off on your mobile service! The public mobile carrier here provides unlimited national LTE coverage (still limited to cities though) and no-charge tethering/hotspot function for $65CAD per month.

I have found this to more than pay for itself when traveling on business by avoiding the $15-20/night charge for internet at hotels, in good coverage areas the speed is often better than in-hotel wi-fi or the 'free' wifi in airports.

That is insane! I've never been charged for the internet in a hotel! Now that I have an LTE phone, I just pair that to my laptop since it is so much faster than the "free" WiFi. I plan to do the same with my Model S.
 
Wow, you guys get ripped off on your mobile service! The public mobile carrier here provides unlimited national LTE coverage (still limited to cities though) and no-charge tethering/hotspot function for $65CAD per month.
That is insane! I've never been charged for the internet in a hotel! Now that I have an LTE phone, I just pair that to my laptop since it is so much faster than the "free" WiFi. I plan to do the same with my Model S.
Yeah, it's ridiculous. I just started thinking about moving to one of AT&Ts shared plans so that the Tesla could be added to it. I'm currently grandfathered in to a pair of unlimited LTE iPhone plans. For our usage, just moving to plan suitable for our current data usage that would allow me to add the Tesla to the shared data pool will cost $70 more a month than the $130 we're already paying. Then add in whatever the Tesla costs. It'll be cheaper to add it to a standalone plan. Asinine.

Having visited Europe, buying SIMs along the way... American carriers suck. Hard.
 
With FW v5.6 I connected my car to my iPhone using the phone as a personal hotspot - connection was very easy and the car remembers it easily enough when disconnected and reconnected. No noticeable difference in Google Maps but the web browser was faster than normal (although didn't seem as fast as on my home WiFi network).
 
I've been mulling over Tesla's decision to use AT&T, despite Verizon being a better network in most places. I finally realized that with the ability of the car to use a Verizon tether via WiFi gives the best of both worlds: Verizon superior coverage, if you pony up the dough, and an AT&T fallback, which doubles as a way to transceive when AT&T coverage is better than Verizon (hard to believe, but I have heard of such places existing, mostly the backward parts of the country).

I'll note that this would make an aftermarket exterior Verizon car antenna a possibly smart addition, since it would not fall victim to shielding by the car body. Also, in those rare areas where you prefer AT&T (coverage, cost, equipment failure, bringing the equipment out of range, etc.), you may have to remember to disconnect the car from tether.

All in all, not impossible to handle well enough.
 
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I've been mulling over Tesla's decision to use AT&T, despite Verizon being a better network in most places. I finally realized that with the ability of the car to use a Verizon tether via WiFi gives the best of both worlds: Verizon superior coverage, if you pony up the dough, and an AT&T fallback, which doubles as a way to transceive when AT&T coverage is better than Verizon (hard to believe, but I have heard of such places existing, mostly the backward parts of the country).

I'll note that this would make an aftermarket exterior Verizon car antenna a possibly smart addition, since it would not fall victim to shielding by the car body. Also, in those rare areas where you prefer AT&T (coverage, cost, equipment failure, bringing the equipment out of range, etc.), you may have to remember to disconnect the car from tether.

All in all, not impossible to handle well enough.

I always thought Verizon was the clear winner too, but in my drive to Minnesota, my girlfriend and I found just as many places with AT&T and no Verizon as we did the other way around, if not even a little more, most notably in several portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, all rural areas where I would have thought Verizon to be better. I personally am switching to T-Mobile in the near future as I'm tired of Verizon's poor customer service and shady business practices. Sometimes it's just not worth putting up with all the BS to get supposedly superior coverage. Maybe that was Tesla's thinking as well. I'm sure AT&T gave them better terms.
 
I always thought Verizon was the clear winner too, but in my drive to Minnesota, my girlfriend and I found just as many places with AT&T and no Verizon as we did the other way around, if not even a little more, most notably in several portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, all rural areas where I would have thought Verizon to be better. I personally am switching to T-Mobile in the near future as I'm tired of Verizon's poor customer service and shady business practices. Sometimes it's just not worth putting up with all the BS to get supposedly superior coverage. Maybe that was Tesla's thinking as well. I'm sure AT&T gave them better terms.

Speaking in generalities, Verizon has better coverage on the east coast and ATT has better coverage on the west. T-mobile doesn't come close to the network footprint of either. If coverage is a priority, I would stay away from t-mobile.

Having driven cross country this past summer along the northern supercharger route, my experience was that Verizon had a slight edge with 3G coverage, although I was surprised how much was already LTE. In Wyoming I hit a ~100 mile stretch that has no coverage from either network. XM still worked :)
 
I always thought Verizon was the clear winner too, but in my drive to Minnesota, my girlfriend and I found just as many places with AT&T and no Verizon as we did the other way around, if not even a little more, most notably in several portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, all rural areas where I would have thought Verizon to be better. I personally am switching to T-Mobile in the near future as I'm tired of Verizon's poor customer service and shady business practices. Sometimes it's just not worth putting up with all the BS to get supposedly superior coverage. Maybe that was Tesla's thinking as well. I'm sure AT&T gave them better terms.

Warning about T-Mobile,

The good...
I recently switched because both Verizon & AT&T simply didn't work at home (live in the hills), most calls would be missed & go to voicemail without ever ringing, T mobile fixed this by offering T-Mobile Personal CellSpot Router, making calls over WiFi isn't new but using this router prioritizes phone calls & the handoff to the cell network when leaving or arriving home has been great, https://support.t-mobile.com/community/coverage/personal-cellspot/wi-fi-cellspot-router for a $25 deposit they give you a T-Mobile-branded Asus RT-AC68U Dual-band Wireless-AC1900 Gigabit Router that is one of the best routers on the market (replaced an Apple Airport Extreme) I have an iPhone 6+ so make sure your phone can make calls over WiFi.

The bad...
In SoCal anytime your in the hills you won't get service 50% of the time, I am not talking about deep canyons, areas like Pasadena, Porter Ranch, Encino etc...places where you expect to have service T-Mobile fails. Their CEO John Legere is great & I love the Uncarrier moves they have made but regret anytime I am in the hills.
 
Warning about T-Mobile,

The good...
I recently switched because both Verizon & AT&T simply didn't work at home (live in the hills), most calls would be missed & go to voicemail without ever ringing, T mobile fixed this by offering T-Mobile Personal CellSpot Router, making calls over WiFi isn't new but using this router prioritizes phone calls & the handoff to the cell network when leaving or arriving home has been great, https://support.t-mobile.com/community/coverage/personal-cellspot/wi-fi-cellspot-router for a $25 deposit they give you a T-Mobile-branded Asus RT-AC68U Dual-band Wireless-AC1900 Gigabit Router that is one of the best routers on the market (replaced an Apple Airport Extreme) I have an iPhone 6+ so make sure your phone can make calls over WiFi.

The bad...
In SoCal anytime your in the hills you won't get service 50% of the time, I am not talking about deep canyons, areas like Pasadena, Porter Ranch, Encino etc...places where you expect to have service T-Mobile fails. Their CEO John Legere is great & I love the Uncarrier moves they have made but regret anytime I am in the hills.

Yeah, that's what's really making me consider the switch. John Legere has been doing a lot of really cool consumer-minded things. Verizon, in my many interactions with them, have shown a lack of caring for the customer on so many levels and assuming people will just stick around because of their network, and I'm not really interested in being one of them anymore. It looks like my house is in a bad spot for T-Mobile coverage (in the mountains), but I'm pretty sure my current Asus router supports their WiFi calling, so I just need to get a phone that does as well, as you said. I read that in 2014 they made huge investments in expanding their network, so hopefully they'll start challenging AT&T at least in network coverage in the near future. I'll probably just sign up for their test drive where they send you an iPhone 5s for 7 days to try out their network.
 
After several years with AT&T - before the smartphone era and through all generations of the iPhone till recently - I purchased the iPhone 6+ outright and switched to T-Mobile.

Although I've loved some aspects of T-Mobile - unlimited text and data overseas (I was able to make use of it heavily in India and Qatar recently), ease of switching service plans, free tethering and the WiFi calling - coverage has indeed been a problem. Both my home and workplace, right in the heart of the Peninsula in the SF Bay Area, have very weak coverage and I'm lucky to get a 3G signal let alone 4G or LTE. For the past couple of weeks in Hawaii, coverage has been abysmal and I've had to grudgingly defer to my wife's iPhone on AT&T to get online.
 
After several years with AT&T - before the smartphone era and through all generations of the iPhone till recently - I purchased the iPhone 6+ outright and switched to T-Mobile.

Although I've loved some aspects of T-Mobile - unlimited text and data overseas (I was able to make use of it heavily in India and Qatar recently), ease of switching service plans, free tethering and the WiFi calling - coverage has indeed been a problem. Both my home and workplace, right in the heart of the Peninsula in the SF Bay Area, have very weak coverage and I'm lucky to get a 3G signal let alone 4G or LTE. For the past couple of weeks in Hawaii, coverage has been abysmal and I've had to grudgingly defer to my wife's iPhone on AT&T to get online.

I signed up for a line with t-mobile (2nd phone) just for the international access. Then I discovered the hard way they will give you the slowest speed the local network can provide. In many places I had 2G. Not worth it. Much better to just pick up a local sim.