Extra info if you don't feel like reading the below: talking about the car's reception (not phone), in Canada, cannot be plugged in, cannot be connected to WiFi, yes this is a first world problem but the question stands for the $75k car.
After re-reading, that sentence was a bit of a dog's breakfast as well
if it was unclear, I meant to say it worked fine for a few weeks and has been a problem ever since.
Hadn't thought of a booster. No idea how they work, but I assume it needs wall power which would be a problem. Will look into it.
Yes exactly, for the car. Smartphone has spotty but seemingly better connection in the same area, despite being the worst phone she's had so far in terms of reception. Speedtest seemed to indicate it was using Bell FWIW.
Huh, hadn't heard of these femtocell things. Interesting.
Walking out works
most times, but not if the car is frozen solid due to it's California-climate inspired design choices that require preheating the car for 30 minutes before you can even more a door handle. Being completely honest, least expensive isn't the goal. It's a $75k car. If something like the $200 Tesla fob would solve this, it would be an instant buy for us.
Charging not yet available, and even if it was it wouldn't be allowed on the work WiFi network (to make a very long story short, this is fair and agreeable).
The goal of preconditioning the car is twofold: Comfort, and actually getting into the car if frozen. So for most times when it's just for comfort, yes a few minutes of being uncomfortable could be tolerated, but... also would be preferable if our previously-mentioned $75k car could have a reliable "remote start"! Bearing lack of comfort that I didn't have to with previous vehicles that were half the price isn't something I had in mind, quite honestly. First world problems, eh?
I
think I've done this on Vancouver Island (WiFi but no LTE). However I'm not sure I see the risk. They're using TLS and hopefully up to date on modern practices in dealing with it to prevent attacks like SSL splitting (if this weren't the case, it would be extremely easy bounty money at one of those hacker conferences in which Tesla participates). Additionally, you can't connect to most public networks anyways since they have login pages that Tesla doesn't yet support.