I was hoping "to cut the cord" and go completely cellular with telephone and internet.
With some false assumptions, I thought we could get equivalent service by getting another Consumer Cellular Home Phone Base to replace our Duluth telephone line and a wireless hot spot to replace the DSL service. My back of the envelope calculation showed the monthly cost would be about equivalent.
Another Home Phone Base would cost us about $10/month and all calls would be charged to my wife's cell phone account. Since we rarely use all our minutes, we wouldn't have any other extra costs.
A quick search of the web for wifi hot spots came up with the AT&T Unite which would cost about $50 per month. Since we pay about $60 per month for our phone and DSL service, this looked like a break-even deal. Since the hot spot was portable, we would have the bonus of using it at our cabin. The deal-maker was that one commenter said he often got 19Mbps with his Unite. Hot diggedy dog! Greased lightning. A lot better than zero Mbps at our cabin and around 6Mbps at our house.
So, on Tuesday off I went to the local AT&T store to buy one. A friendly representative met me at the door and answered all my questions. He showed my the Unite which is about the size of a cell phone. When I told him that I had read that it was capable of 19Mbps he replied that some people even got 25Mbps.
I went through all the rigamarole of filling out a contract, but then got ticker shock. With all the taxes and fees the monthly cost for 5 gigabytes would be $63!! Oh, well, maybe it will be worth it to have access at the cabin and having three times the speed I now have.
The contract did include a 14-day return policy.
I brought the hot spot home, unpacked it, read the instructions, assembled it (insert battery and put on back cover), and turned it on. I set my laptop to access it and was surprised that it seemed slow. I ran an Ookla speed test on my MacBook and found it was doing less than 4Mbps compared to over 4Mbps with the DSL modem. I ran similar tests with my iPhone and my wife's iMac. I moved the Unite close to windows and received even slower speeds. The only upside was that upload speeds with the Unite were faster than with DSL.
I also found that the megabytes were also adding up, even when I did nothing. After a half-afternoon of use, I had used over 220 megabytes. With both of us online we would easily exceed 5 gigabytes in a month; that could add $10-20/month to our bill.
I reluctantly repacked the unit and took it back to the AT&T store yesterday. Surprise, the same friendly representative met me at the door again.
He was sympathetic to my problem, but he wanted to double-check. When he used the hotspot with his iPhone, he was getting around 20Mbps! He checked the coverage map and found a tower within three blocks of our house. Oops! It won't become active until December. So, he took our unit back and waived the restocking fee.
We said we would periodically check with my wife's Consumer Cellular phone (AT&T network).
When we got home, I downloaded Ookla to my wife's cellphone. Test runs gave less than 3Mpbs! Even when I pointed the phone at the nearby tower! Oops! I was still using our DSL modem! I turned WiFi off on my wife's cell phone and tried again. The ping was slower than through DSL, but the download never even began! It stayed on 0.00 until I got a message about connection error. We are in the desert compared to up on the hill in the mall area.
We'll keep checking the local tower. If and when service improves to about 20Mps, we'll reconsider cutting the cord.
Note: This article was corrected 2013-10-24 to state that the first speed test with my wife's cellphone was using our DSL modem and that the test failed on the AT&T network.
