cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2312546
I noticed that my cousins had something like this.
What model or brand should I get?
Does this model work well?
https://www.amazon.com/RoamWiFi-Hotspot-150Mbps-Download-Anywhere/dp/B08G8FK29N/
I highly recommend getting a Inseego MiFi X PRO 5G hotspot from The Calyx Institute. $700 for the first year (13 months if you use my link, plus I’ll get a free month too - full disclosure), $500/year thereafter. T-Mobile (Mobile Citizen) service with speeds exceeding 1gbps in ideal conditions. Unlimited throughput without caps or throttling of any kind. It also includes USB tethering, an Ethernet port, and a built-in VPN client.
You can buy it anonymously, including shipping it to a FedEx pickup point under a pseudonym, and the money goes to an okay-ish Internet freedom / privacy organization. Since you’re giving money to a nonprofit, you can write the expenditure off on your taxes (minus the value of the hardware - they’ll give you paperwork for that).
You can’t use it outside of the USA, but I have had outstanding quality of service from mine inside the USA, and regularly push a few hundred gigabytes through it every month, all for less money than the baseline 5G hotspot offered commercially from T-Mobile, which I believe caps out at 30GB.
All made possible by Sprint taking $1B+ in government funding to expand their LTE infrastructure, and permanently agreeing to provide low-cost uncapped mobile internet to non-profits, with zero limits on what the nonprofit uses it for (including giving it as a gift to members). T-mobile bought Sprint and now they’re on the hook for it forever.
Mobile Citizen hotspots are also offered by local libraries, so you can probably check one out from yours if you want to give it a test-run before committing to buying your own.
I don’t mind “okay-ish” non-profits or Internet freedom / privacy organizations.
“Okay-ish” is usually damn better than the alternative, tbh.
Also, it’s good that government funding helped in this case; with everything being privatized or defunded, it’s a miracle that government funding actually helped out in this case!
I’ll consider getting what you recommended. Thank you!
Why not tether your phone to the laptop with usb or bluetooth?
…Good point.
Also, you can use bluetooth with your phone vis a vis your Lenovo tablet?
Not sure. You can certainly try.
That would be a redundancy for the vast majority of modern phones. Most models have the ability to project a wireless hotspot with a fairly good radius.
Tethering is faster and more secure (hotspots can be cracked).
Hotspots are as secure as any WiFi network. That is to say, it depends on the encryption standard you use (WPA2/WPA3) and the password/shared key. If you use a strong 40-character password with WPA3, no one’s cracking that. With a password like that, even WPA2 is sufficient.
True, but rarely have I seen people use a 40-character password for their wifi network. Especially not a phone hotspot.
Who is going to be cracking your hotspot while you sit in your car?
The attacker doesn’t need to be next to you to crack the password, they just need to collect enough packets and then crack it at home.
