Re: Moving from 56k modem
Hi Richard.
I faced a similar situation although a bit differently a few months ago.
The only WISP in the area announced they were shutting down the present
service which ran at 512 kbps and would offer upgrades to a new service
that runs 10 Mbps. Fine, but what they did not say officially was that
anyone outside of five miles from the towers they would implement the
new service on would be out of range and thus no service.
My remaining choices for the network here at the farm were satellite or
cellular. Our phones are with US Cellular and the other options were
Verizon or AT&T. After speaking with the USCC agent I opted for their
20 GB/mo shared service between the two cell phones and an LTE router
for the farm office head end. While the data plan is $140/mo, the agent
used loyalty discounts to arrive at a price of about $200/mo for four
devices (two smart phones, the LTE router, and a plain flip phone) which
was equivalent to our old cell plan plus the former WISP charge per
month.
With the shared data plan our smart phones now have hotspot capability
enabled and I have had no issues using my Motorola Electrify M as a USB
tether with Debian 8. Network manager picks it right up and away I go
with 'Net access where I don't have access to WiFi. The phone is
running Android Kit Kat. I have also used an ipad mini (supplied by my
employer) as a USB tether as well. If you don't use Network manager you
may need to do some manual network configuration, but just be sure that
the plan you go with allows USB (and probably WiFi) tethering and you
should be good to go. Perhaps even try it in the store to be sure.
- Nate
--
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true."
Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us
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