

Ask HN: Prepaid mobile hotspots with no expiration? 3G, 4G, or LTE. - chatmasta

I&#x27;m wondering if anyone has a good solution to this problem:<p>I want a mobile hotspot so that I can browse the Internet on my MacBook while riding the train&#x2F;bus&#x2F;whatever. I want to prepay for data transfer with no expiration. e.g., pay $50 for 5gb of data transfer that I can use whenever I want.<p>From my research, it seems like the major carriers all offer hotspots, but either confine you to a monthly contract, or offer prepaid plans with expirations. So yes, you can pre-pay $50 for 5gb of data, but you need to pay it again the next month even if you did not use all 5gb of data.<p>It seems like the best solution is a USB modem with a SIM card slot, coupled with a prepaid data plan loaded onto a SIM card. But this raises many questions: Which USB modem? Which bands should it support? Where to buy the SIM card?<p>I imagine this is a problem someone on HN has already solved. But the literature online is surprisingly sparse. So... any recommendations?
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win_ini
Depending on your level of risk taking, you may be interested in something
like this from eBay: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/MOBILE-HOTSPOT-FLASHED-TO-
VERIZON-PP...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/MOBILE-HOTSPOT-FLASHED-TO-VERIZON-PP-
UNLIMITED-3G-INTERNET-
MIFI-2200-4510L-4620L-/221275158155?pt=US_Mobile_Broadband_Devices&hash=item338506f68b)

The units are flashed and use Verizon's prepaid Internet plans but are
effectively unlimited - if you prepay your account for a year - you get
unlimited 3G data during that time for about $100/yr.

I couldn't quite believe when I stumbled across it - but it reminds me of
hacked satellite encryption back in the day. Hard to believe this would
actually work - or keep working for a long time - but based on some
questioning - these eBay vendors stand behind their products....

Perhaps someone has a better idea of how these actually function....I don't.

~~~
rahimnathwani
They may be using a plan which was not intended for mi-fi or smartphone use. I
guess they reprogram the IMEI or equivalent of Sim ID of a 'basic phone' onto
the Android phone.

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phamilton
"Internet on the go" at Walmart.

~~~
gcb0
that's actually very nice to have in the wallet for when t-mobile/att has no
coverage and you have to work. any idea which network it uses?

any first hand experiences?

~~~
phamilton
I believe it's an MVNO for Sprint.

I haven't used Internet On the Go, but I have used TruConnect which is the
same company. TruConnect worked alright. I have a personal connection to the
company and did some work for them at one point in time so I'm not completely
impartial, but their average customer was a 200 MB / month customer. Any more
and a subscription would makes sense.

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battlesoap
I was looking at [this]([https://yourkarma.com/](https://yourkarma.com/)) the
other day. It looks like this is what you're looking for.

$14 per GB is pretty expensive though, but the data doesn't expire.

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raw_creations
T-Mobile $45.00 per month "unlimited" +$5.00 more for HotSpot

~~~
gcb0
that is exactly what OP is not looking for

