What do you do for internet? I don't have any intention to live full time in a vehicle, but I want to be able to take off for an arbitrary amount of time and work while away.
I've done a few test outings but generally end up reinforcing my conclusion that cellular is not overly reliable when you're more than an hour or so outside a moderate-sized town. I currently have to carry equipment for two separate carriers (AT&T and Verizon) and a signal booster to have a reasonable success rate at getting a strong enough signal to work.
The next avenue I'm exploring is satellite internet, but it is significantly more expensive.
i worked remotely for 5 months in a class C RV, in some really remote areas, across 36 states total. in my experience, internet was great 90% of the time. it was faster in rural/small town rather than metro areas, i'm assuming because there's less load on the towers. the worst parts were actually in national parks, which had almost no service. some mountainous areas were bad depending on which side of the hills you were on. deeply forested areas were hit or miss. usually, it didn't take more than driving a few hundred yards to to go from bad to acceptable service. anything near a highway was pretty much great. i also worked from a lot of parking lots in commercial areas, all of which had good cell service. i was able to skype and work over SSH fine. it was as good as broadband in most cases. i was worried about the internet the most when i started the trip, but it turned out to be the least of my problems.
i used ~150GB/month, with an unlimited verizon plan. i used a dual antenna hotspot, with an extra antenna extender. if i had 3g service somewhere, i could use the hotspot and antenna and usually get lte. i thought i would need satellite, but i didn't. its also slow and expensive. slower than 3g probably.
when done, i sold the RV for the same price i bought it for, saw a lot of the US, saved $12k on rent, spent $2k on gas and $700 on tires, $200/mo on internet... that's about it. i got a LOT for my money
I live in a fairly mountainous area of the country and prefer the more secluded spots away from major highways, which has been the main reason for the very limited cellular service. I'm pretty much the opposite of you -- I was actually more optimistic about cellular service before trying it and am now questioning its availability.
A week ago I was in northern Idaho on Priest Lake. Within my camp site I was unable to get a usable cell signal with the phone alone, but with my booster and a directional antenna I could get up to around -90-100 dBm. This worked until the rain came. That tower and other rural towers seem to frequently use microwave backhaul links to get connectivity, so the rain fade was sufficient to make that connection unusable for a couple days.
You have to let go - I got 4G mobile wifi earlier this year, its fast as heck and sometimes when I don't get a signal.. I don't connect to the internet! Can always read a book, or go for a walk.
I'm kind of extreme though; I've been using cellular data almost exclusively since 2001 so its nothing new. I've spent plenty of time out of range. I think that if you are out of range and you need to connect; its time to move on.
Problem is, I can't let go. At least, not all of the time. I'm a remote employee rather than it being my own endeavor, so there's a certain expectation of communication in addition to needing to interface with our various services from ticketing to source control. My ultimate goal is to be able to work from a beautiful place, and once I'm done for the day, to go out and explore it.
No I have a mobile phone for voice calls. In the beginning I used dialup, then GPRS or EDGE directly through the phone (cable and later Bluetooth connection). Then I got a separate device for data, first an ICOM 3G USB dongle which I used for many years but as of this year I'm on 4G, with a Huawei 4G mobile wifi thing.
I have a raspberry pi setup as router with a USB Alfa wifi adaptor for rebroadcasting free wifi. I also have a 4G hotspot as a fallback.
I've found the pi doesn't work well because it's having power or IO issues where the external adaptor is slow when rebroadcasting on internal wifi. I'm upgrading to an Intel NUC when I have the time to finish setting it up.
I've done a few test outings but generally end up reinforcing my conclusion that cellular is not overly reliable when you're more than an hour or so outside a moderate-sized town. I currently have to carry equipment for two separate carriers (AT&T and Verizon) and a signal booster to have a reasonable success rate at getting a strong enough signal to work.
The next avenue I'm exploring is satellite internet, but it is significantly more expensive.