Using a cell phone to get internet?

keninaz

New Member
I have been thinking about upgrading my cell service and just doing away with my current cable based internet but I am concerned about my usage using the cell phone to receive data.
My wife and I each have a computer but don't download much at all.
I assume the cell phone can act as a modem and be connected via a wireless router like I have now to get on the internet.
If I drop the cable (don't watch most of the crap on the cable anyway) and still want to watch movies for example I read somewhere that a typical download for an HD movie is 2 GB? Is that a compressed file or what your data will reflect when downloaded? I do like to watch movies and I am concerned that I can spend a lot of money downloading the stuff from whatever service.
I am handicapped and getting older so it's getting tougher and tougher for me to get out and about. I would like to save some money over the $190 I spend now for internet and CATV. That of course is in addition to our basic cell phone service that we don't use much now of course which runs $64 a month.
 
Ditch cable TV and just keep cable internet. Then purchase subscriptions to Netflix and Hulu and invest in an HD antenna for your house to catch the basic channels over the air.
 
You will need cable internet still. Yes, you can use your cell phone for a hotspot, however most providers only give you a few gigabytes of tethering data with your plan, and you will end up paying a LOT for mobile data, especially if you plan to stream video. The average cost is around $5-$10 per GB of data.
 
Unless you have an unlimited data plan you will be restricted to watching only a few movies per month (probably 1 or 2) before you start incurring data overage charges (I have Verizon and they charge $10 per gigabyte). Streaming movies from Netflix uses approximately 1GB per hour so each hour of watching Netflix could cost you $10.

I would definitely keep the cable internet.
 
190 is a bit steep for TV+Interwebz, as before I'd just drop the TV portion. If you wanted to save more you might be able to tone down your bandwidth package depending on your usage patterns.
 
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