Wifi hot spot

[jdelrizzle]

Hi y'all!
first post here, I had gotten started in the world of iPads almost 2 years ago when the ipad2 was released got me a
Ipad 2 32 AT&T 3G loved it, until my son dropped it. Well that was the perfect opportunity to get the new ipad with 4g
LTE once again with AT&T, well my question is how do I make my ipad a wifi hotspot, do I need to purchase a monthly
5gb plan and have a smart phone plan with AT&T or is the purchase of the 5gb plan all I need, I've read different things
from different sites here on the www, please help me out y'all.

 

[jdelrizzle]

Well I got my answer, turns out AT&T now offers the wifi hot spot, but you have to purchase the 5gb a month for 50 bucks, my next question is how fast/good would my ipad hot spot be, do you guys think it would be smart to cancel my current Internet plan with my provider and attempt to run my household off of my AT&T ipad wifi hot spot, is 5gb enough for a month.

 

[pmstirling]

I assume you have verified that iPads have the necessary hardware to be a wifi hotspot?

I recently moved to a part of town that does not have "regular" broadband, ie no dsl or cable. We have been using our Android phones as wifi hotspots, through T-Mobile. They seem to be the best carrier for this as they include the hotspot capability with their 5GB monthly plan (I believe both AT&T and Verizon charge extra for hotspot). You must have hotspot set up with the carrier or they will block you!

I would say that it's acceptable given that we have no other options, but if I had dsl/cable available I'd get that as both are cheaper, faster and have unlimited data allowances. It's irritating to have to be turning the phone's wifi hotspot on and off, and the wifi hotspot hardware drains the battery fast, I really have to keep the phone plugged in when hotspot is enabled. After a few months of this, I'm seriously considering getting satellite Internet, 5GB per month isn't really enough if you're doing more than just email and web surfing.

Hth
Patrick

 

[digitalbits6]

The cellular model is shifting from "Pay for minutes and text", to "Pay for Data". 5GB may seem like a lot for a SmartPhone and maybe even for an iPad2, but iPad(3) has HD and from my tests, can use a little more data packets (partially because it's faster, and partially because some content is sent in higher resolution). But once you open up either your SmartPhone or iPad as a hotspot for laptops, then the data usage starts to run up very fast. Web pages for laptops are not optimized like they are for mobile web pages. In fact, there are many ads and videos that try to pop-up all the time. All these are big data users and your 5GB will run out so fast.

So, unless you have some nice grandfathered in unlimited data plan to share, I'd think twice about this strategy. At a minimum, run some tests of web usage and see how much bandwidth you are using up. ISPs for households Internet accounts limit speeds, but not the total number of bytes of data. But 4G LTE providers seem to give you great speed but at measured data GB amounts.

Good luck on finding the cheapest GB at the fastest speeds.

 

[jdelrizzle]

The cellular model is shifting from "Pay for minutes and text", to "Pay for Data". 5GB may seem like a lot for a SmartPhone and maybe even for an iPad2, but iPad(3) has HD and from my tests, can use a little more data packets (partially because it's faster, and partially because some content is sent in higher resolution). But once you open up either your SmartPhone or iPad as a hotspot for laptops, then the data usage starts to run up very fast. Web pages for laptops are not optimized like they are for mobile web pages. In fact, there are many ads and videos that try to pop-up all the time. All these are big data users and your 5GB will run out so fast.

So, unless you have some nice grandfathered in unlimited data plan to share, I'd think twice about this strategy. At a minimum, run some tests of web usage and see how much bandwidth you are using up. ISPs for households Internet accounts limit speeds, but not the total number of bytes of data. But 4G LTE providers seem to give you great speed but at measured data GB amounts.

Good luck on finding the cheapest GB at the fastest speeds.

Hey makes sense that's good looking out, I guess only benefit from using my ipad as a wifi hot spot would be if the only devices using my wifi were phones and small tablets, I guess it's not all that its hyped up to be even the Verizon one.

 

[Wolfpuppies3]

My iPhone 5 is my mobile hotspot and it works just fine; at LTE speeds it approaches wifi speeds. I don't need two hotspots so never activated that on my new iPad.

 

[jrcinnh]

Well I got my answer, turns out AT&T now offers the wifi hot spot, but you have to purchase the 5gb a month for 50 bucks, my next question is how fast/good would my ipad hot spot be, do you guys think it would be smart to cancel my current Internet plan with my provider and attempt to run my household off of my AT&T ipad wifi hot spot, is 5gb enough for a month.

Does anyone know this for sure? I see that on the iPad itself under the change plan menu, it says the $50 plan include hotspot, but does that mean the iPad can be a hotspot, like Verizon or that the iPad can use the AT&T public hotpsots?

The Verizon iPad 3 has a menu to allow you to turn on the internal hotspot, the AT&T version does not have this, at least with 5.1.1. Does buyingthe $50 5gb plan add the button? Anyone using this plan?

 

[scifan57]

Does anyone know this for sure? I see that on the iPad itself under the change plan menu, it says the $50 plan include hotspot, but does that mean the iPad can be a hotspot, like Verizon or that the iPad can use the AT&T public hotpsots?

The Verizon iPad 3 has a menu to allow you to turn on the internal hotspot, the AT&T version does not have this, at least with 5.1.1. Does buyingthe $50 5gb plan add the button? Anyone using this plan?

Yes, the iPad 3 can generate a wifi hotspot if supported by your carrier. The hotspot option will not appear in settings until your carrier activates it.
Any iPad can use anybody's public wifi hotspot.