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Comment by socialist_coder | Hacker News Reader

Here in the US, we recently moved into a new house (rural) and my broadband wasn't setup yet, so I needed a temporary solution to continue working from home.

So, I headed off to the mall to compare mobile AP plans. Literally every option was either mega expensive (think multiple hundreds of dollars per month for 100 GB or the price was right but the service area was crap).

A lot of the mobile data plans actually only apply to direct usage from your phone. Not when using it as an AP (tethering). Those all have separate bandwidth limits. The standard amount on most plans (that you also have to pay extra for) is around 10 gigabytes. And, I didn't even find a normal consumer plan from ATT / Verizon (the only carriers with good service here) that let you buy more than that. You have to buy a super expensive business plan.

So yeah, fuck US LTE data plans. Absolute garbage if you actually try to use it for any serious work from a PC.

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It's not a data plan, but I'm using straight talk's $55 "unlimited" plan. Supposedly I'll get throttled or whatever after 50GB or so based on congestion, but I'm generally over 100GB just from tethering and I've never been throttled. Not sure what network they use, I think Verizon. Might be an option to consider if you haven't yet.

Good plans come up semi frequently, you just need to know where to look. I worked from an RV full time for 2 years using only cell plans and I was pretty happy with the plans I had. I still use my Verizon Grandfathered Unlimited plan for home internet and routinely use >100GB/month for $80/month. That plus an AT&T connected car plan with unlimited data for $25/month and I am set. I spent a lot of time following https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/ before pulling the trigger on plans.

It's pretty crazy to think I've been using the same data plan for well over a decade but that Verizon grandfathered unlimited really is worth it. Some months I don't use much but others I can go well into the hundreds and hundreds of GB without breaking a sweat.

I know T-mobile has some coverage issues but their phone plan has free phone tethering. I think its capped at 3G speed but works great for typical laptop usage.

> Absolute garbage if you actually try to use it for any serious work from a PC.

I beg to differ - I have 2 hotspots from Verizon (15GB each -> 30GB total/month) and they support my full-time work as a remote developer. I have to avoid watching HD video, but that's effectively the only restriction I have.

My folks were nearly burned out in the Paradise Camp Fire (there's no visible structures around them). They went with a satellite-only broadband provider because it would've taken another 1-2 months from now to get POTS telephone restored (they would be the only customer on the street).

> A lot of the mobile data plans actually only apply to direct usage from your phone. Not when using it as an AP (tethering).

Not to take away from the larger point about US data plans, which is generally true.

But the fundamental market philosophy of the US is to exploit individuals' laziness. If you're unwilling to do the basic modern necessity of taking control of your phone, then you perfectly fit the profile to be their victim. If you're just walking into a carrier store/kiosk and asking them what they overtly market, you basically have "$$$" written on your forehead.

Practically - if I needed an LTE connection, I'd setup a fixed antenna aimed at a Sprint tower on a Clearwire-settlement plan, look into buying a grandfathered Mobley device on eBay, or accept a slightly lower speed for a consumer "unlimited data" plan (eg $55/mo for 3Mbps at Cricket).

I'm really glad you made this comment because you're actually totally right. I am a very competent developer. I should just figure out how to get tethering setup outside their mobile hotspot limits so it looks like phone data.

Looks like I should be able to do it with this from my Apple device: https://github.com/rickyzhang82/tethering/wiki

I have 2 phones, one on Sprint's Free year plan - which I have yet to see throttle, even with tethering.

My other phone is in Mint SIM, which costs $20/mo for 8gb of LTE and works great, and tethering is shared with regular data.

How is 8GB/mo LTE a good deal? Theoretically you should be able to use your allowance in minutes (or it's not really LTE)

Can the ISP detect if you're using it as an AP?

If you use the stock ROM then they probably can. A fey years ago the carriers would put proprietary hotspot apps on your phone which would integrate with their billing system, but if you switched to another ROM you could just use the built-in Android hotspot option and it would work just fine.

With an AOSP ROM like LineageOS they can't detect it from the phone itself, but there are still some differences in the packets that a phone would send vs the packets a computer would send (you can Google about how to hide tethering on T-Mobile and find some discussion on that); it's not very hard to change your settings to avoid that method of detection.

This probably refers to TTL, which can be easily changed to disguise the 'hop' from your device to your phone... but Deep Packet Inspection is apparently commonly used nowadays too. To get around that you need to be encrypting with a VPN or similar setup.

This is my simplistic understanding of the state of play based on the last time I looked into it but as mentioned above it's easy to Google.

How do you fix the TTL trick?

You set the default TTL in your OS to +=1.

on the AP (phone):

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j TTL --ttl-set 65

You will need TTL target built into the kernel of the ROM you are using. LineageOS is unwilling to do it officially, so I build my own with it enabled.

It's a good idea to only use ipv4 when doing this. A few services are detected on TMUS, so for those VPN. Sprint doesn't seem to care, but they have a patent on TTL detection too from around 10 years ago. I normally do not VPN, but I do use my own DNS since I don't like carrier hijacking.

If you buy an unlocked phone, you get Android tethering. Only buying/leasing a phone from a carrier (bad idea as usual) risks a custom hotspot app since maybe Lollipop or Marshmallow?

Look up 'dun_tether_required'.

Set that option and your carrier can't tell if you're tethering. It doesn't require root and works on every phone I've tried it on.

Not if you use a VPN, from my experience.

Very ISP dependent: both Verizon and T-Mobile detect using TTL. They also have a list of services which will count towards hotspot data.

For Sprint, everything is old and weird... so they just look at ports like it is 12 years ago. (OpenVPN's default port is bad, 443 is good though)

I used around a terabyte one month on T-Mobile's unlimited plan. I think at the time I paid around $90.

Any reason you didn't consider Google Fi? I've been pretty happy with it.

Google Fi a virtual operator using T Mobile towers. T Mobile's coverage is excellent in cities, but pretty bad in rural areas.

It switches between Sprint and T-Mobile, not sure if that makes a difference, I guess it depends where you are

Sprint is really bad outside cities too. Sprint and T-Mobile are the two worst operators if you're concerned about signal quality outside metro areas.

Individually, perhaps, but when you put them together, it closes quite a few gaps. In practice, when I switched to Fi, I got more coverage in places where AT&T's was really bad.

Google Fi can also do cellular over WiFi if your phone supports it.

I have a device with Sprint. If I run into an area where my primary T-Mobile phones don't get service, they'll do voWiFi using the Sprint connection.

Google Voice now supports data calling as well, so you can have same end result of WiFi calling even if your carrier or phone will not do voWiFi.

I don't see the appeal of Fi at all.

For me, the biggest appeal of Fi is that you pay the same data rates when travelling in other countries. The second biggest is the ability to have up to 5 data SIMs associated with the same account, with identical rates and no extra fees.

I don't pay for data in other countries. It's throttled unless I buy a day pass. For longer stays I usually buy a cheap local SIM and sign into Google Voice and DIGITS for free calling and number portability.

So you have data SIMs that share from the same pool? I use a few hundred GB's per month. How much would this cost on Fi? I currently have 4 unlimited SIM's, a extra voip number, and a low speed SIM with one of my line numbers copied. It costs about $160/mo. If I run into an area where I don't have service, I have a second provider that's also unlimited and costs $4/mo.

Historically T-Mobile was terrible. They now have native roaming on US Cellular and band 12 (700mhz) and band 71 (600mhz) lowband coverage. This covered a lot of the gaps.

Sprint is weird, since they really only have halfassed voLTE they rely on a giant legacy CDMA network that should have been put out to pasture 5 years ago. But they do have the largest number of roaming agreements if all you care about is ability to call (and not have data). They do have fast data but it requires you to be in line of sight of a tower, not have walls or wet leaves in the way, and have a phone supporting HPUA so you can actually upload things.

AT&T's network has basically zero investment in recent years, unless in Georgia or a handful of other markets it's the worst of the 4. Poor spectrum planning, low capex, the only reason they are #2 is because they keep buying up companies with customers (shitty Mexican carriers and DirecTV).

Verizon still seems best (hardware, spectrum planning, roadmap, coverage), but no plans ideal for my needs. Poor for travel.

Get an overseas SIM card with the ability to roam to the USA.

Three UK will let you roam to the USA and is $8 per month. $8 is the total plan cost, and there is no supplement for roaming!

>Verizon still seems best (hardware, spectrum planning, roadmap, coverage), but no plans ideal for my needs. Poor for travel.

I use a Verizon reseller (Total Wireless); it works great and is pretty cheap for the US.

Travel is not a problem with Verizon: Verizon phones are all unlocked, and have SIM cards. Just buy a prepaid SIM card when you're out of the country and use that for data. It's generally much cheaper than any service in the US; on my recent trip in Europe, it cost me 15 Euros for a 3GB SIM card, and I don't think I used half of that in my 2 weeks there, even though I was using my phone extensively for navigation and more.

T-mobile's bad coverage reputation is undeserved today. They are easily on par with AT&T _IF_ your phone supports their 700MHz band.

My experience differs significantly from yours, having moved from att to T-Mobile in the last 3 months.

Google Fi does not even qualify as an operator really. It is not a standard that any device can implement. It is only implemented by google's blob. You can use google-fi as a regular network if you hardcode to one operator, but the switching stuff needs a blob.

It's not exactly cheap at $10/Gb.

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