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Comment by throwawaygulf | Hacker News Reader

LTE is limited to 21GB of higher speed transfer a month, at which point you get rate limited down to 2Mbps down and .5Mbps up.

Can't have Zoom calls on that garbage.

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You don't know what kind of contracts are available for the GP.

In EU, getting a lot more is usually not a problem

Not sure about the EU, but last time I was forced on LTE in home at the states, the plan I described above was the best in the US. That was 5ish years ago when I was living in the stix.

Cellular plans from the major US carriers change every couple months. Throw in all the resellers and you have new plans every week. Describing a cellular plan from 5 years ago is like talking about a 286.

In addition to plans changing all the time...

US plans have a tendency to be much worse than EU due to lower competition

Yeah, I'm in Portugal, and we pay €30 a month for unlimited (actually unlimited - no FUP or anything) data.

The ISP does do some traffic shaping, so they'll throttle video streaming at peak hours, but a €1 a month VPN busts around that no problem.

I would say at least 1 TB minimum for a home data plan, imo. I've used that much in a month just on Steam games, and each member of a family drives that up very linearly. Any less and you start "rationing" out something fundamentally unlimited.

If you don't have broadband, today, you pretty much have to make compromises. You don't play Steam games and you don't stream much video--probably get DirectTV. Cell is one option in many places. Satellite is another. Neither are great but that's sort of where you are until maybe Starlink arrives.

If you are going to spend hours playing online games / watching netflix then I can't imagine why you wouldn't just stay comfortable in the city or the suburbs. Living off grid you are going to spend a lot of your free time just living. If you've ever camped in a tent it's probably not dissimilar, by the time you've made breakfast and cleaned up afterwards its almost time to think about lunch, or at least it can feel that way.

The last time I was forced on LTE at home in the states, the plan I described above was the best in the US. That was 5ish years ago when I was living in the stix.

I used 150GB of LTE in the past three days and still going strong.

Would that not be dependent on the carrier?

Indeed. Last time I was forced on LTE in home at the states, the plan I described above was the best in the US. That was 5ish years ago when I was living in the stix.

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