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Does anyone else intentionally have no ISP-provided Wi-Fi at home and instead ration mobile data for Internet access? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by to c/frugal@lemmy.world
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I've had no ISP-provided Internet access since Feb. 2023 or so and, while it's been a pain at times, I still haven't caved into returning to the evil monopoly that is Spectrum, so far, and probably won't for as long as I can't land a remote job. ArrowDL, while not perfect, has been pretty good at download management for the most part in conjunction with mobile data-hotspotting. Update: I'm now using AB Download Manager to mitigate download cancellations at the throttled speed.

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[–] 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I'm a year+ with no home Internet. I do not ration my mobile data though. I have unlimited phone data, and I use a hacky program to connect my mobile wifi to my computer.

I didn't need to be online 24/7 so it works fine for me.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Is your data truly unlimited with no throttled tier? When I hit US Mobile's tier, anything >720p becomes unusable on a practical level until the next month and I just deal with it. Of course, I'm also paying <$20/month.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    I have T-Mobile. They throttle hotspot after a small amount, i think its 5gb. With the app I use it hides the hotspot from the carrier, and even Microsoft (which stops it from auto restarting updates). So to the carrier im just using my unlimited cell data alot.

    It's janky though and can cut out at any moment . Sometimes it'll stay connected for an hour, sometimes i have to reconnect every few minutes. But it's worth it, i can dl games and stream movies.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Haha, is it TetherFi? TetherFi can do this masking, but it doesn't (or at least didn't) allow connectivity with certain programs that use UDP, like Telegram Desktop, Unigram, and Signal Desktop, which was kind of a pain for me since Signal has no web interface.

    My current hotspot-limit bypass method actually just involves an old Android phone that happens to somehow not get picked up by US Mobile's hotspot-checking; I found this out purely by accident, which is why I went with an annual plan with them, haha. By the way, I used to use T-Mobile and it also cut out, but US Mobile is a supercarrier that has SIMs with all satellite networks; my connection is nearly flawless on Dark Star, which is their internal name for the AT&T network. Perhaps you might like to consider that in the future!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I use pda dot net. Daisy chaining phones sounds interesting

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Oh yeah, I had tried PDA, too. I can't remember why, but I think because it worked identically to TetherFi, I returned to TF probably because it's open-source. (But with my old phone's hotspot feature getting miscategorized as normal mobile data usage, I just treat a second phone as a hotspot, haha—and not as primary due to its inferior stats as an older, budget phone, ironically enough.)

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