Teleworking (and not Work Camping)

[Wrascal]

20GB? Are you watching movies/ listening to music all day long?

We easily get by sharing a 3GB family account on our Verizon Cellular. Last month we used under 2 GB.

[Nate]

I have a work from home office, even though I do field service. We just bought a season site this year that is somewhat close to our home. So I hope to do some "teleworking" once the kid is out for the summer. My company even provides me with a ATT wireless networking air card, so it should work out pretty well.

[Mustang65]

Three years ago (prior to purchasing our Wi-Fi signal extender) we stayed at a CG in north Georgia that had poor Public Wi-Fi signal, so I contacted the local cable company that supplied cable service to the CG and I ended up paying $150. $100 installation/equipment charge, $50 for one month of service, along with a $100 deposit that got back as we were leaving, and the Internet service was terrible. Never went back to that place.

So getting local internet can be EXPENSIVE..

Was not a happy camper.

Don

[Beelbill]

Originally Posted by Wrascal

20GB? Are you watching movies/ listening to music all day long?

We easily get by sharing a 3GB family account on our Verizon Cellular. Last month we used under 2 GB.

We share 10 GB among 5 cell phones. We could increase it to 20 GB for a reasonable increase in monthly cost. But after that, it is $10 per GB. What I was talking about wasn't cell phone usage. I was talking about getting a Verizon Home Router and working from a computer in my home. The constant back and forth all day long for work projects would eat up much more than the reasonable priced 20 GB. Cable is unlimited. Wired AT&T home internet with Uverse is 250 GB.

If you use a Hot spot for work, it will suck up the cell phones data allowance quickly. Plus it sucks the power from your cell phone quickly. Add my daughter on her tablet and my wife on a laptop and 20 GB won't cut it. The home router from Verizon is new and I predict it won't be long before demand drives them to make it unlimited or at least a higher GB at competitive price.

Perhaps a cellular competitor like AT&T or Sprint would have unlimited data with their hot spots. Then it would be worth it.

[Wrascal]

I have no idea of how much data we consume on our home system but we've never been billed any extras for going over. Maybe that's because our "UP TO 16M" speed (which actually tops out at 6M) keeps us within bounds; but it does get it done.

My bride occasionally needs to video conference (1 or 2 per week) but otherwise its normal traffic.

Cellular hotspot fills in while camping.

[slinger]

For teleworking I might be able to scrape by with 40 GB per month, but that would not leave any allowance for family usage (streaming videos, etc).

I have a job that requires a lot of bandwidth. I regularly use over 120 GB per month at home. This is why bandwidth availability is so important to me ... Low bandwidth means no teleworking ... Means working from home instead of where I really want to be ... Camping.

[Hattie]

Originally Posted by Beelbill

If you use a Hot spot for work, it will suck up the cell phones data allowance quickly. Plus it sucks the power from your cell phone quickly. ... Perhaps a cellular competitor like AT&T or Sprint would have unlimited data with their hot spots. Then it would be worth it.

First let me state that we're not full-time Road Warriors, we're RVing/Boondocking about 15% of the time. During the week I telework full-time for a hi-tech (Silicon Valley) computer company so I'm in continuous virtual meetings with VoIP ~ but so long as we get reception, I do just fine when "on the road"; tomorrow we head home after a week in Stockton. With our AT&T plan for 3 cells, we added a dedicated a HotSpot. For ~ $20/month we get 30 GB/month with unused data rollover. We use it for 3 computers, 2 tablets, TV Roku + BluRay DVD player. Yep, we're having fun!

[Mustang65]

When we are up at or northern GA location for 4 months of the year, I average anywhere from 275Mb to 600Mb daily (M-F) doing my stocks. While that is running, we still use our Magic-Jack and was able to stream video from our home SlingBox at the same time. Only when the major holidays (4th of July and Labor Day weekend) did I see a performance decline, but I was not using my stock program on those days.

If you are using Windows you can see how much data you are using each day by going to Control Panel, Network and Sharing center, View status of Local Area Connection and a running total of the numbers are there.

Video streaming worked fine with only 3Mb

Don