Best method for WIFI Streaming on the road

[pconroy]

Originally Posted by bansai

I paid mine about 30 minutes ago. lol. Wanted to secure my spot in line. My wife and I turned down an opportunity to move to a 30 acre ranch out in Idaho because of the horrible internet out there. This will be a 'game changer' for a lot of us. The service address they have listed is my 'brick and stick' home, but I would absolutely take it on the road.

Wow - I hope you get the chance to get one! I'm jealous.


Yeah - some Youtubers are saying they can't go too far from the service address used before it stops working. The guess is that will be temporary; that once enough sats are up, once sat to sat handoff is running and once he has enough base stations we should be able to use it anywhere!

[Mikayles]

Nomad ...check em out.

https://nomadinternet.com/

[TaftCoach]

Originally Posted by CAG

You might notice that many if not all of these questions come up weekly so the information is pretty fresh. As I mentioned in another thread, much like this, is teaching people how to find this information helps them as much or more that filling the site with repeats. Give them a fish or teach them to fish.

With all of the other new topic I seriously doubt the site will go away.

But if you teach them to fish they'll sit in a boat all day drinking beer

[davolson]

Re: "much of this has been covered before". 99% of the things I have learned on this forum come from the random weekly forum updates via email. Sure if I had a mystery to solve I would search for an answer, but I have learned so many things by just reading the forum every week, not searching for particular problems.
Keep posting whatever. If I've seen the topic enough..I can just choose not to open the thread.

[rbutton]

Just a note on StarLink as related to RV's as the design is based on much the way early cell phones were built.

This is directly from the FAQ StarLink site.

Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell.

Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive internet. This is constrained by geometry and is not arbitrary geofencing.

[Johnynorthland]

We’ve been using Nomad internet with a Netgear Nighthawk router from August to December with no issues. It’s truly unlimited service.all we do is stream videos. Pricey at $139 a month. I’ve heard some of their 3rd part plans experienced shut downs, but supposedly they are making it up to their customers. We will be back on the road March, April and May. So I don’t even know if I was effected, because my router is in storage with my RV while we are in our S&B. I will be looking for cheaper alternatives in June. I think I can do better elsewhere.

[rewen]

Originally Posted by rbutton

Just a note on StarLink as related to RV's as the design is based on much the way early cell phones were built.

This is directly from the FAQ StarLink site.

Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell.

Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive internet. This is constrained by geometry and is not arbitrary geofencing.

I think is this just temporary, as Elon has said many times that it will be suited to travel on RVs and even airplanes. Here's hoping. I've signed up to test and paid for the first month, but it's first-come first-served here and my name hasn't come up yet.

Additional, during testing, they also geofence you in so that the data they gather from testing is the date they actually want (in other words, data for your location and not some other).

[Riverman]

I paid a deposit to Starlink also, with the understanding that they don't have to accept me and can refund my deposit anytime they wish.

[bansai]

Originally Posted by rbutton

Just a note on StarLink as related to RV's as the design is based on much the way early cell phones were built.

This is directly from the FAQ StarLink site.

Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell.

Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive internet. This is constrained by geometry and is not arbitrary geofencing.

I saw that as well. Hopefully, that's an early limitation. It shouldn't be terribly hard technologically anyway for the end-users receiver to connect to whatever the strongest signal is within the network. It's really a mesh network (or should act like one). But baby steps I guess. I'll just be happy when I can give comcast the finger.

[Goldie50]

I agree with pconroy. Last summer my son traveled a bit with us for a few weeks and he used his hotspot on his ATT phone to operate the Roku and he connected to his connects that he subscribed to and we watched Netflix, Prime and local channels from Austin. As long as your phone shows LTE on it you can stream whatever you are subscribed to. No satellite or WiFi needed. The wife and I have a family plan with ATT that includes hotspot and we have a 19.95 Roku installed to our TV on our TT. It works great!

[TnHiker]

Why not Satellite? I have a low cost plan with DISH Network ($46.00 mo.) and when I'm not traveling I just let it go dormant and don't pay anything. It is there RV plan no cost to restart or stop the service. It is perfect for me except when I'm in a forest and can't get a signal because of trees in the wrong place. Good luck finding your solution. Happy Camping, God Bless.

[kyleebrock]

Give it some more time: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/starlink...ernet-venture/

[Mikec557]

Just a clarification for people who are just beginning to do their research. Cell phone plans with unlimited data does not equal unlimited streaming (watching video on your cell phone) nor does it equal unlimited "hotspotting" your cell phone. Most unlimited data cell phone plans still have a ceiling of data used before the carrier reserves the right to slow your speed to a point that its too slow to watch a movie. For instance, our Straight talk plan is unlimited data but after we use 60Gb of data they can slow us down to less than 4G/LTE. Also, our unlimited data allows only 10Gb of hotspotting. Then they disable the ability to Hotspot unless you buy more Gb. I'm not complaining about my plan or anyone else's. I'm just saying, don't over read the phrase "unlimited data". Be sure to understand hotspotting, do they allow it, does your phone have the ability to hotspot, how much data will they let you hotspot, etc.

[warl0q]

There are several devices that can take a regular unlimited cell phone sim card, do a TTL Bypass and give you a hotspot that is unlimited and never throttled for any carrier. This only works with regular cell phone lines not with Mifi/Jetpack/Hotspot lines.
Search "unlimited+data+ttl" on youtube to get all the info and device reviews so that you can choose a good device for your level of expertise.
Hope this helps

[Bill Johnson]

Originally Posted by bansai

I paid mine about 30 minutes ago. lol. Wanted to secure my spot in line. My wife and I turned down an opportunity to move to a 30 acre ranch out in Idaho because of the horrible internet out there. This will be a 'game changer' for a lot of us. The service address they have listed is my 'brick and stick' home, but I would absolutely take it on the road.

Problem is now it only works with one address and can't be moved

[bansai]

Originally Posted by Bill Johnson

Problem is now it only works with one address and can't be moved

Yeah, has been covered... but I'm banking my 100 dollar deposit on that being a temporary constraint. as I understand it, they want to map your receiver to 1 satellite during the initial rollout so they can control the saturation or lack thereof for each node in the "constellation." At the rate they are launching satellites, it shouldn't be long before they can enable something resembling free-roaming. Worse case you call them up and tell the person on the other end of the line - "hey, I moved"... I need my service restarted at xyz address and there might be a re-connect fee or something. I really hope that's short-term though..

In the meantime, I plan on firing my local cable company and mounting the dish to my house

eta.. they also plan on offering phone service on the same network, so definitely their plans include a fully 'meshed' network. I also wonder about the coverage area of a satellite 300 miles above your house guessing (could be wrong) that covers at least a few counties worth of state parks around here.

[pitman44]

Originally Posted by billcf7

Some good info in this video

Agreed. I'd also recommending checking out this site. The folks at Changing Lanes went here for their info and equipment. There is a wide variety of equipment you can utilize depending on how critical having solid internet is to you. Eric, the owner, goes over a good explanation of the differences in the equipment and they are pretty responsive to email queries. I purchased our equipment from them.

Someone questioned the cost/worth of setups such as what Changing Lanes have. My wife and I talked it over and decided we'd much rather have solid internet that good TV (Dish). So we opted to drop Dish at home. Subscribe to some streaming services and put the savings, over $1k a year, toward better internet while we're on the road. Hopefully about 6 months of the year in a year or so. That may not be for others, but it works for us.

Mobile Must Have

[johnnynemo]

We’re on the road now and we have been using AT&T TV Now with an unlimited AT&T cellphone plan. We have a TCL flat screen with a Fire TV stick hooked via USB. The nice thing is that watching television through the AT&T app doesn’t count against our data and we can save that for watching movies occasionally (Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu, etc). If no wifi is available, we can hotspot off one of our phones. The most interesting thing is we still get our local (home) network channels, not the local ones from wherever we are. It’s working well for us.

[Riverman]

Which phone plan are you on with the free streaming data?

[Oscar]

I have a 2020 Jayco Pinnacle. It came with a winegard 360 antenna on roof plus WIFI setup. I had the choice of either Verizon, ATT or they offered WIFI service with Winegard. Pricing them all. Winegard was the winner with 10gb for $59.99. Pay as you go service. Pay when you leave home and you get a reminder when your almost out of data. Just pay for more and your good to go. I have been getting better than 20mb most places I have been. Streaming is perfect with no pixelation. Starlink sounds great if your full time. But for 2-3 weeks or a month this is cheeper.