RV Internet Options - Uncomplicating the Clutter

October 28, 2018 FIN

Looking for an easy RV internet set up? Look no further.

Our Easy RV Internet Set Up

It it fits your budget, the $95 month T Mobile Unlimited plan is by far the best bang for your buck in our opinion. While it may not sound sexy or sophisticated, we’ve been using T Mobile for 5 months now and except for a few spots where service was dodgy, could not be happier with out setup.

What about weBoost?

A lot of RV blogs and Youtube videos talk about using things like weBoost or scouring eBay for Verizon plans with unlimited data. While we spent a lot of time weighing these options, ultimately, using T Mobile seemed like a low risk no brainer.

The Super Complicated RV Internet Setup

We literally took an old unlocked iPhone 5 and got a SIM card for it at T- Mobile.To be very specific, the plan we have is:

ONE Plus International $70 + ONE Plus International $25

While the International is a nice solution since we’ll be using this phone in Canada and Mexico, the real reason to spring for the $25 extra per month is for unlimited streaming to devices. That’s right- Our iPhone 5 is an unlimited hotspot. Typically, other carriers like ATT and Verizon limit how much data you can use when using the phone as a hotspot. They also limit the bandwidth provided to devices- you don’t have that problem with T Mobile. In the fine print, T- Mobile does state that users over 50GB per month will lose data speed if the network is congested in their local area, but we haven’t seen that reflected in performance yet.As a quick example, in July 2018 we used 190 GB of data. That’s an insane amount of data usage, even for a home- but that goes hand in hand with running a remote online based business. Even after all that data usage, as I sit here writing this I’m pulling 40 Mbps down and 14 up. That’s VERY usable internet speed! Problems with our RV Internet Solution -If there's no T Mobile service, you’re SOL for unlimited internet. Luckily for us, we also both have AT&T cell plans with 6GB hotspots so we’re typically fine in a pinch to at least still work- the data cap means no Netflix though!

Internet Solution for Fulltime RVers

In case you’d rather read than watch:

Tim: 00:00 I feel like all of the traveling and having unlimited internet is way too complicated when you look at it online. We went really stupid. We have an iPhone five that's you know, four or five years old at this point and we just have the T-Mobile unlimited plan.

Fin: 00:19 We're going to try to talk about a travel tip while we are on a hike. When we filmed the first TRIPPED we filmed it all and then we came back to the U S and then we edited it all, push it out. It's easy to divide. We also had time then to sit down in our house and film more like question answer or just travel tip videos that we pushed out to you guys as well. Two separate things. Now we're on the road, we're editing videos, air pushing them out as a traveling. I don't think we're going to have time to like have sit down chat videos so I think we're going to have to do this whole travel tip thing. While we are traveling. Tim and I are just talking about our T-Mobile plan and we thought we could share how we are doing internet on the road.

Fin: 01:02 So as you can expect we need internet for our phones. We need to internet for the computers. We need internet for Netflix, chill. We each have a cell phone and we have an AT&T go plan. We each have a cell phone. We each have an AT&T GoPhone. It's just like a monthly plan where we have like six gigs or something on the phone. Then we're using this old cell phone and we're just putting a T-Mobile SIM card in it, using it as a hotspot. So we don't have a, MiFi, we don't have like something affixed to the RV. We're just have a cell phone that is neither of our cell phones, a third cell phone. And we're using that as the hotspot.

Tim: 01:41 So if you go in and try to get like a dedicated hotspot, it's severely limited how many gigs of data you get. I think it's, yeah, it's crazy. It's been great so far. You get up to 22 gigs without throttling and then after that it's still unlimited and they only throttle you if you're in a really congested area. But it's been awesome so far. So T-Mobile is $95 a month and each of our cell phone plans is $40 a month? We're on the prepaid plan. That's fine. That's cool. Is that what it is? Yeah, that's what it is. Final thing we've heard a ton researching before we left about cell phone boosters and everything. Now that we're on the road and talking to people who have them, we heard they're not that great actually. Like we can always get AT&T or T-Mobile signal unless we're in say big bend park and then you're not going to get anything no matter what you have. So it hasn't been an issue so far.

Fin: 02:37 Okay. So the only thing then with internet, especially T-Mobile since they're not as since, they don't have as much service as a Verizon or an at and T is that is definitely the first to not have service. We still then have it on our cell phones, but you know we don't have this unlimited then so a good example is last night in Santa Fe here we had enough internet on our phones to work and get by. It wasn't like Netflix and chill unlimited mode. But then tonight we're going closer into town and then we'll have T-Mobile there. So we're spending a little bit more money on staying at RV parks to be close in to town.

Tim: 03:16 If you're researching wifi and internet plans right now for your trip, don't over-complicate it. Like T-Mobile has been awesome so far. We've used 60 gigs on their unlimited plan and we're probably going to have a hundred by the end of the month. It works and it's pretty affordable.

Fin: 03:32 Remember we saw that thing online, like Ulimitedville or something. It was like other online vendors that you can get unlimited service through. It's just like a third party. I dunno. Again, we're not sponsored by any of this. This Is just like, we literally just finished all the research cause we've just got the T-Mobile plan. We're happy with how that's working. We don't know any other options because we've never used any other options, but we have super legit. We're just seeing how much we can, how much data. Loving that data!