DISH Anywhere and Personal Mobile Hotspot

[dendavis]

I may be way "out there" with this thought, but please bear with me. Last time we traveled, took our iPad with us, hoping to use the DISH Anywhere system to keep caught up with our favorite shows. Place we stayed had horrible wi-fi, try as it may, the iPad just could not deliver the content from home.

Am wondering if a Verizon Jetpack (ask that because I have Verizon Wireless phone service) hot spot would give me enough "juice" to have a reliable Internet connection to make the DISH Anywhere system work? As I read their website, one can order the service in manageable units, viz., weekly or monthly, so there should not be a lot of unnecessary service cost when at home. My iPad is "only" wi-fi, so would need the hot spot to provide the better Internet connection via LTE. This all assumes the economics of a personal hot spot with occasional service costs would be less than upgrading to a full LTE capable iPad, and the associated data plan usage.

Any thoughts welcome.

 

[dangue]

I may be way "out there" with this thought, but please bear with me. Last time we traveled, took our iPad with us, hoping to use the DISH Anywhere system to keep caught up with our favorite shows. Place we stayed had horrible wi-fi, try as it may, the iPad just could not deliver the content from home.

Am wondering if a Verizon Jetpack (ask that because I have Verizon Wireless phone service) hot spot would give me enough "juice" to have a reliable Internet connection to make the DISH Anywhere system work? As I read their website, one can order the service in manageable units, viz., weekly or monthly, so there should not be a lot of unnecessary service cost when at home. My iPad is "only" wi-fi, so would need the hot spot to provide the better Internet connection via LTE. This all assumes the economics of a personal hot spot with occasional service costs would be less than upgrading to a full LTE capable iPad, and the associated data plan usage.

Any thoughts welcome.

It'll depend on the signal strength of where you are. If you can get LTE, then it shouldn't be a problem. If the signal is less than full bars or only 3G, the video quality may suffer. (I'm basing this on my experience with an iPad 3 AT&T model.) Hope it helps.

 

[Miner]

It worked great for me using T-mobile and my wife's iPhone 4s. One consideration is the amount of bandwidth streaming can use. With a 4G connection, my kindle was able to stream in HD, somewhere around 1meg per second. That can add up quickly!
It even works ok with my IPhone 3gs (3G) to my notebook via USB.

 

[TheKrell]

It worked great for me using T-mobile and my wife's iPhone 4s... It even works ok with my IPhone 3gs (3G) to my notebook via USB.

I have T-Mobile too. Can you give a hint or two as to how this is done? (All our tablets are WiFi only.) Surely it's not as simple as hooking up the USB cable on a 3GS...

 

[3HaloODST]

I have T-Mobile too. Can you give a hint or two as to how this is done? (All our tablets are WiFi only.) Surely it's not as simple as hooking up the USB cable on a 3GS...

I have a 4S on T-Mobile and it was as simple as jailbreaking and installing TetherMe. Along with a few APN setting changes.

 

[TheKrell]

Ah yes; tethering. I thought T-Mobile prevented that somehow.

 

[3HaloODST]

As of the latest carrier settings update the Personal Hotspot option is no longer usable unless you pay $15/Mo for tethering. That's where TetherMe comes in. They also use user agent detection however it doesn't block anything but default Firefox/IE/Chrome desktop user agents. There are easy ways to change your user agent with Firefox/Chrome. Most other applications work fine. The other way they detect is by using a special APN for tethering. That's easy to change.

 

[Miner]

I have the Simple Choice Plan (T-Mobile's newest, no contract plan) and it includes the personal hotspot as part of the plan, no tethering charges. I think the previous plans restricted the hotspot, and one would have to jailbreak the phone, or pay the $15 per month, but now it is free, under the settings tile.
On my wife's 4s the phone will serve up wifi access; on my phone it is by blutooth or usb; so I needed iTunes drivers to allow it to work with my notebook.
Miner