# WiFi Hotspot with iPhone 4



## Jane917 (Dec 29, 2009)

Someone on another forum suggested I might be able to make a wifi hotspot with my iPhone when I am traveling and camping in areas that have poor wifi coverage. Many places I have been this summer also have pretty poor cell coverage also. Does anyone know more about hotspots?


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## Leslie (Apr 7, 2008)

Jane917 said:


> Someone on another forum suggested I might be able to make a wifi hotspot with my iPhone when I am traveling and camping in areas that have poor wifi coverage. Many places I have been this summer also have pretty poor cell coverage also. Does anyone know more about hotspots?


Jane, you need to contact your carrier and find out what to do. We have AT&T and we are grandfathered in to the unlimited data plan. If we switched to having an iPhone hotspot, we'd go to one of the monthly data plans--apparently, their long-term game plan is to switch everyone to a monthly plan. Anyway, I digress...

The whole idea with a hot spot is that you can use your phone and its LTE/4G/3G whatever capability to create a wifi hotspot where no wifi exists. For this to work, obviously you need to have some sort of cellphone coverage and the slower the connection, the more annoying it will be at your computer. Still, for those of us who are sort of addicted, it's better than nothing. 

I bought a WiFi hotspot from Verizon to use at the Free Clinic because 1) there is no wifi there; and 2) the city "barracuda" blocks a bunch of sites, including Facebook and gmail. I pay $50/mo for the hotspot and it's worth it because it gets a lot of use (one person pays me half the cost because we are the two heaviest users). We have 5GB of bandwidth/mo so I tell people not to watch movies--mostly they should check email and visit Internet sites. I am planning on taking it with me later this month when we go on vacation in downeast Maine because I know the house we are renting doesn't have WiFi. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

L


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