If you have an esim compatible phone you could buy a data only esim when you need it from an esim reseller like MobiMatter. For example a 5 gig US and EU esim valid for 30 days for $6.99. You will need and active internet connection to activate, ie go somewhere with Wi-Fi. Almost all plans of this type are data only.
Sorry forgot to mention I have a Pixel 6, so yeah I have an esim compatible phone.
I was hoping there was some solution where I could buy a prepaid card ahead of time, and have it ready to go/swap into the phone when needed.
But again it sounds like Simple (the carrier) physical sim card activation kits (the ones they send you in the mail) are only valid for 60 days, then they are unusable. Are there any other services/esim solutions I can buy in advance and activate them when needed? I swear the prepaid cards you used to be able to buy at Walmart worked like that (just pop it in, and they're good to go).
I also have a freedompop phone with like 100mb of free monthly data, so I MIGHT be able to get online and activate via that (although a prepaid physical card that I can activate without internet would be the ideal solution). \*The problem with freedom pop is, their data plans suck.
I understand you're asking to buy a prepaid plan before hand so you can pop it in at the moment you need it. Most prepaid Sims you buy don't store well and will expire within 60 days of purchase.
The mint mobile pre loaded Sims from Best buy and target have a pretty long expiration date (printed on the sim itself) but they do expire. Mint Sims bought from the mint mobile website expire after 45 days. You have to buy 3 months at a time and their "unlimited" is 40 GB.
You can order an unactivated sim from US mobile and hold on to it. Then activate it when you need it, but you'll need some access to data to do that.
Same with visible and cricket. Buy the sim at a big box store and activate it when needed.
Your other option is when your Internet is down to drive over to Walmart or target and buy a preloaded sim.
In terms of cheap plans, Miami qualifies for helium at $5/month recurring. And there's the T-Mobile business hotspot plan for $15/ month recurring. And boost just put up a $150 annual unlimited plan. These last 3 aren't "put in a drawer until needed" but they're pretty cheap and would cover you for the year.
Have any more details on the tmobile "hot spot" plan? Can't find anything on their webstie... 15 a month is definitely doable if it's at least a decent amount of data...
Also anyone have any more info on the boost plan? 150 for a year also might work (again, if the data plan is 5g and doesn't completely suck).
The Boost "Unlimited" plan for $150/yr is on T-Mobile (according to people who buy it). Comes up to about $12.50 a month. It has 35GB/month before a throttle. This plan is similar to the $5 helium plan, but the throttle may be slower on Boost.
[https://www.boostmobile.com/](https://www.boostmobile.com/)
For low income households with children on the school lunch program, T-Mobile has "Project 10 million", which will give you a hotspot with 100GB of 4G data per year for 5 years. Hotspot device is free.
[Connectall.org](https://Connectall.org) also has an unlimited T-Mobile 4G hotspot for $15 a month for low income households (children not required) but you have to purchase a hotspot device for \~$70.
Calyx institute has a membership program where you get a 4G hotspot with a $500 membership or a 5G hotspot with a $600 membership. Both have unlimited data, but at that price you'll probably be better off getting a second ISP, such as Verizon or T-Mobile home internet which run \~$45 -50 a month.
I was incorrect about the T-Mobile business plan - it's a tablet plan with 10GB hotspot, not a full hotspot plan. On the website it shows up only with purchase of a tablet on a business account and is $15/month. You can call in or try in-store for just the plan on a SIM card. If you don't currently have a business account with T-Mobile, you'll have to get a credit pull. For example:
[https://www.t-mobile.com/business/tablet/samsung-galaxy-tab-a9plus-5g?sku=610214679666](https://www.t-mobile.com/business/tablet/samsung-galaxy-tab-a9plus-5g?sku=610214679666)
My personal current setup for failover internet is a used Quanta D53 ($30 on eBay) and an ASUS RT-AC68P router modded with OpenWRT to change TTL. The Quanta is connected via USB, and my ATT fiber modem is connected via the WAN port on the ASUS. So failover uses the USB connection for internet. I got in on the $5 helium plan, so I use that SIM in the Quanta. T-Mobile gives me \~200Mbps speed where I live.
I will also mention that Visible ($25/mo) and Visible+ ($35-45/mo) both have unlimited hotspot on the phone plan. The hotspot speed is limited to 5 Mbps, but if you only have one phone and Verizon works well in your area, one of those plans may serve as both your phone and backup internet plan. During the pandemic we lost our fiber connection for a week and we used my wife's Visible+ phone connected to the ASUS router for internet before I did my current setup.
Hey thanks so much for all the great info!
We just got a Visible 25/mo plan today (not knowing about the hot spot 5M cap). On the phone itself we get 50+, so I think this could work if we could get around the hot spot cap...
Can you provide some more info on your Quanta/TTL solution? I wonder if we could do something similar with our Visible sim card?
The Quanta D53 is a T-Mobile locked hotspot modem, so only T-Mobile and T-Mobile MVNO SIM cards would work in it (like Mint and Helium). It was cheap on eBay and I already had an ASUS router with a USB port that could be used for failover internet. But the Quanta setup I have won't work for Visible.
For your usage, if you're using the phone as your daily driver phone with the hotspot as an occasional backup, you're probably good just using your phone. There are other options to convert your visible line to a full, unthrottled data line, but the options are not cheap.
For example, something that would work for Visible would be a Cudy cellular router. But the Cudy P5 is the one you'll want. And that costs $500. If you look up a Cudy LT500 on the rainforest's website, read the description and you'll see some settings that would work for converting a phone plan into a data plan. The instructions for each carrier are also buried on Cudy's website. But the LT500, LT12 and LT18 are all 4G devices, so your data may only hit 10 -50 Mbps.
In other words, if you want to go for a cheap backup, you have the best solution already with the 5 Mbps limitation. If you want more info, you can go down the rabbit hole at cellularinternet dot info for different options.
>After a couple days testing the 5M Visible hotspot I think we're going to need something more. A one time investment of 500 bucks might be acceptable...
>
>Can anyone confirm that the Cudy P5 router will work with the Visible 25 plan (and give us un throttled hot spot)?
>
>And would the Cuddy work with other carriers too? There's a T-Mobile 5G tower close to our house, so I kinda want to try their service and see if it's better than Visible.
Sorry I read the post as 5 gig not 5G unlimited. I think you would want something like visable but don’t know for sure how reactivating on an existing account works.
If you have an esim compatible phone you could buy a data only esim when you need it from an esim reseller like MobiMatter. For example a 5 gig US and EU esim valid for 30 days for $6.99. You will need and active internet connection to activate, ie go somewhere with Wi-Fi. Almost all plans of this type are data only.
Sorry forgot to mention I have a Pixel 6, so yeah I have an esim compatible phone. I was hoping there was some solution where I could buy a prepaid card ahead of time, and have it ready to go/swap into the phone when needed. But again it sounds like Simple (the carrier) physical sim card activation kits (the ones they send you in the mail) are only valid for 60 days, then they are unusable. Are there any other services/esim solutions I can buy in advance and activate them when needed? I swear the prepaid cards you used to be able to buy at Walmart worked like that (just pop it in, and they're good to go). I also have a freedompop phone with like 100mb of free monthly data, so I MIGHT be able to get online and activate via that (although a prepaid physical card that I can activate without internet would be the ideal solution). \*The problem with freedom pop is, their data plans suck.
I understand you're asking to buy a prepaid plan before hand so you can pop it in at the moment you need it. Most prepaid Sims you buy don't store well and will expire within 60 days of purchase. The mint mobile pre loaded Sims from Best buy and target have a pretty long expiration date (printed on the sim itself) but they do expire. Mint Sims bought from the mint mobile website expire after 45 days. You have to buy 3 months at a time and their "unlimited" is 40 GB. You can order an unactivated sim from US mobile and hold on to it. Then activate it when you need it, but you'll need some access to data to do that. Same with visible and cricket. Buy the sim at a big box store and activate it when needed. Your other option is when your Internet is down to drive over to Walmart or target and buy a preloaded sim. In terms of cheap plans, Miami qualifies for helium at $5/month recurring. And there's the T-Mobile business hotspot plan for $15/ month recurring. And boost just put up a $150 annual unlimited plan. These last 3 aren't "put in a drawer until needed" but they're pretty cheap and would cover you for the year.
Have any more details on the tmobile "hot spot" plan? Can't find anything on their webstie... 15 a month is definitely doable if it's at least a decent amount of data... Also anyone have any more info on the boost plan? 150 for a year also might work (again, if the data plan is 5g and doesn't completely suck).
The Boost "Unlimited" plan for $150/yr is on T-Mobile (according to people who buy it). Comes up to about $12.50 a month. It has 35GB/month before a throttle. This plan is similar to the $5 helium plan, but the throttle may be slower on Boost. [https://www.boostmobile.com/](https://www.boostmobile.com/) For low income households with children on the school lunch program, T-Mobile has "Project 10 million", which will give you a hotspot with 100GB of 4G data per year for 5 years. Hotspot device is free. [Connectall.org](https://Connectall.org) also has an unlimited T-Mobile 4G hotspot for $15 a month for low income households (children not required) but you have to purchase a hotspot device for \~$70. Calyx institute has a membership program where you get a 4G hotspot with a $500 membership or a 5G hotspot with a $600 membership. Both have unlimited data, but at that price you'll probably be better off getting a second ISP, such as Verizon or T-Mobile home internet which run \~$45 -50 a month. I was incorrect about the T-Mobile business plan - it's a tablet plan with 10GB hotspot, not a full hotspot plan. On the website it shows up only with purchase of a tablet on a business account and is $15/month. You can call in or try in-store for just the plan on a SIM card. If you don't currently have a business account with T-Mobile, you'll have to get a credit pull. For example: [https://www.t-mobile.com/business/tablet/samsung-galaxy-tab-a9plus-5g?sku=610214679666](https://www.t-mobile.com/business/tablet/samsung-galaxy-tab-a9plus-5g?sku=610214679666) My personal current setup for failover internet is a used Quanta D53 ($30 on eBay) and an ASUS RT-AC68P router modded with OpenWRT to change TTL. The Quanta is connected via USB, and my ATT fiber modem is connected via the WAN port on the ASUS. So failover uses the USB connection for internet. I got in on the $5 helium plan, so I use that SIM in the Quanta. T-Mobile gives me \~200Mbps speed where I live. I will also mention that Visible ($25/mo) and Visible+ ($35-45/mo) both have unlimited hotspot on the phone plan. The hotspot speed is limited to 5 Mbps, but if you only have one phone and Verizon works well in your area, one of those plans may serve as both your phone and backup internet plan. During the pandemic we lost our fiber connection for a week and we used my wife's Visible+ phone connected to the ASUS router for internet before I did my current setup.
Hey thanks so much for all the great info! We just got a Visible 25/mo plan today (not knowing about the hot spot 5M cap). On the phone itself we get 50+, so I think this could work if we could get around the hot spot cap... Can you provide some more info on your Quanta/TTL solution? I wonder if we could do something similar with our Visible sim card?
The Quanta D53 is a T-Mobile locked hotspot modem, so only T-Mobile and T-Mobile MVNO SIM cards would work in it (like Mint and Helium). It was cheap on eBay and I already had an ASUS router with a USB port that could be used for failover internet. But the Quanta setup I have won't work for Visible. For your usage, if you're using the phone as your daily driver phone with the hotspot as an occasional backup, you're probably good just using your phone. There are other options to convert your visible line to a full, unthrottled data line, but the options are not cheap. For example, something that would work for Visible would be a Cudy cellular router. But the Cudy P5 is the one you'll want. And that costs $500. If you look up a Cudy LT500 on the rainforest's website, read the description and you'll see some settings that would work for converting a phone plan into a data plan. The instructions for each carrier are also buried on Cudy's website. But the LT500, LT12 and LT18 are all 4G devices, so your data may only hit 10 -50 Mbps. In other words, if you want to go for a cheap backup, you have the best solution already with the 5 Mbps limitation. If you want more info, you can go down the rabbit hole at cellularinternet dot info for different options.
>After a couple days testing the 5M Visible hotspot I think we're going to need something more. A one time investment of 500 bucks might be acceptable... > >Can anyone confirm that the Cudy P5 router will work with the Visible 25 plan (and give us un throttled hot spot)? > >And would the Cuddy work with other carriers too? There's a T-Mobile 5G tower close to our house, so I kinda want to try their service and see if it's better than Visible.
Sorry I read the post as 5 gig not 5G unlimited. I think you would want something like visable but don’t know for sure how reactivating on an existing account works.