I didn't mean to imply I don't believe it to be true in your world. I just can't relate to it in my world because all of the above. And maybe because I've almost always had options other than paying per text.
Mostly that's something I have to blame my son for as his age group is all about texting. And he controls the plan for family cell group. Hmm that sounds nefarious. Anyway he's always kept us ahead of the curve when it comes to choosing and paying appropriately for the changing demand in cell features. For example we've also never been blindsided by exceptional data charges.
Honestly, in the US, these textese abbreviations were used long before and after any blip on the radar where expense was a concern because .... i guess we just are more addicted to speed.
If you get short replies from me, I'm ill. Well on a good topic.
Or maybe you just had a more competitive market. The UK and most of the rest of this part of the world have paid extortionate rates from the get go. Still do in many places.
Living in the house across the street from cows, with the hay fields and the mountains behind us .... comes at the cost of being a bit closer to understanding what that's like.
I'm currently at the coffee shop in town where there's actually free, decent-speed wifi. I'm kicking myself for not remembering that there's photos I wanted to upload and that I should have been catching up on my Dtube and YouTube. Oh well. I enjoyed chatting with the husband a good long time.
We can't get cable and know to avoid satellite, so all computer connections to the Internet go through the cell phone. ... To keep this simple, let's just say it gets complicated. ... which reminds me ... I need to add a new antenna for the signal booster to our prepping for spring shopping list.
What is your speed like using the cell phone? There are mobile wifi devises that you can plug into and use as a hotspot.
My son brought his one over the other day as I too live in a broadband black hole.
His MIFI device didn't work to well here but was fine at his house on the lake? Go figure. Plus it's £30 a month? which is rather expensive.
I'm interested in getting something that works because I'm planning an RV trip and need a decent signal up in the mountains of Scotland. Not many coffee shops up there.
Basically, in the US, we hit a setting in our phones that turns our phones into hotspots, broadcasting Internet via wifi. Then we connect pc's wirelessly.
Now as to the cell signal, that's another story. In the summer we have enough trees and I think solar issues too (unconfirmed) that we need a signal booster to maintain a good steady 4G speed. We shop here https://www.wilsonamplifiers.com/
Yes. The whole situation is pricey. Cable and DSL run 60 to 80 USD per month.
We get 15Gigs per device per month with a full 4G connection after that it drops to crawl speed but remains unlimited. (This is the speed at which HTML5 fancy displays of real time data (such as Bittrex) tend to break. )
The Hotspot and the fees are now part and parcel with the plan and it's an employee rate so ... i dunno real pricing.
Before this, we had a very old Verizon plan that my son signed us up for that was unlimited data at 4G for $15 each device per month (employee price). We miss it but changes had to be made because families change.
To compensate we added an inexpensive tablet ... so usually between both cell phones and the tablet we survive. Oh, also, the non-hotspot data (purely device viewed data) comes out of a different pool and is basically unlimited.
All in all, we think we're still ahead of broadband costs via cable and dsl. In an irony of ironies, there is fiber optic cable being placed in the area ... they stopped at the cow field and completely skipped this old farm house and the one across the street. But when we looked at the cost ... we said that's okay, we'll let someone else scream and yell about it. Our cell system might be pricey ... but not that pricey AND it goes with us anywhere.
Ok that's pretty much the skinny version of how we do Internet.
OH oh and the other thing we learned the hard way is that there's still a lot of small towns that are not on any broadband anything including not 4G. So the whole "take it with you with a signal booster" is actually vital in order to maybe reach a 4G tower ....
This is not relevant if you only fly to big cities ... which is "No! not on your life. Not on mine either" ;-)
Thanks for the information re 4G. My cell phone does have 4G but rarely gets above 2G at home. I can use it as a hotspot as well but only 500 mbyte a month. So no video uploads as it stands. My broadband is unlimited but as slow as hell with only 500kb upload speeds. Useless but it's the only provider out here. The others are all linked to cable tv which I don't want either.
Yes for a while we actually paid a little extra for cable without TV because we didn't even want to keep up with a TV... Moving every year or so.
If you can pick up a stronger signal anywhere near your home the signal booster could help. Oh and we always buy the mobile version.