A fair amount of folks ask me how I stay connected as we do our travels - With what I do I really need to stay connected the best I can and well its not for watching Netflix, but my wife might argue that.
So lets discuss a few things here before we get into some of the nuts and bolts. "FREE" Wifi at RV parks, it doesn't work, There are 100's of people that are all trying to slam a poor under powered internet connection that if it works, it barely works. We all thirst for streaming, Facebook, work connection etc. and it completely drains the parks WIFI There are several terms I will use here WIFI - This is NOT an over the air cellular connection. This is WIFI that you would get at a RV park or Starbucks
Mobile Broadband - This is what comes from the cellphone providers like used on your cellphone or using a Mobile Broadband Hotspot.
Level 1 Internet Connectivity (This is what I had first) So if internet is critical but you are on a budget, you want to do a few things. 1. Pick a carrier (Verizon or AT&T) plans verify dramatically from month to month and you will have to do some research, along with looking at data caps and throttling.
2. Do research on what carriers work best in the areas you are going to travel to, or is there coverage in the area you are about to head to, if there is no coverage then you might have to adjust your plans.
3. We use an app called open signal it lets me look at coverage area of where we are going and zoom down to the location we are going to stay in to see how strong and reliable the cell coverage is for data before we get there.. Yes we have changed our travel locations based on this.
4. You will want to get a hotspot or a jetpack depending on your service you select, these are built for taking a cellular data signal and making it into WIFI in your RV.
5. Setup is very easy with this device. Ordering it and then activating the SIM card through ATT takes about 15 minutes.
Here is the mobile hotspot we used when we first started.. Its a great hotspot and for 80% of ya'll it will work awesome! But this isn't the only piece to the puzzle. One of the biggest improvements to this setup will be having an antenna that will plug into this hotspot - the ability to plug in an antenna will allow you to mount the antenna in your RV window working to get the best single to the hotspot and provide a good strong service for you. We would move it around from window to window looking for the best location. We used a nighthawk antenna that did great for us and 90% of the time we were able to get a great working internet connection. We did upgrade our system to a newer system with dual services and a large external antenna, but that system is very complex and I will do a write up on it next!
Hope this helps you guys! Remember to check us out Facebook