angiebaby
Mountain Mama
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2007
- Messages
- 4,260
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Sportin' Wood and I sold our house in Reno last month and moved into our motorhome full-time. He is working remote and I am taking a sabbatical to finish my graduate studies.
This decision hinged on our ability to have reliable internet connection on the road in potentially remote locations with less-than-ideal cellular coverage. I stressed over this because we wouldn't know if our hardware would work until it was too late. What if we shelled out thousands of dollars for a mobile internet system and it didn't work in the remote regions of the Idaho Panhandle or the Enchanted Circle of New Mexico? We would have sold our house and would have to buy another one in this terrible market (for buyers) instead of enjoying a couple of years exploring the nation.
So, I can tell you now, that we are in BFE Idaho, where we usually only have 1-2 bars of Verizon, if any at all, and have as good of service as we had in Reno.
We did a lot of research and watched a lot of youtube videos from people who are working remotely. We ended up going through a company called mobilemusthave.com
Even if you don't need to stream videos or telecommute, the WeBoost antenna will increase your cell coverage in remote areas immensely. We have been averaging an increase of 2-3 bars using it in various locations. This is the model we purchased. I use an app called "open signal" that shows us the direction of the nearest cell tower and we point the antenna towards it.
We also got a PepWave mobile modem with an omni-directional roof antenna. I don't know the ins and outs and technicalities of it, but it holds up to 4 sim cards in it. We currently have two, an AT&T card with 500 GB of data and a Verizon one with 15GB of data before it throttles you. We set it up so that it pulls fro the ATT card as a primary, but it will supposedly alternate as needed with no lapse in streaming. Some places don't have AT&T so we have the Verizon as backup. You could have an additional Verizon if you wanted or Sprint, whatever. Again, up to 4 cards.
It was challenging installing the roof antenna due to the access from inside the coach walls. We paid extra to have them walk us through the setup, but I did it on my own from watching their videos and found I didn't need their assistance, but again, our whole plan hinged on internet access, so I wanted to ensure we had support if we needed it.
The folks at mobilemusthave.com have been great. It was a little frustrating at the beginning because I really just wanted to talk to someone and you can't call them. You have to use the chat feature. The call is a last resort as far as their business model goes. Jeff explained it pretty well, can you imagine all of the elderly people calling with questions who are fairly computer illiterate? Most people who RV full-time are over 60. They would have to have several full-time people dealing with the customers who may not even buy their product, just answering questions. So in the end, I let him deal with communicating with them and he learned some things from their chat set-up that he was able to use for his line of work. I knew if I needed help, they would be accessible through the chat and call if I really got into a tight spot, which I never did.
Redundancy is the key. We have our three cell phones as potential hot spots, we have the WeBoost antenna if the signal is low, and we have the mobile router with two (perhaps more if we need it) different data providers to choose from.
So, to make a long story short, if you are looking to get an internet setup in your RV or just want a better cell phone signal in remote areas, I highly recommend mobilemusthave.com. You can check out their YouTube videos also. This company has been key to us being able to sell our house and live in the Rockies, which any of you who know me know that this has been our dream for a long time.
This decision hinged on our ability to have reliable internet connection on the road in potentially remote locations with less-than-ideal cellular coverage. I stressed over this because we wouldn't know if our hardware would work until it was too late. What if we shelled out thousands of dollars for a mobile internet system and it didn't work in the remote regions of the Idaho Panhandle or the Enchanted Circle of New Mexico? We would have sold our house and would have to buy another one in this terrible market (for buyers) instead of enjoying a couple of years exploring the nation.
So, I can tell you now, that we are in BFE Idaho, where we usually only have 1-2 bars of Verizon, if any at all, and have as good of service as we had in Reno.
We did a lot of research and watched a lot of youtube videos from people who are working remotely. We ended up going through a company called mobilemusthave.com
Even if you don't need to stream videos or telecommute, the WeBoost antenna will increase your cell coverage in remote areas immensely. We have been averaging an increase of 2-3 bars using it in various locations. This is the model we purchased. I use an app called "open signal" that shows us the direction of the nearest cell tower and we point the antenna towards it.
We also got a PepWave mobile modem with an omni-directional roof antenna. I don't know the ins and outs and technicalities of it, but it holds up to 4 sim cards in it. We currently have two, an AT&T card with 500 GB of data and a Verizon one with 15GB of data before it throttles you. We set it up so that it pulls fro the ATT card as a primary, but it will supposedly alternate as needed with no lapse in streaming. Some places don't have AT&T so we have the Verizon as backup. You could have an additional Verizon if you wanted or Sprint, whatever. Again, up to 4 cards.
It was challenging installing the roof antenna due to the access from inside the coach walls. We paid extra to have them walk us through the setup, but I did it on my own from watching their videos and found I didn't need their assistance, but again, our whole plan hinged on internet access, so I wanted to ensure we had support if we needed it.
The folks at mobilemusthave.com have been great. It was a little frustrating at the beginning because I really just wanted to talk to someone and you can't call them. You have to use the chat feature. The call is a last resort as far as their business model goes. Jeff explained it pretty well, can you imagine all of the elderly people calling with questions who are fairly computer illiterate? Most people who RV full-time are over 60. They would have to have several full-time people dealing with the customers who may not even buy their product, just answering questions. So in the end, I let him deal with communicating with them and he learned some things from their chat set-up that he was able to use for his line of work. I knew if I needed help, they would be accessible through the chat and call if I really got into a tight spot, which I never did.
Redundancy is the key. We have our three cell phones as potential hot spots, we have the WeBoost antenna if the signal is low, and we have the mobile router with two (perhaps more if we need it) different data providers to choose from.
So, to make a long story short, if you are looking to get an internet setup in your RV or just want a better cell phone signal in remote areas, I highly recommend mobilemusthave.com. You can check out their YouTube videos also. This company has been key to us being able to sell our house and live in the Rockies, which any of you who know me know that this has been our dream for a long time.
