We’ve all been to areas where mobile service is less than stellar. You’re on a hike and suddenly there are no bars. While some purists may not care, it’s nice to have some connectivity for emergencies or severe weather alerts. Our affordable solution was quite simple. Get a second, cheap phone.
There are fancy services that will provide connections using a variety of methods, but they are all $150 and more per month. It’s not worth that amount when there are other options.
The benefits of two phones from two different sources are two separate networks. If one is out of range, the other one isn’t. I’ve yet to encounter an area where neither one works. We chose Tello for our cheap plan, and it actually works better than our more expensive, famous-name network phone. You can bring your own phone and we chose one that we had kicking about. They also have phones to purchase in case you can’t find a free or cheap phone that’s compatible.
We also signed up for the pay-as-you-go service and keep about $10 in there. This is great not only for venturing into Canada, but also keeps the higher speeds for data going. This is also handy when using their hotspot plan, which is included in the $25/month unlimited plan we selected.
After our hike, and we retire to the camper, we can enjoy the hotspot to post articles like this. Check out Tello here to see if it works for your plans. You can select a lower price plan to test it out and cancel with no worries. We tested and stayed.