I’ve had no ISP-provided Internet access since Feb. 2023 or so and, while it’s been a pain at times, I still haven’t caved into returning to the evil monopoly that is Spectrum, so far, and probably won’t for as long as I can’t land a remote job. ArrowDL, while not perfect, has been pretty good at download management for the most part in conjunction with mobile data-hotspotting. Update: I’m now using AB Download Manager to mitigate download cancellations at the throttled speed.
Ironically this is my spectrum bill the past few months. They send a letter saying they are upgrading the speed at no charge. Then a few months later the bill goes up.
Nov 2024. $60
Dec 2024. $70
Jan 2025. $70
Feb 2025. $73
Mar 2025. $73
Apr 2o25. $93!!
I switched to a home-oriented 5G system from T-Mobile. The price was decent for my area ($50/month), and most importantly, Spectrum got nothing from me.
Before that, my wife and I would use our phone hotspots for internet (Visible has plans that have unlimited throttled hotspot). The speed was capped at 5Mbit/s, but it was enough for us (and was only $25/month/phone at the time).
I’ve since moved back to Canada and am using a reseller (Oxio), which has been great so far.
Dang, 5MB throttled is insanely high! Hmm…
Rationing? In today’s day and age? I have unlimited mobile data with Visible for $25/mo. It even has unlimited (slow, 5 Mbps) tethering.
If you use a cheap VPN (I use Mullvad), your video bitrate doesn’t get throttled. But the tethered device also needs to be signed in on the VPN because WiFi tethering on the phone doesn’t use the phone’s VPN, at least on Android.
If you use Android, and you’re clever, you can USB tether to a properly-configured Raspberry Pi using EasyTether, and have that give WiFi to all your devices at full speed. I have a 4k Apple TV, and I get 4k video on my $25/mo plan.
For a single device like one PC, all you need is EasyTether on that PC, and then you can USB tether your phone to get unthrottled tethering. EasyTether costs a one-time $10 payment for the phone app. The PC app is free. You need both.
Looks like they have a new $35 plan that doubles the WiFi tethering speed (to a whopping 10 Mbps) and allows 1080p video without needing a VPN. That sorta seems like a sweet spot for price vs. hassle.
Nice strategies. I used to use EasyTether when it had a free plan. For some time I more recently used TetherFi as it’s free and open-source. I generally prefer FOSS nowadays even if it presents a greater hassle.
We purposely didn’t add wifi to our home. It would be an expensive way to give up more of our privacy. It used to bug me, but now I’m used to not having it.
Wifi doesn’t cost anything monthly. It’s a 1 time cost for a device like an access point and it’s cheap. Are you confusing wifi with internet?
