Frugal Online Access Without Landline
mwmil...@gmail.com
line?
Any help Appreciated,
Matt
Rod Speed
> What are the better ways to get frugal online access without a land line?
wifi if its close enough to be viable and you dont mind the dubious legality with some of them.
Samantha Hill - take out TRASH to reply
> What are the better ways to get frugal online access without a land
> line?
Go to a public WiFi hotspot with your laptop.
George Grapman
Public library.
sarge137
Panera Bread - free wifi in my area. There are also 3 or 4
independent coffee shops with free wifi.
George Grapman's suggestion of the Public Library is probably the
best, if there's a branch close enough, that's open enough to be
useful.
Regards,
Sarge
Samantha Hill - take out TRASH to reply
>
> George Grapman's suggestion of the Public Library is probably the
> best, if there's a branch close enough, that's open enough to be
> useful.
That depends. At our public library, you have to sign up in advance and
can only use it for an hour at a time.
Al Bundy
But first make sure you have the land line cost to the minimum. Drop
the touch tone dialing, caller ID, and any other add on in the bill.
See if you are eligible for any discount for age or income. Don't sign
up for a long distance carrier. I know AT&T offers all of these
options. Then there are dial-up options from free to $9.95 on up.
Dave
Do you mean no landline at all, or just no telephone service activated on that landline? You've gotten some good responses so far, but I took your question to mean, how do I access the Internet at home cheaply and legally without using dial-up?
If you have telephone lines run to the building but no telephone service active, google naked DSL. Basically, you can have DSL service (awesome!) run on the phone line with no "phone" service. And with DSL starting around $12-$15/month (regular price, not a special promotion), that's really frugal for broadband Internet access.
You could also look into a "lite" offering from your cable company. Most cable companies DO NOT advertise this, but in addition to the regular cable modem service that is fast and expensive, they usually offer a lower speed cable modem service at a cheaper price. Like anywhere from $15-$30/month for what is essentially about 20% of the download speed of their regular cable modem service that can run as high as $50-$60/month. But even if you are a heavy surfer, you don't need all that speed, so the "lite" version works great.
Finally, if you have no lines at all to the building like no telephone lines and no cable lines, you can look into T-Mobile, if you have a T-Mobile cell phone signal in your building. Through T-Mobile, you can get a cell tower based broadband Internet connection. Don't remember the cost but I'm sure it wasn't over $30/month, last I looked into it. This will be much cheaper and more reliable than any satellite based solution. Plus side of this is, you can use it anywhere that T-Mobile has a signal! Just get an adapter to use it with your desktop computer if you are usually using it at "home". -Dave
Gordon
@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:
Sharing a broadband connection with a neighbor.
With their permission, of course. They may be
able to hook you up through their wifi, or run
a length of cable to you. Of coures you offer
to help pay for the service. NB: Many ISP's
frown on this type of sharing, but don't really
try to detect it.
Your neighbore may be a local coffee shop that
has wifi reachable with a cantenna (google it).
Again, get an agreement with them before you just
decide to freeload.
Some communities offer a free wifi cloud. Here in
Portland, OR we have Metro-fi and THe Personal Telco
Project.
Your Cell phone can also access the internet. Sprint,
AT&T, and Verizon offer teathered or phone as modem
data access services. I tried this with my laptop
and Sprint phone. You have to download and install
a piece of software. There are two ways to go on this.
You can use the call manaager provided by your wireless
carrier, or you can download the CDMA modem driver
provided by your phone manufacturer. Be carefull, though.
If you don't have a data plan with your carrier (shop on
line for the best rates), you will be charged per Kbyte.
That can be very un-frugal. There was a guy who ran up
a $12,000 cell phone bill by downloading movie trailers
via his cell phone.