Tired of not being able to tether your iPhone? There’s now a solution on the market that’s legal and won’t cost an arm and a leg. Last year Verizon introduced the MiFi Mobile Broadband device. It’s a Wireless Access Point that connects to the Internet via a cell data connection instead of a wired connection. It’s about half the size of a cell phone and runs on batteries.
Functionally, this means that you can leave the MiFi in your briefcase, connect to it from your laptop via WiFi, and get an Internet connection anywhere that Verizon offers data service. And you’ll be running on Verizon’s data network instead of AT&T’s much smaller network.
The game changer is that Verizon now offers Prepaid Mobile Service. When the MiFi was introduced, you had to sign up for two years of service at $60 per month, making the final bill well over $1500. Now you can buy a MiFi off of eBay for $125 and pay for service by the day, week, or month.
A week of service costs $30 and a month of service costs $50. Starting this week, the monthly plan has been upgraded from 500MB to 1GB. These rates are very attractive for the person who travels rarely. The only downside is that you have to sign up for the service from an existing internet connection. Note that you can’t use the MiFi to buy more prepaid service unless you already have an active service plan.
I bought one for myself this week with a month of prepaid for our vacation this summer. The first time you configure it, you have to connect it to your PC or Mac via a USB cable and you have to install Verizon’s VZAccess software. The installation process was a little time consuming but not complicated. Once you’ve activated your prepaid service via the USB connection, you can do everything via WiFi.