Best cell phone plan deal of the moment, Visible by Verizon?

[RogerD]

I have straight talk (verizon). I have been using for about a year and my only complaint is they don't want you using it as a hotspot. I use PDAnet app to get around it, but I can't exceed 60 gb or they will review your account. If they figure out you are using as a hotspot they will terminate the account. 60 gb is nowhere enough data for me, so I just use it as a backup for my att hotspot.

I'm going to sign up for invisible and give it a try since it's truly unlimited.

 

[Random Painted Highway]

I bought Visible service and phone on Friday and am going to try it out as a hotspot.

 

[Fivealive]

I switched to Visible 11 days ago and so far have used up 38.13GB, 30.24GB of it being the built in hotspot (not PDAnet), so far so good, I will update if anything changes. I'm on pace to use up 90GB just from tethering. I switched over from the pre-paid Verizon, and the service seems identical as far as I can tell. The only difference so far is that this is cheaper and I no longer have to hide my tethering with PDAnet.

 

[RogerD]

Update: I've been using Visible for the past 14 days as a hotspot and have used 149.43 GB with no problems.

They said when using as a hotspot you would be limited to 5 Mbps download. But I'm typically getting around 17 Mbps and have seen speeds as fast as 35-45 Mbps. Upload is usually between 5 - 9 Mbps.

Hard to beat for $40 per month.

 

[SheketEchad]

I'm really considering getting the Visible cheap phone to replace my Jetpack on my beyond unlimited plan that I have now. Since I only use it as a back up for my house router currently (when power goes out I can still work), I've never bumped up against the throttling on the Jetpack (which begins supposedly at 15GB during congested times) or my regular phone. I'd drop 20.00 for the jetpack on my monthly bill, and add 40.00 to have unlimited to use for work when on the road.

I think since I have 9 days left on my billinh cycle, I'm going to try and see if I can use it up to the 'throttle' zone and see what difference it makes. I'm thinking none since I'm connected to a VPN when I work, and I think it only takes the handshake to the VPN and then usage runs through the VPN, but I am not sure. It may however make my viewing of CRVL videos less enjoyable!

Are there more geeky people than I with experience in that matter - usage GB when connected to a VPN? When I go on the road I must, must be able to work. Verizon has never let me down in over ten years, and this deal looks amazing.

 

[skyl4rk]

The data transfer goes through your hotspot to the vpn server, so the vpn data still shows as hotspot data usage.

 

[RogerD]

Visible Hotspot: 50 down / 9 up

 

[SheketEchad]

Good grief, that's scads better than my house router from CenturyLink AND my Verizon hotspot (if you combined them both they wouldn't be that high, lol!) And my ping time to server is only 34 ms.

I'm not even getting 2Mbps download or upload from either my house router or my hotspot on my cranky old laptop, so I tested with my cell phone and work laptop as well. I think it must be my network adapter on my old busted up personal laptop. It is just old and slow I guess, because all my other newer devices tested much better using the same DSL router and hotspot, but still not near what you're getting with Visible.

Speedtest via my cell phone through the mobile app, was 21.3 Mbps download and 5.29 upload with a 15ms ping using the same house router, and about the same from my work laptop while disengaged from the VPN.

Thanks for providing the results. I wonder if they will be able to maintain that stellar performance as the network grows more users? Sure looks good from over here

 

[RogerD]

The speed really depends on the tower you are nearest and congestion.

The majority of the time I'm getting around 17 Mbps down and 5- 9 up.

It does work well. The last 16 days I've used 158 GB of data with no problems.

 

[gwave]

It hasn't been long, but I'm so far satisfied by Visible and their cheap pone the R2, which I'm really only using as a hotspot.

Today I got a travel router set up and have a second phone and macbook connected to the router, receiving from the hotspot. The router is necessary because either Visible or the R2 only let's you connect 1 device to the hotspot at a time. Again, too early to say how this will work out, but it's nice little set up and doing exactly what I needed it to.

The router I got is the GL.iNet GL-AR750S-Ext Gigabit Travel AC Router (can find on Amazon)

 

[Firtree]

Visible somewhere states only one device on the hotspot tho’ in the past using an iPhone could connect more than one.

 

[RogerD]

Received an email from Visible today that the 5 Mbps cap has been dropped.

They said when using your phone as a hotspot that it would be capped ay 5 Mbps.

I never experienced it, always gotten 17 Mbps on average and as high as 50.

So looks like it was already ongoing and at least no one has to worry about it happening.

 

[tripper]

I have been using visible for 6 weeks now, it works well most of the time. Occasional dropouts, and some very slow speeds during peak times around Tucson. Works very well around flagstaff. I got it with iPhone 6s.

 

[chucktate]

It hasn't been long, but I'm so far satisfied by Visible and their cheap pone the R2, which I'm really only using as a hotspot.

Today I got a travel router set up and have a second phone and macbook connected to the router, receiving from the hotspot. The router is necessary because either Visible or the R2 only let's you connect 1 device to the hotspot at a time. Again, too early to say how this will work out, but it's nice little set up and doing exactly what I needed it to.

The router I got is the GL.iNet GL-AR750S-Ext Gigabit Travel AC Router (can find on Amazon)

 

[tripper]

You should know that your data is always de-prioritized so if you are on a tower with some congestion your data speeds can be pretty abysmal.  My experience over the past month in a limited area is that rural areas are good for data speeds where in moderate sized cities the speeds are almost unusable. 

Still, I'm keeping it as a backup to my at&t hotspot and T-Mobile phones.

Exactly my experience with it too. Evenings in city, very low bandwidth. Out camping, fast and good service

 

[Cajunwolf]

I scanned the whole thread and no mention of NetBuddy. A friend of mine who travels regularly turned me on to this one. He loves it and like me has to have fast, reliable internet, whatever the cost. This is $65/month. You buy one of the recommended routers, purchase the SIM card, and hook up.

https://netbuddy.co/

 

[RVTravel]

Netbuddy is a separate thread.

 

[Cajunwolf]

@RVTravel
Thanks!

 

[brucedevauxone]

1st i would like to ask the people that run this forum= why sooooo many treads (NINE) related to Visible??? would it not be better to combine all info related to any one topic in the same forum title

so i decided to post under this title because in seems to have the most activity

 

[B and C]

I don't run the place Anyone can start a thread and if the mods tried to combine them into one it would be a jumble of posts that would be difficult to follow. Not that difficult to read each of them where there is a flow.