FreedomPop mingle hotspot

[jimindenver]

The Freedompop Mingle hotspot arrived today. It fired right up out of the box but out here was only able to find a 3G signal. That has been fast enough to do the forums and even slowly load the few pogo games I do.  I'll take it deeper into Denver tomorrow in search of a LTE signal.

It's suppose to do both wifi and tether. I'll have to try the tether part. The wifi extended to the back of the house so that was fine.

The hotspot was $44 shipped. The base plan is 500 mb free a month.  Go over and its a cent a mb or you can buy a gig for $10. They have plans starting at 2 gigs for $20 and it's $4 to have roll over. (they give you a free trial 2 gig plan when you buy the hotspot)

I don't expect much up in the mountains considering I am only picking up 3G here on the edge of Denver. I can use it here to augment the phones data and it may possibly come in handy on the road. Now if I could just find a Verizon version....

So it is functional if you have Sprint in your area and can be free month to month if you don't use a lot of data. I've read some not so thrilling reviews about the Mingle but this one seems to function as it should.

 

[jimindenver]

I did try to use it tethered this morning and no go. It just told me the Mingle was 100% charged and to unplug it.

 

[jimindenver]

I was about ready to send the Mingle back as it seemed to be able to pick up 3G even when I took it into Denver proper where Sprint has 4G/LTE. I joined their forum too ask about it, listing LTE as a issue and instantly got a email saying they were having issues with the carrier, hoped to have it taken care of soon and here's 100mb free for your trouble.

That's fine until my free trial ends and the free account becomes good for LTE only. I'm not paying for 3G on a weak network.

 

[jimindenver]

Well I have to tell you that those people can resolve carrier issues faster than you can say FreedomPop. I turned on the Mingle after getting that email and magically it connected to LTE. Much faster than 3G too.

 

[RVTravel]

Thanks for all the info Jim.

 

[GotSmart]

I wonder how it would be in Quartzsite?

 

[cyndi]

Thanks, Jim!

 

[blars]

I wonder how it would be in Quartzsite?

I'm getting 3-4 (of 6) bars of freedompop (sprint) 3g signal at Hi Jolly BLM on the North side of Quartzsite.

 

[GotSmart]

I'm getting 3-4 (of 6) bars of freedompop (sprint) 3g signal at Hi Jolly BLM on the North side of Quartzsite.

Then that would be worth looking into.  Thanks!

 

[NickTheoBennett]

I also use Freedompop, though I purchased the LG G2 smartphone. I regularly use it both by itself and as a wifi hotspot, and it works beautifully. It's certainly not as good as a $50/month plan from one of the big providers, but it works very well for a free service.

 

[jimindenver]

I can add that in the sticks of mid Michigan I was still able to pick up LTE.

 

[jimindenver]

Not to bore you all too much but I thought I'd up date since my plan went past it's month mark.

I had fun playing with the 2 gig of data trial plan the first month. It gave me a chance to try it in different places and to see just how much data I use. At times the houses wifi would bog down and the mingle was a better connection, go figure.

The last days of my plan I had just a bit of data. A member here told me about the friends feature of the service and gifted me 100 mbs. I ended up going over my data by 56 mbs and they billed me $2 to fund the pay as you go plan at .015 cents a Mb. 66 cents in my case.

I switched from the $20 2 gig plan they give you a trial on to the 500 Mb free plan. A member here alerted me to the friends program where you get 50 Mb a month for every friend that accepts your invite up to 500 Mbs. With a bit of effort i found list of emails to add to the program and quickly maxed out the extra 500 Mbs. Now it a gig free every month and I can receive another 500 Mbs a month from those friends. Since it cost money to roll over data and then only 500 Mbs a month, people tend to dump their excess data right before it expires. A known friend gifted me 100 Mbs, two others randomly gifted me 20 Mbs each today.

One other thing is when you have one of the 2 gig plans and up, extra data is $10 a gig or .015 cents a Mb. On the free plans the extra data is $10 for 500 Mbs and .02 cents on pay as you go.

Pay as you go comes either from a $2 charge to your card or from a credit account. You can add $10 or more to the account or like mine, I have the balance of the $2 from when I went over.

So I wont bore more unless something changes. I will post if they have good deals in the devices. I just missed getting the MiL one for $29 and they had USB sticks for $19. For that price you can have multiple accounts and more free gigs a month.

 

[jimindenver]

A update to my Freedompop adventure. The hotspots have been working fine as long as they get a signal. They are considerably less expensive than when I first posted, as little as $20 and some of the phone deals have looked impressive. What this update is really about is that they have started giving away GSM service on either AT&T or T-Mobile here in the states. It also provides services overseas.

You can get a Global hotspot with the GSM data sim or just the sim itself. They also sell a sim card good for Talk, text and data that will work in any unlocked GSM phone. The free allotment is small with only 200 Mb of data plus the 500 Mb that you can get by adding email addresses off of a main list. The talk sim only includes 200 minutes of talk and 500 text so both are considerably smaller than what you get when on the Sprint side of things. It also uses HSPA+ not LTE but that's still more than fast enough for streaming.

Now for me it is perfect. It gives me a bit of AT&T coverage when nothing else connects. I can make a gig stretch quite a while if need be and I make few if any phone calls and text. At worse I would have to bump up to a paid plan for the time I was in that area and drop it back down after.

This is the current data sim deal and it comes with a battery.

http://slickdeals.net/f/8752791-fre...1gb-free-data-trial-powerbank-9-free-shipping