Adding WiFi hot spot to my Tacoma

Looking for any info if available, to add WiFi to my 2017 TRD Sport. Thanks in advance

 

*points at your smartphone*

 

Out of curiosity, what do you need a hot spot in your truck for?

 

Isn't it obvious? To go on TacomaWorld while driving!

 

Your cellphone carrier must be doing a very poor job at advertising it’s mobile hotspot options if you had to ask this

 

Sure, it's called a smartphone.

 

Color me crazy TW, but I’m guessing OP is looking for connectivity when in regions remote enough to be lacking cell data. I’ve looked into this myself with no satisfying results.

Following this thread. Now we just need to hear from the non-mall crawlers lol.

 

You can always get a separate "hot spot" wifi module and use a pay as you go system. I do this and works great. Both me and my wife have a job where we must be oncall every few weeks and didn't want to be limited to being home or close to home if we are paged for critical business. We both have Sprint, which isn't the best in remote areas and went with an AT&T mobile hotspot device. I can be sitting in the back seat, rolling 70 mph on the interstate, logged into work with my laptop, and the speed is just like I am sitting at my desk. Solid connection, both of us have done this (logged in at the same time, with our laptops and our phones) and not noticed any issues with speed (this is mainly work/email type stuff, not streaming a movie). AT&T has a slightly larger coverage area, and you pay $25 for 2GB of data for 4 weeks. If neither of us are on call for the up coming 4 weeks, we don't pay anything, then just pay the next time. 2GB of data is a lot for 'work' type responses to email and stuff like that, so we have never been over (but you can always pay more for 5GB of data). Unused data is not rolled over, you use it or lose it. But since it's for work and only, I'm claiming it on my taxes.

Not sure if this is what you are looking for but this works great for us. Pay as you go HotSpot is there if you need it and don't want to be paying for a feature with your carrier if you are NOT going to be using it that often. To add a hotspot feature to both of our phone plans is more than $25 a month, especially if I won't use it every month.

 

Thank you !

 

Smartphone radios are only capable of about 1w transmission power.

Meanwhile an actual vehicle hotspot has a far more powerful Radio greatly increasing connectivity around the vehicle.

 

I actually kinda like the idea of putting in a hotspot. Would certainly make road trips with the little kids easy.

I believe you can get google fi to work on some hotspot devices. Its 10$ per gig up to $60, then its free after you hit the $60 mark.

 

Taking a trip to NY to see family end of March. With my wife's idea of taking time off "still working" it would make it much easier.

 

We're on the road quite a bit. Seriously a standard LTE/4G smartphone hotspot has always worked for me in areas with LTE/4G service. We use Verizon. Of course if you're in a remote area without 4G there's not much you can do economically. Also, it makes no difference how strong the hotspot output signal is if you're out of 4g service range. There are signal boosters but I don't know how well they work in a mobile setting.

I would check coverage maps for your carrier in the area you're going before you do anything else.

 

I have an AT&T Mobley plan, unlimited hotspot data for $20 monthly, $23.32 after tax, postpaid. This is a stand-alone plan. I then swapped the SIM card from the Mobley into a Netgear Nighthawk hotspot router. This deal was not advertised but spread like wildfire thru Reddit and Howard's forum a couple of years ago. AT&T removed the plan shortly afterwards but I'm grandfathered in.

Recently I've read that it's available again for a limited time.. let me see if i can find a link for it and post it here.

 

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