Off-campus wi-fi options

My son has rented an apartment off-campus and I'd like some advice about getting wi-fi set up there.

The apartment is wired for cable, but he doesn't have a TV and doesn't want one.

Would a personal hot spot make more sense than a cable modem in this situation? He is on a Verizon wireless plan. Verizon has a deal for a Jetpack for $50 for the device and $20 a month. Does that sound about right? How much data would heavy laptop use require?

j_r said:
My son has rented an apartment off-campus and I'd like some advice about getting wi-fi set up there.
The apartment is wired for cable, but he doesn't have a TV and doesn't want one.
Would a personal hot spot make more sense than a cable modem in this situation? He is on a Verizon wireless plan. Verizon has a deal for a Jetpack for $50 for the device and $20 a month. Does that sound about right? How much data would heavy laptop use require?

Depends on what you mean by "heavy." For example, I let my daughter tether to my phone, and watching 3 hours of Netflix on a trip used up about 4 gig of data.

Any chance he lives next door to an Optimum hotspot

RobB said:
Any chance he lives next door to an Optimum hotspot

I wish! He's across the street from student housing, and he thinks that if his apartment were 10 feet closer to the road, he'd be OK. But now that you mention it, I'll have to check.

Wifi antenna/booster.

Wouldn’t the place he lives be connected to some Internet service provider that has various packages, some of which do not include TV? If he is not an Optimum customer I don’t see why it wold be right for him to piggyback on to student housing hotspot. Seems like he or you should pay for what he needs. Sorry. My experience as an Optimum customer is that you need an ID and password to use Optimum wifi, and I pay for the dubious privilege of being an Optimum customer in my home so am fully entitled to use the hotspots wherever they are, slow though they seem to be.

grayhill2 said:
Wouldn’t the place he lives be connected to some Internet service provider that has various packages, some of which do not include TV? If he is not an Optimum customer I don’t see why it wold be right for him to piggyback on to student housing hotspot. Seems like he or you should pay for what he needs. Sorry. My experience as an Optimum customer is that you need an ID and password to use Optimum wifi, and I pay for the dubious privilege of being an Optimum customer in my home so am fully entitled to use the hotspots wherever they are, slow though they seem to be.

I think student-accessible wifi and the optimum hotspot the RobB was referencing are two different things.

I imagine if he is a student, then he has legitimate access to campus-wide wifi. However if his housing is too far to utilize it, it's not unreasonable to use some type of extender to get to it.

If his parents use Optimum, then he can likely use their password to access an Optimum hotspot.

We aren't pirates.

j_r said:
We aren't pirates.

So, he's not going to Seton Hall? But seriously, if there is a hotspot nearby, it wouldn't be piracy to let him use your account to access it. It's not like you don't pay for it--that's piracy

If he watches video over the internet, forget about a personal hotspot. It would be slow and would run up a bill that makes you faint.

If a neighbor has good service he could pay them monthly for a password