If your cellphone plan supports it and you have a data plan, you can use the phone as a hotspot anywhere you have a cell signal. It is as secure as any other connection; just make sure you are on secure websites (https://)
It's the "plan" you agreed to and pay for via a provider such as Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. Typically you select a voice and data plan that is tailored to how you use the service. Even the pay as you go plans offer different voice/data allowances.
@Beth Gallagher AFAIK, my Trac-phone, purchased at retail, $4.99, and having 60 min. of time "fed" into it electronically, had no plan involved. A number was issued, and if my time expires, the device becomes useless, until "refilled", at which time a new number is issued. I get absolutely no unwanted calls, as the only folks knowing my number are my intimates, and those are DANG few! Frank
My Friends... As a hapless witness to this veritable potpourri of internet access information, I can only state with a modicum of sensibility that it's purely academic whether the antenna on my Verizon Modem is functional or not. Were it functional, then I would need some sort of signal receptor to prove it was, such as someone's Internet-capable Iphone, Tablet, or Laptop to prove it. Other than that, I'm continuing to enjoy my limited-existence Windows Seven PC. Thank you all for the technical dissertation on Wireless Internet Access! Harold I. Pollner, now 83
A broadband router is also known as a broadband modem. You can either use wirelessly (as you seem to be doing) or with an ethernet cable. I use it both ways.
Yeah, our modem has a wireless router in it, but we use a separate router instead of messing with the one in the modem. Way back when our kids wanted to play games on the internet, they strung an ethernet cable back to their rooms. That all disappeared when we got WiFi. I believe this is our second or third router since then, and we will stay with it until it dies unless someone gifts us one. We don't need any additional speed, but if the kids were still home and young, we would have had several more ...faster, faster, faster.
@Thomas Stearn I went around on this issue once on that OTHER forum, and did not resolve the fact that you state: a router may also be a modem, and vice versa. Frank
They can be combined, as a cable router modem. I don't know anything about them, but I guess they exist.
Are you serious, Beth? HOW do you do this? How do you "open" network settings? How do you "find" servers? This is all "New Century" stuff to me! Harry
Hal-- Maybe you should sign up for a computer basics class at a local junior college; it could open up a whole new world.
I suggested on a couple of occasions that he could learn a lot just by going on YouTube and getting a visual explanation to a lot of his questions but nope, suddenly not interested, gets mad and stomps off. I can’t imagine how he’d react to a classroom setting with a real teacher standing there or maybe, as a second thought, if he spent some bucks trying to learn, a classroom setting might not be all that bad!