topic Newbie questions - Consumer Cellular, one bar signal strength, lousy satellite internet in Arlo

Newbie questions - Consumer Cellular, one bar signal strength, lousy satellite internet

torrent — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:00:05 GMT

Newb questions so I don't have a specific model to ask about.

We're on a rural road with satellite internet (WildBlue) and Consumer Cellular. Apparently CC uses the AT&T/T-Mobile networks. CC will equip phones with an AT&T SIM or a T-Mobile SIM, depending on which one they think will work better for you. We get one or maybe two bars signal strength at our house.

I'd like to check in on our cats while we're out of town. So this is an indoor application. It seems that satellite internet either won't work at all or is very unreliable for home monitoring so I'm inquiring about cellular. Does anyone have any experience with Arlo and CC and weak signal?

Re: Newbie questions - Consumer Cellular, one bar signal strength, lousy satellite internet

TomMac — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:08:58 GMT

You may have two choices...

1) an Arlo GO camera for att, should work with 1 or 2 bars tho costly...

you can check data thruput on yr phone for speed of service.. Several Mbs each way should work fine

2) a mobile hot spot with Ethernet port, and a Arlo base and camera...once again check for yor best service speeds tho in this case data if not unlimited may be a factor

in both cases, a min of 1Mbs is a must tho I recommend 2 in each direction

Re: Newbie questions - Consumer Cellular, one bar signal strength, lousy satellite internet

torrent — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:35:19 GMT

Tommac -

Thanks for the speedy reply.

Your Method #1: Is there a way to check data thruput on my phone?

Method #2: WildBlue caps us at 17GB/month. And our bandwidth is horrific. I can't even get Speedtest to run this morning. It says "Latency Error".

Re: Newbie questions - Consumer Cellular, one bar signal strength, lousy satellite internet

TomMac — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 16:21:38 GMT

@torrent wrote:

Tommac -

Thanks for the speedy reply.

Your Method #1: Is there a way to check data thruput on my phone?

Method #2: WildBlue caps us at 17GB/month. And our bandwidth is horrific. I can't even get Speedtest to run this morning. It says "Latency Error".

Speedtest on your phone ( app ) can measure thruput...since the Go is a cellular camera on LTE, it should give you a pretty good idea

If you can't run speedtest , your out of luck that way... for either method

But #1 and #2 were both referring to using cellular not satellite ( if thats what you were referring )