Having a high-quality mobile hotspot is a mandatory part of any nomadic mobile setup. Netgear M5 and M6 are the best, and the weBoost is an affordable way to make it even better.
Verizon and ATT are the only reliable services in North Carolina (and America) from my experience. While a lot of people have Mint and Visible and T-Mobile these service providers are constantly de-prioritized to the services owned by ATT and Verizon. That’s not the kind of thing I can prove other than through my experience watching what happens with T-Mobile gets deprioritized.
ATT is the most expensive service but works best with the Netgears. ATT hates data users. This is probably because they were abused for so long by people swapping sims from their “tablet” program and running unlimited data traffic. ATT prices are astonomically high and do not include an “unlimited” option where traffic over that amount is automatically throttled. Instead, ATT charges outrages rates for overages. [I once paid 460 dollars for going over. Since moving to 100 GB I have not gone over and stream about three hours a day.] ATT does have “pay as you go” plans that completely shut down until you pay if you go over, also not good for live streaming, but way better than being stuck in a plan that will still charge you for overages. The ATT salesperson completely lied to me when I signed up for the plan saying that the play I bought would throttle and it absolutely did not. Now I’m stuck in that plan.
Verizon provides the best plans and coverage for urban areas in my experience and—most importantly—allows unlimited bandwith that is throttled after the “premium” bandwidth is all used up. This is perfect for streaming because even their trickle when combined is enough for a decent live stream.
As for hardware, I have more experience with mobile data hotspots than I care to admit because of all the IRL live streaming hassles and working remotely. I’ve owned 12 of them.
The first hotspot I owned I bought in 2013 to work on the road. It was a huge mistake and Verizon would not let me out of it. The “MiFi” hotspot kept slamming my connection making any kind of professional chat or call impossible and regularly dropping my remote ssh terminal sessions in the middle. Considering the important work I was doing that demanded a connect to be up, that is disasterously bad. Given that I was stuck with a useless modem that I couldn’t stop this mistake cost my a lot early on.
The first modems I tried for live streaming are the wireless modem dongles which never worked because of their power demands and lack of antennae. This really angered me because this is what all the IRL streamers say to use. Just don’t. They are horrible.
Next I got an M5, which I promptly lost during a rainstorm taking shelter in the woods. It must have fallen out after I ended the stream. There went 800 dollars instantly. (I bought it just as it came out from Netgear directly.) I tell this story because it is important to remember that this gear isn’t cheap and taking it out into harsh outdoor conditions that you will never again visit is a very risky proposition. Be ready to be vigilant if you do risk it.
In pursuit of the perfect IRL streaming setup I got bought a T-Mobile “unlimited” account and the base modem. They sent me home without even putting a sim card in it even though I asked them about it. I had to drive an hour back to the store just to have them put it in. Then I came home and after a week of attempts couldn’t get the modem to make any decent connection at all. I returned it and another couple from Davidson was returning their “internet gateway” product saying “we just can’t get any signal at all.” They let me swap it for their highest end Inseego modem (300 dollars). I tried that modem for another two months and it did almost none of the work. I barely touched my bandwidth on it. I decided it was going to cost me more money to keep it than to buy myself out of it. So I paid the 250 dollars, had them “unlock” the modem, and stopped the service, another very expensive learning experience. I will never get a T-Mobile account ever again under any circumstances.
Even though the amount of live streaming I do is decreasing in favor of edited video content, this knowledge is still relevant since everything I read from experienced digital nomads says they require a mobile hotspot even if they do have Starlink.
(missing the b13 channel which Verizon depends on). The M6 is set to work with everything for the foreseeable future, but can require resetting the APN on occasion and doesn’t allow locking down 4g (a required for reliable live streaming).
I happen to have three Netgear Nighthawks at this point, 2 M5s (locked to 4g) and 1 M6. Three modems is the minimum to do any quality live streaming in America, of that I’m convinced. I also use one of the Inseego modems locked down to Verizon. I also have the highest end Inseego modem and they are way better than the other tiny Verizon hotspots but are so very bad compared to the Netgear.
I’ve also tested the weBoost booster and it does work. I even set it up on my backpack and biked around with it. But for most cases the extra boost is not necessary if I have three or four modems.