How Fast Is Verizon Hotspot Internet – If you use cable internet and pay more than you want, you can significantly reduce your internet bill by switching to new technologies such as fiber optic or 5G wireless home internet.
In this article, I will discuss my experience with the Verizon 5G Internet Home, a wireless solution for home Internet access. Note that this is not the same as Verizon FIOS, which is a fiber optic cable solution.
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I want to emphasize that this is not a sponsored post. I paid for Verizon’s 5G home internet service myself because I wanted to find a cheaper, more reliable internet alternative and share the experience with all of you.
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With Verizon 5G Home Internet, you can access the Internet from an Internet Gateway Box that connects to the nearest Verizon cell tower. It is very similar to using a mobile phone as a website. The Verizon Internet Gateway Box even has a dedicated phone number. If this sounds frustrating to you, it is to me. Can this have as much bandwidth as a direct cable connection? continue reading
In August 2023, Verizon changed its pricing structure. The lowest plan is $60/month or $50/month with autopay, limited to 100 Mbps download speed. For many, this is still a good deal, as 100Mbps is plenty of bandwidth for a household of one or two people.
If you want download speeds of up to 300 Mbps, you can get the 5G Home Plus plan for $80/month or $70/month direct payment, or $45/month with an eligible mobile plan.
A few days after I ordered the service, I received the Verizon Home Internet Gateway, a neat white cube with a power connector and two Ethernet ports…
Verizon Hotspot Wifi Device
I wasn’t even aware of it when I ordered the service, but the unit has a built-in Wi-Fi router. I also like that the box has two Ethernet ports. This should make it unnecessary for a large number of people to buy an additional router.
The setup was stupidly easy. I turned off the power and waited for it to load and configure. Once that was done, I connected the Ethernet cable from the door to my computer and used a web app to set the Wi-Fi network name and password. Voila! I was up and running within minutes. It’s amazing.
You can also configure Wi-Fi on the box using the settings printed in the section below.
Apart from the quick start card, no manual is included with the device. But you can download the manual in ARC version or ASK version.
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I immediately measured a download speed of 300 Mbps, the maximum speed on my plan. I’m surprised I got it mostly from the cell phone signal. Note that the cheapest plan is currently limited to 100Mbps, but this is still a large range for most people.
I have been using this service for almost a year now and my normal download speed is between 240 and 280 Mbps. Still better than cable for me.
Verizon 5G Home Internet speed test shows 238.82 Mbps download and 9.14 Mbps download, 22 mb ping, 145 ms download latency, 34 mb download
Last year my cable download speed was about 90 Mbps, probably due to the combination cable added to my house. That was one of the things that made the wireless internet solution so attractive to me. Note that other people may be able to get faster internet speeds with cable.
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However, I should clarify that your distance may vary depending on how far you live from the nearest cell tower and how many other people are using that tower at the time.
And not everyone can get 5G internet at home. Check the Verizon website to see if you are in the area.
Since the Verizon Home Internet Gateway box includes a built-in Wi-Fi router, I went ahead and tested it. For the first month it worked great, with good signal strength reaching my entire two-story house and even my garage below. But after a month my signal strength inexplicably dropped off a cliff. I noticed when my outdoor ring cameras died due to low Wi-Fi signal. The signal strength in my house was good.
I don’t really count it on Verizon, though, because I don’t expect built-in Wi-Fi without external antennas to be as good dual-layer routers as Netgear’s three external antennas.
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If you live in a one-bedroom apartment or condo, built-in Wi-Fi is probably right for you. It will probably work in many two story houses as well.
But many of Verizon Home Internet’s low ratings come from complaints about Wi-Fi limitations. Well, a built-in router isn’t meant to be as good as a dedicated Wi-Fi router with external antennas that you can find at Best Buy. If you live in a large multi-level home, you will probably want to use a dedicated router from Netgear, Asus or other reputable manufacturers.
Also, I read that the Wi-Fi router is limited to 10 devices on 2.4GHz and 30 devices on 5.0GHz. Again, the solution is to connect to your Wi-Fi router as explained below.
I had a commenter, Tom, told me that he complained about the Wi-Fi range in Verizon and they sent him a free Wi-Fi extender. Something to try if you don’t mind waiting for customer support.
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You must do this with a device with an Ethernet port (ie do not rely on Wi-Fi to perform these settings). The reason is that you turn Wi-Fi off on your gateway, and if something goes wrong and you need to turn it back on, the only way to do it is to use Ethernet.
On the Verizon Gateway website, go to Network -> LAN -> IP Passthrough and enable it. Doing so will disable Wi-Fi and remove internet access from the gateway’s LAN2 port. Connect your router to that port and you’re good to go. Read all my instructions here.
As soon as I submitted the service order, I received an email asking me to create a Verizon account online. When I tried to do this, the network did not recognize my device’s phone number or account number. I called Verizon customer service and they advised me to wait at the entrance and set it up first before creating an account.
So I did that but got the same error. I tried logging in several times and my account was blocked so I called again and reset my account. Unfortunately, the reset code had to be sent via regular US mail because the phone number on the file was my address, which of course could not receive text messages. Yes!
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After that I can finally go to the website and set up auto-pay (which you have to do to get the $10/month service discount). But I still couldn’t access the iPhone app. I called again and they reset my account again, which means I can wait for another postcode.
That did not solve the problem. I stopped using the site at this time. There are also some settings that time out when I try to change them, like the contact phone number. I could only change it by calling customer service again.
This was just my experience. I know others have had experiences with unhealthy math. My problems may be due to the fact that I had a Verizon cell phone account a long time ago because I saw this message on the website: “This email is associated with another line on this account. You must be logged in. that line for Manage preferences I think it messed with my old account.
To their credit, it’s always easy to get a Verizon customer service representative on the phone, which can’t be said for all Internet providers.
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Some people who watch local TV on streaming services such as Hulu and YouTube TV have reported that their location is not properly reported to these services, and therefore they cannot watch local channels on these services.
The first is that Verizon rapidly expands and deploys blocks of new, non-renewable IPs in the real IP Geo field reserves. Eventually they will be corrected.
If you go to https://iplocation.io/ you can enter your IP address (Google “what is my IP address”) and see where the IP is connected. You can also do the same on the MaxMind website. If your position is incorrect, you can also submit a correction request.
The second problem is that the IP address of the gateway is not fixed, so it can