Question simplest way to set up PC with dongle/card for 5g cellular data in remote area?

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

One of my son's friends has no internet, because he is living in a remote rural area with no wired internet.

I found myself thinking about cellular data, but he is really on a budget. I wish someone offered unlimited 500k or 1mbps data for $10 or so a month, but I haven't been able to find that. I did recently find a provider that offered about 10GB of high speed, with unlimited 256k, for about 10 bucks. I suppose that might be as good as he could get.

That being said, is there a USB dongle with antenna or something where he could just insert the sim card, and directly get data on the PC? They charge an extra 50% a month for wifi hot spot, so he wouldn't want to go that route. 256k seems pretty slow, but at least he could stream music, browse internet, and check email. $100 or so a year seems reasonable to add internet access like this.

If you have any recommendations for a usb device that could easily add this, I would appreciate your suggestions. Thanks!

 

[lantis3]

No need to pull his sim card and put in a dongle. Of course he is going to find his own cheap data plan, however.

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

Wow, that seems a lot simpler than I had thought. I'm pretty sure we have about 8 cell phones lying around that are all 3 years old or less. One of those, along with the USB cable, should be all he needs, along with a sim card with data plan.

 

[lantis3]

If USB tethering doesn't work

Question - How to turn my android phone into a WiFi Repeater AND connect it to pc via tethering?

Greetings people! Im not quite sure if thats the right place to ask but here we go. I have 2 Xiaomi android devices,1 desktop, and access to a network. My endgoal would be to have Internet Access in my PC and after some searching i ended up downloading an app that lets you share the network...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[akugami]

Is he able to get subsidy through the Lifeline Program for Low-Income Consumers? That might help cut some of the costs.

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

Wow, that seems a lot simpler than I had thought. I'm pretty sure we have about 8 cell phones lying around that are all 3 years old or less. One of those, along with the USB cable, should be all he needs, along with a sim card with data plan.

Hmm. I think the old phones I have are stuck to the Tracfone network. Wouldn't that mean that the sim card & data wouldn't work with it?