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What is a mobile hotspot and why would I need one?
One day at a Digital Drop-In workshop at Skibbereen Community School, there was no Wi-Fi and therefore we could not access the Internet. It seemed to be a widespread problem that day across areas of the town. We could have just chatted for the hour over our tea and biscuits, or gone home, but participants come to the workshops to learn and develop their skills in the digital world. We could not send them away ’empty-handed’, but what to do? Well, it seemed as good a time as any to get familiar with creating hotspots and both learners and mentors were up for the unscheduled challenge!
Learners had iPhones, iPads, a laptop, a variety of Android smartphones (non-iPhones) and tablets. The mentors were careful to check with their learners as to whether their mobile data plans were unlimited. Unfortunately, no one seemed to know this and so we could not take the risk of creating a hotspot that might use up precious free monthly data and result in a nasty bill the following month. So, as facilitator, I was happy to offer my phone’s hotspot for the learners to link to.
A Google search for ‘what is a hotspot’ returns the following top explanation:
A hotspot is a physical location where people can access the Internet, typically using Wi-Fi, via a wireless local area network (WLAN) with a router connected to an Internet service provider.
Source: www.intel.com
But this isn’t really what we’re looking for since the school room that we use is such a physical location but on the day in question we cannot use the network. A refined search for ‘what is a mobile hotspot‘ yields a more useful explanation also from Intel’s web page:
A mobile hotspot (sometimes called a portable hotspot) is a hotspot that’s just that—mobile! While a “regular” Wi-Fi hotspot is tied to a physical location, you can create a mobile hotspot by using your smartphone’s data connection to connect your laptop to the Internet. This process is called “tethering.”
Source: www.intel.com
Okay, now that we have the correct terminology (mobile hotspot rather than hotspot) we can figure out how to create one so that we can access the Internet and carry on with our workshop. The devil is in the detail as they say!
It is worth noting that there are many valid reasons to use our own mobile data instead of a public free Wi-Fi, not least concerns regarding security and privacy. My advice is to check that our data plan includes free unlimited data or words to that effect and create our own mobile hotspot while sitting somewhere with an iPad or tablet that requires an Internet connection and a bigger screen than a phone!
For ‘how to’ information on “tethering” a device to a smartphone please head over to our library of resources.
Until next time, Sandra
Featured image courtesy of khaas on Pixabay.
Sandra Flynn 