I had a neighbor complain about what she called the "glitches" while streaming using her cellular hotspot service through AT&T.
She experienced:
1. Widely varying speeds (MBPS)
2. A significant number of service dropouts and disconnections.
3. Loss of her home network and access to the internet
4. Her printer, connected to the network wirelessly, would not reconnect to the network once the service restored itself.
In diagnosing the problem, and AT&T was of absolutely no help to her when she called them, I found several things that explained the issues she was experiencing:
1. Tower switching. Basically, cellular traffic & data management employed by AT&T.
2. External interference. It appeared to be a signal strength issue.
3. Her hot spot was also her 3G spec'd phone. AT&T is phasing out 3G service in this area and her phone will eventually need to be replaced. At this time service for 3G connectivity is getting worse.
I convinced her to:
1. Replace her phone now vs. waiting. She advised she had gotten a text from AT&T about the 3G service expiration but had no idea what it meant. I clarified that for her.
2. Stop using a cellular hotspot and have internet services installed at her house. She didn't quite understand what I was recommending. For some reason she, like many senior citizens, think WiFi is internet service. I broke it down for her and told her it would be much more reliable than any cellular hotspot.
She made the switch, found out that her internet service was much faster than her cellular hot spot, service reliability was much better and that she wasn't always trying to figure out why she was having so many printer problems.
All of the current AT&T plan offerings are 5G based (negating any 3G new plans), hotspot data speeds (what AT&T calls "high speed 5G data) vary depending on time of use (20GBPS during peak times, possibly 100 MBPS during non-peak times) and they are more expensive on a monthly basis than 100 MBPS local ISP service.
She's a happy camper now.
