Curtis, I use my iPhone as a hotspot (with a Verizon account) when there's a power outage. I'm in an area with 3G and very limited and spotty LTE. I have found the service to be unreliable: sometimes it works very well and is pretty fast (a little faster than Hughesnet, but not by that much); at other times it's very slow. It doesn't seem to want to multitask, either, so if I'm downloading something (for example, updating an app), sometimes it won't do anything else, not even open web pages (I don't have this problem with Hughesnet). This is why I only use the hotspot for emergencies; it wouldn't work as the only provider. I haven't tried a signal booster with it because I only use it in emergencies, so I don't know how/if a signal booster would work. Looks like MetroPCS doesn't have contracts, so it might be worth it for you to give them a try. As for the signal booster, do you know anyone who has one and might let you test it? $400 is pretty steep.
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