Cellular data and Connectivity

We are finding two challenges in staying connected while up here in Alaska. The first is obvious – in many places, there simply is no cell service. Completely understandable. The second is a bit more frustrating… we spend several hundred dollars a month on cellular data plans, and we continue to “run out” of data.
I’ve commented on this before, but am still irritated that we have “unlimited” data plans on both Verizon and T-mobile, but basically have no data from either – they simply don’t cover Alaska. Verizon has been available in Ketchikan and Juneau only, and T-mobile’s “unlimited” data is actually roaming on another plan which gets cut off at 200 Mb (about 5 minutes on our boat). We also have SIM cards for our boat’s cellular router with Google Project Fi and AT&T. Both have been very good, but we have burned through our allocation (15 and 18 Gb respectively).

The problem, I think, is the way our devices “see” the network. We have a combination WiFi/Cellular router on the boat, which creates a “boat” WiFi network that is connected to either an external WiFi network (rarely) or to a cellular network using a cellular modem and SIM card. Our devices, all 10+ of them including laptops, iPhones, iPads, Apple TV, etc, then connect to the boat WiFi network and “think” they have unlimited connectivity, happily chugging away, downloading, updating, etc. There are no provisions that I know of that allow control of WiFi data for IOS apps the way they can be controlled for cellular data usage. Our WiFi network software can show traffic and data consumed, but doesn’t have an easy way of identifying or controlling usage by device. I suppose I could configure the firewall to block ports associated with various data consuming services, but I haven’t investigated that just yet.

For now, we are limiting the connections to the boat WiFi network and waiting for the next Project Fi billing cycle for our next ration of data.