Two years ago, I set up my mother with an AT&T 4G wifi hotspot. Overall, she is happy with it. The hardware is starting to get less than optimal. It doesn’t keep a charge as long. I think a wire needs replacing. It shut down randomly twice. Since it is two years old, I decided to buy a new one for her and keep the old one for me to play with.

The price came down. Without a contact, the ATT Velocity hotspot is now $60. (two years ago it was $150). And this time, I could buy it from BestBuy rather than AT&T. A far easier buying experience. No shipping so sent right to me.

Setting up an account

Since I bought the hotspot from BestBuy rather than AT&T, I had to set up my own account online. Hardly difficult. The steps:

1. Go to http://att.com/activateprepaiddata
2. Enter the SIM number – this is listed as the ICCID on the bottom of the box
3. Enter IMEI number – this is on a sticker inside the phone (easy to see before putting in the battery). It’s also on the bottom of the box.
4. The zip code of the user – I used my mother’s
5. Enter user’s email. I used my mother’s
6. Pick a plan. I chose the same plan I had before. $25/month for 2GB
7. Sign up for autopay
8. Choose a password
9. Then I went to manage account to set up a name. I repeatedly got “We seem to be experiencing system issues. Please try again later.” on saving. It was true though. I waited 5 minutes and then it saved.

Trying out the hotspot

The battery/case comes separated so I put that together. The device tells you the charge, connection strength and whether you have any new messages. Unlike last time, I didn’t have any messages right away. I had the flashing green light and six messages once I signed up for automatic payment.

New since last time – the device appears to tell you how much bandwidth was used up. This is an illusion. Once I started using data, it directed me to the web for this.

It still shows the number of connected devices.

I connected to the wifi using the default password from a Chromebook and went to http://attwifimanager. I logged in with attadmin (the default) and changed:

• Network name (it prompted me that I would be disconnected so I reconnected) – I made sure to use a different password
• The wifi password (it prompted me that I would be disconnected so I reconnected – should have done this with the network name to save a reconnect)
• Set max number of devices to 2
• On advanced settings, changed admin login

There was an option to hide the password on the device. I chose this because my mother wanted a password that has other meaning.

1. Click the connection from the wifi list
2. Type password

This didn’t work on the first shot. I tried from my iPad and also no connectivity. So I rebooted the hotspot and it worked.

To remember the connection 

1. Click the wifi icon and click “Connected to X”
2. Click network name
3. Click “Prefer this network”
4. Ensure “Automatically connect to this network is checked”
5. Click “close”

How fast is the connection?

I ran a speedtest both to see how fast the connection was and to use a chunk of bandwidth to see how reporting worked. The answer was:

• ping 36 ms
• download 13 Mbps
• upload 9 Mbps

Problems

Every once in a while, I have to push the power button on the wifi device for the ChromeBook to connect. I haven’t seen a pattern on this, but it only happens on trying to connect.

Support

Most problems can be dealt with online at att.com/my prepaid, but they do have a phone number: 800-901-9878