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iPhone X Can you not stream Netflix using a hotspot on your phone?

T

TH55

macrumors 68040
Original poster
I recently upgraded my AT&T wireless plan to the Unlimited Extra which gives you a hotspot of up to 15 gb a month. I tried to watch Netflix and it wouldn’t load, and when I called Netflix they said a hotspot wasn’t strong enough to support streaming. Is this true? I was really hoping to get out of paying $50 a month for internet.
 
Cable modem and access, router, Netflix, gauged by AT&T plans.

Netflix needs 25Mb bandwidth. You can test from inside the app, good idea, as well as traditional tests.
 
26139 said:
Not usually, no, and Netflix would blow through a 15gb data plan in a few days.
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Lol, that would barely last us a day. According to the home router, our daily usage is 15-70 GB. Monthly usage is ~1TB.

As for hotspot not being fast enough, depends on the carrier, location and network congestion.

It seems to me hotspot traffic on AT&T gets deprioritized. At the office, at busy times of the day (e.g. lunch and break times), connection speed is much slower when I hotspot the iPad to iPhone than if the iPad uses built-in LTE.

Verizon's much better. It's the fastest carrier at the office (and I've tested AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint). No issues with video streaming over hotspot on Verizon (granted, I think I'm limited to 480p).

You don't need 25Mbps for Netflix unless you watch 4K. Iirc, their 1080p streaming tops at around 8Mbps.
 
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It might be carrier specific. I have unlimited data on my iPhone plan. I’m able to set up a hotspot and connect my iPad mini to it and stream Netflix.
 
TH55 said:
I recently upgraded my AT&T wireless plan to the Unlimited Extra which gives you a hotspot of up to 15 gb a month. I tried to watch Netflix and it wouldn’t load, and when I called Netflix they said a hotspot wasn’t strong enough to support streaming. Is this true? I was really hoping to get out of paying $50 a month for internet.
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Try using a VPN on the Hotspot.
 
26139 said:
$50 for monthly home internet seems well priced to me. I pay almost double that with my provider.
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$50 is quite expensive from where I’m from. An end to end unlimited fibre for 25mbps costs $30. $50 if you want the 150mbps. Most expensive is at $150 for 500mbps
 
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dangerfish said:
I don’t think I know what you are referring to. But if I said something offensive or that came off as rude, I apologize. That would not have been my intent.
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Fair enough.

I asked about deleting unwanted wifi addresses upon logging in to my mac.

Apology accepted.
 
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