My dealer was telling me that while the 2017 does not support any 3g or 4g hotspot (like my 15 Ram does that I am trading in) that feature will be present in the 2018 models, is that accurate?

 

No, that is not accurate unless he is talking about the F150.

The 2018 F150 will have it, the 2018 Super Duty will not.

 

I don't understand the advantage of a vehicle specific hotspot...especially when you can get a personal more portable (mifi) or enable tethering on a smart phone.

at least w/ a mifi you can take it with you, where ever you go (i keep mine in my laptop bag) and can use it in any car/truck.

 

I had it on my GMC and it does come in handy. I think I paid for 2GB a month and a few road trips it allowed me or my wife to work while traveling. It was far more stable than tethering from a phone. Plus it was convenient to auto connect to wifi each time I drove the truck and not having to connect manually.

 

You can do the same thing with any modern Android or Iphone.
I use about 15GB of data/month for work, and just hotspot using my android. Very stable, no issues and I can take it with me wherever.

The idea of a hotspot in your truck is nice, but not if you do the math on the additional cost of the data vs. the data you may already have on your phone or how cheap it is to add.

 

The experiences I've had have been much better using on board wifi than tethering. I've went through several rural areas where my phone would lose service but my on board did not. I use Project Fi so I only pay for the data I use (~2GB a month). So adding 2GB to my truck for $20 was worth the price of convenience.

 

I drive 70k miles a year through very desolate regions on a 2015 Chevy for work. I added unlimited data to the truck for its wifi hotspot. My trucks signal is FAR better than my phones. Sveveral locations I frequent I can't receive a phone call all day, but I'll receive text and email constant through my trucks wifi. I have zero service on the phone, but able to watch movies easily through my truck. $20 per month is extremely cheap for this service. This is my largest single complaint about my 17 F-350.

 

1. Trucks get a much better signal than a phone
2. Easier to turn on/off month to month on a truck than through your wireless plan

 

Currently at 100GB on my MIFI, unlimited data plan for 9.99 a month with my ATT account, no idea why people like the truck hotspots, ridiculously expensive with very little data. More of a gimmick marketing tool than actually function. You may get better service in some places but pay more for a fraction of the data I would not even think of switching.

 

Its only because the truck has a booster. I just use a booster and it works as good and I can switch car when I need it

 

I bought an ODBII wifi adapter a while back and added it on my AT&T "Unlimited" account. I bought if for my kids to be able to use their iPads on road trips and do homework going to/from school (it's a 30-40 minute drive). Worked great, but that quickly ended when I discovered that on Apple devices there is no way to set a wifi network as "limited". On my Android phone I can designate specific wifi networks as limited so it doesn't think it's hooked up to my home network, or any other unlimited bandwidth network. My daughter's iPad did an iOS update on a road trip and consumed 5gb of data in one whack because she was connected to "wifi". That was the end of that. The AT&T Unlimited isn't really unlimited and Imdont want to get throttled. Now I just hotspot when the need arises.

 

We've got one of those too. I actually use it on one side of my dual-WAN router at home and most of my internet is served up through it (it's faster than my WISP). I routinely hit over 200GB/month and I can only recall being throttled once. We take it camping, use it on the road, etc. It's an awesome little device, but I think they have eliminated the $20 'connected car' unlimited plan for it.

 

Agree'd I routinely hit over 50 a month on my personal cell and between 100-200 on my MIFI and have never seen any decrease in speed. Also ATT does not throttle anyone, they will however give you lower priority on a tower if the tower is reaching its maximum bandwidth limit to give other people priority over you if their data usage is lower.