Question iphone and home router

[mrnik]

I have a T-mobile unlimited plan. I can purchase a $30 a month phan for an old iPhone 6s to give me unlimited calling/data/texting.
I travel often between 2 homes. I am retired.

Is there a way to use this iPhone 6s to provide whole-home internet? I realize there is a personal hotspot option on the iphone, but I want to connect it to a router.

I have researched this topic, and it seems most people are recommending: RT-N66U.
However, I have not heard of anyone trying this with an iPhone.

Can someone please confirm:
If I purchase an RT-N66U, connect an iPhone 6S via USB/lightning cable, and configure the settings, will I be able to use my cellphone data (Tmobile) to extend wifi throughout my whole home? Also, if I make this a permanent solution, will the iPhone continue to charge while connected to the RT-N66U?

My uses for internet at home: netflix, email, facebook, youtube. Usually just one device at a time. No large gigabyte files or anything.

Thank you in advance!!!

 

[mrnik]

I travel between my condo near grandkids and florida home. I am paying $100/mo at each location to have access to a home internet connection. Seems expensive for what I use it for and am trying to cut costs.

Thanks!

 

[mrnik]

Also, Tmobile is giving me unlimited 3G speed. Is this enough?

 

[jsmithepa]

Am technical minded but that's not on top of my priority list. These are:

Cell Carriers often have a contract clause prohibiting you to TETHER (the technical term to what you are doing). It may work at first but they find out eventually, so read the fine prints.

When people are offered UNLIMITED DATA, that usually means the data rate is so slow, u can be online 24x7 but takes you forever to do something. So find out if the data rate they offering u works for what u need it for before tackling this other stuff.

 

[bill001g]

Apple like most things they do is extremely proprietary. I know it is not supported by any of the asus or merlin firmware releases. I saw discussions that dd-wrt had it working but I never paid a lot of attention.

You might be able to use some kind of repeater but unless you have a signal level problem you are best off just using the hotspot function directly.

BUT as stated above step number 1 is to see what the limitation is when you tether. So called unlimited even has limits when you do not tether as cell phone have become more powerful and can eat a lot of bandwidth watching say netflix.

Not sure last time I looked at tmoble the unlimited plan had caps and if you exceeded that your traffic would be given much lower priority that others during periods of congestion....and I think that was device traffic not even tethered.

 

[svalbaard]

Can't you just ditch the phone and use an LTE router such as the ASUS 4G-AC68U? There are other smaller and portable ones available if you look online also.