How to use a smartphone as a mobile hotspot
Buried inside just about every smartphone is a capability that few people take advantage of but that I have come to rely on more and more: the ability to turn the phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot.
Using my phone as a hotspot (also known as Wi-Fi tethering) means that whenever I have a couple of bars of signal strength, I can get my tablet or laptop online — and share my internet connection with work colleagues. It’s my way to stay on top of work wherever I am, allowing me to read and send emails, move data back and forth with the company’s servers and even get a taste of the latest office gossip from the comfort of a full-sized device.
A phone hotspot can be a serious collaboration tool for a group of businesspeople attempting to work together. The potential ranges from a group on the way to the airport in a van finishing a group presentation to an accounting team working in a conference room with an internet connection independent of the company they’re auditing. It can also provide a connectivity lifeline for a home office when the Wi-Fi goes down.