Home topics small-business-resources hot-tips Business Tech Hot Tips Business Tech Broadband on-the-go: How to stay connected on the road Sarah McDonald June 21, 2012 Switching between a laptop, tablet and smartphone is easy in the office with all devices connecting wirelessly to your Wi-Fi network . But venture out into the world and you need yet another internet plan to stay online. Fortunately, you don’t need separate plans for each device. One plan plus a Wi-Fi modem is all that is required to connect up to five devices at once, wirelessly. Tethering and Wi-Fi hotspots If you own: an Android smartphone on 2.2 or later an iPhone 4 or 4S running iOS 4.3 and above a Windows phone running Mango 7.5 or above a Nokia N9 You can turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot. Generally, there will be an option for creating a hotspot in your settings. This is slightly different to tethering, where a physical connection needs to be made between the phone and the device but the effect is the same: you’re using the phone’s 3G data to connect to the internet on a different device. This is a really useful function for those situations when you want to share your connection with a friend, or you really need a bigger screen to work with. It’s very easy to set up and there is no need to buy extra hardware. The disadvantages of tethering and Wi-Fi hotspots include running through your data very quickly, as most smartphone