If your cellular provider’s mobile hotspot/tethering plans are too pricey, skip them and tether your phone to your computer without inflating your monthly bill. Read on to see how you can score free mobile internet.

We recently received a letter from a How-To Geek reader, requesting help linking their Android phone to their laptop to avoid the highway robbery their cellular provider was insisting upon:

Dear How-To Geek,

I recently found out that my cellphone company charges $30 a month to use your smartphone as a data modem. That’s an outrageous price when I already pay an extra $15 a month charge just because they insist that because I have a smartphone I need a data plan because I’ll be using so much more data than other users. They expect me to pay what amounts to a $45 a month premium just to do some occasional surfing and email checking from the comfort of my laptop instead of the much smaller smartphone screen! Surely there is a work around? I’m running Windows 7 on my laptop and I have an Android phone running Android OS 2.2. Help!

Sincerely,

No Double Dipping!

Well Double Dipping, this is a sentiment we can strongly related to as many of us on staff are in a similar situation. It’s absurd that so many companies charge you to use the data connection on the phone you’re already paying for. There is no difference in bandwidth usage if you stream Pandora to your phone or to your laptop, for example.

Fortunately we have a solution for you. It’s not free-as-in-beer but it only costs $16 which, over the first year of use alone, will save you $344. Let’s get started!