The throttling is 2G speeds, or so they say. I haven't done a speed test, but I can't stream Google Music, even on low quality, and web browsing is torturous even on relatively mobile-friendly sites.

I did think about the Mi-Fi thing, but then I figured that's just another piece of hardware I have to deal with. On the other hand, since I do end up using a lot of my streaming bandwidth in the car, I suppose I could just leave it in the car and just use it when driving. I'd probably struggle to cross the 5GB boundary on my phone if I had another 5GB to use in the car.

It looks like the Mifi plans are $30 for 5GB, plus the cost of the device. It jumps to $50 for 7GB, but since I'm only now crossing the 5GB limit with less than a week to go in my billing cycle, I don't think I'd need more than my phone's 5GB plus the MiFi's 5GB.

The upside with the Mifi is that the voice SIMs on the $30 prepaid plan are limited to a paltry 100MB of "wireless hotspot" service, so I'd be able to use the whole 5GB when I need to tether (which isn't very often.) I could probably engage in some countermeasures on my laptop to hide my traffic from their tethering detection -- change User-agent strings and so forth -- but that's annoying.

The downside vs. the two voice SIMs plan is that I don't get the extra 100 minutes of voice service for the months when I do go over.

All in all, maybe Mifi is the way to go. Anyone have recommendations for a cheap Mifi device?