After much disappointment of a lost package I finally got one of those Freedompop wifi hotspots. It's like a little hockey puck that lets me connect a tablet anywhere without using my phone.
Their setup is you buy a device and they give you 500mb every month. For the sake of comparison, I use an average of 1,000mb a day at home and I use an average of 2,500mb on my phone a month.
They want to make money by convincing you to upgrade with more bandwith. It's fairly reasonable actually and if I needed I would actually upgrade.
Another way is they have upgrades like "Premiere" and roll over MB or whatever. Mine came with Premiere and I can't cancel it online. I can't cancel it on the phone because I work from 8-5 Monday through Friday. My brother doesn't want to call for me... so I guess $8/month isn't that big of a deal right?