How to share your mobile data to connect a laptop to the Internet

What would we do without a mobile data rate? Because of smartphones and the hyper-connected society that they have promoted, data plans have become an essential of our day-to-day… but as in this life – unless you are lucky enough to have contracted a rate with unlimited GB – these are also over. There are situations in which there is no other solution than to resort to the ability of Android to share data.

And it is that our favorite operating system, from one of its earliest versions, offers the possibility of sharing the Internet connection with other devices, either with smartphones or tablets, computers, or any device capable of connecting to the network of networks.

Android, natively, offers several methods through which to share the Internet connection. Each of them is oriented to a specific situation. Next, we go on to see and explain each one of them.

WiFi access point

The WiFi access point is the system most used by Android users when sharing the Internet from one mobile to another. It consists of using the mobile data network in order, as its name suggests, to create an Internet access point to which the rest of the devices can connect via WiFi.

This system also allows adding a security layer through a password, which all those users who want to connect will need to know to establish a connection to the network. Therefore, you will need to share the password of the WiFi network

To enable a WiFi access point on Android, follow these steps:

1. From the System Settings, access the “Network and Internet” section.
2. Enter the category of “WiFi Zone / Share connection.”
3. Several options will appear. The one that interests us, in this case, is the “WiFi access point.” Once enabled, you can change parameters such as the network name or password, as well as the type of encryption – it is recommended to use WPA2 / PSK–

When the access point is created, other users will connect to the network you just created.

Share Internet by USB

You may be wondering what it could do to share your Internet connection via USB, being able to create a WiFi access point. Well, it may be the situation that you lose the connection through ADSL or fiber temporarily, and you need to access the Internet through a desktop computer without WiFi connectivity. For this case, this is the most convenient method.

Unlike the WiFi access point, the USB sharing option is not active at all times. To enable it, it will be necessary, first, to connect the Android device to the computer with which we are going to share the Internet via USB.

Once connected, from the “WiFi Zone / Share connection” panel, the new option “Share Internet via USB” will appear. If we activate it, the device will begin to share the Internet connection with the computer to which it is connected.

Share data via Bluetooth.

The Bluetooth connection sharing option is similar to a WiFi access point, with the difference that, in this case, Bluetooth technology is used. The first step will be to connect the two devices, the one that will share the connection and the one that will receive it, through Bluetooth.

Now, from our Android – if we are the ones who are going to share the connection – we will have to follow the following steps:

1. From the System Settings, access the “Network and Internet” section.
2. Enter the category of “WiFi Zone / Share connection.”
3. Enable the “Share via Bluetooth” option.

In this way, the sending device is already prepared, but it is time to configure the device that will take advantage of the connection, following the following steps:

1. From the System Settings, access the “Connected Devices” section – it may change depending on the manufacturer – 2 Enter the Bluetooth category, and select the device that is sharing the Internet.
2. From the options menu of the device in question, enable the “Internet access” option.

In this way, the device can now be connected to the Internet through our Android and the classic Bluetooth connection.