I can say from experience that using my Dad's iPad on 4G LTE is significantly faster than our DSL home connection which hovers around 5MB/s download and not that great of upload. The major trade off, in my opinion, between cellular data/packet switched data is going to be the latency and ping. Ping and latency is usually very low on DSL because it's a consistent and a wired (of course) connection with very little packet loss, whereas wireless is going to experience some packet loss depending on reception. It all depends on what you plan on using the service for, and whether or not you can tolerate the occasional "trouble," so to speak.

Honestly, using a WiFi hotspot and a cell phone seems like overkill and silly. Unless you plan on using your cellular data connection on other devices, which still, can be done with a smartphone with the hotspot feature enable. What is wrong with using a smartphone with cellular data access? Sprint offers unlimited data packages for decent rates.

Just my two cents.

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