What is the "free city wifi" thing you referred to that requires the isp provided router?
Maybe thats just me though. My Thai phone provider gives me global roaming with unlimited data capped at ฿300 a day (about $10 a day). The last time my wife and I came back to Australia together, we had pre-paid Telstra sims. The time after when I came alone for work, I didn't bother, as the roaming cost worked out better than Telstra's shitty pricing, and I still got to use their network.
As for an actual solution, I doubt there is one an ideal solution in this case. Honestly, I would want to need access to a lot of other people's Wifi before I signed up for this type of deal - how sure are you this doesn't give the other Telstra members carte-blanche access to your local network, and how sure are you a judge will accept "but your honour, that could have been anyone downloading those pictures, I have Telstra Air".
$10/day is $300+ a month - I pay $50/month for 7GB of data on Telstra's 3G/4G networks. I haven't actually needed to use Telstra Air because the middle of the city has free wifi by iiNet/Internode (RIP).
Given the generally atrocious default security of most home router vendors, I'd assume its equally terrible, and maybe you get a nice surprise.
> $10/day is $300+ a month - I pay $50/month for 7GB of data on Telstra's 3G/4G networks
As I said, I was using it when travelling from home (Thailand), so it was $10 a day (max, if i didn't use it or used less than the cap amount, no/less cost) for unlimited data (still using Telstra's network). The alternative was to use a prepaid telstra sim, which from memory at the time gave me maybe 4 gb of data for.. $59 or $69?
I wasn't suggesting its an option for you, just explaining that those "free wifi" things always seem like a shitty deal to me, compared to the cost of your own data service.
> I haven't actually needed to use Telstra Air because the middle of the city has free wifi by iiNet/Internode (RIP)
I must have missed something, what's the RIP for?