I think I’ve gotten over most of the growing pains with the new set.  The Coolpad Rogue ships with two ways to get online, WiFi hotspot or USB tethering.  WiFi is working fine, at least in an isolated spot, but I hate crowding the 2.4GHz spectrum with a high-power signal.  USB tethering also pushes bits just fine, but I basically need to do an electronics project to keep it from draining my laptop and overfilling my handset battery.  What I really miss is Bluetooth tethering, maybe there’s an app for that.

As far as the throttling goes, I changed a few settings and found a better spot for coverage, apparently I was stuck on a 2G data channel when I started out.  24 kbps is actually pleasing news in that context.  Right now, I’m doing much better on 4G.