Mobile Wireless ISPs - Are There Any Left?

mikeyjake asks: "What is the best choice for a (mobile) wireless ISP these days? Are there -any- choices? My band will be on the road for weeks at a time in the upcoming year, and two of us need to do much of our work online (including maintaining our server). We've been looking for a wireless ISP solution so we can work on the road. I looked into Richochet, which I remember the old commercials for, but they're gone now. Anybody know of anyone still doing this? I know I can just 'dial in' through a cell phone, but the best I've seen is 14.4. I'd have to kill myself at that speed. I remember Ricochet talking triple digits. We own our own conversion van, so some kind of van-antenna would also be possible, but a truly mobile unit would be even better. Thanks for the help."

Comments

my preliminary results from Voicestream's iStream.

[spike666]

voicestream's iStream service which is a GPRS (packet radio via GSM phone) claims to have 128kb transfer rates. what i've found in my preliminary testing (which was admittedly very meager) showed me that its really painful to try and do anything interactive - aka telnet. its doable, just slow and laggy. it appeared to be optimized for web surfing.

the big caveat is that i was playing with this only a few times, and all from within my cube in my office - which has degraded cellular coverage. Also, i was using a palm pilot to do the connectivity.

so, now that i've shot my own story full of holes, you can think about using this in a pinch. it promises much, and i've yet to really test it out to see what it does deliver. maybe some international /.'s can tell you more of their GPRS experience.

oh yeah, you'd need to spend at least $169 on the motorola phone, and get a monthly service of aorund $59 or so.

good luck!