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

A couple of options

[dublin]

It's been a while (about a year) since I last investigated this, so I may be off-base, but I think this is still reasonably current:

Most of the cellphone companies, especially the PCS ones, claim to be able to deliver digital data connections. Almost none of them can, and if they can, the performance is painfully slow. These folks just don't understand the value of opening up their bit stream. (Dream On: Really, I just want a good IP pipe, and I'll decide myself whether to use it for web, mail, telephony, or whatever. This assumes that the phone companies are interested in building an open IP architecture, sadly, they're not...)

So far as I know, there are no wireless ISP services that offer both road coverage and non-painful speeds.

Probably the best option today from a coverage standpoint and a real data solution is one of the CDPD-based services like OmniSky or GoAmerica. You can also start at the sites of the equipment providers like Sierra Wireless or Novatel Wireless. This approach still leaves a lot to be desired, but is likely the best reasonably-priced option available now.

Alternatively, you could try to live in the 802.11b world, hoping to find access points. Some cities have better documentation of this than others - Austin has a very incomplete list at Austinwireless.Net, mostly because RoadRunner is heavy-handedly disconnecting people they find out are running 802.11b APs. This is not a great option, but actually getting better as 802.11b takes off - lot's of offices and coffee houses have this stuff now.

Of course there are the exotic options like Iridium, but it's expensive and I expect most of their bandwidth is being used by the DoD right now...

Metricom's Ricochet was a great system if you could get it, but I was never able to consider it: they never got enough of Austin covered to really make it an option. The only people I know that were really able to use Ricochet were in the Silicon Valley (San Jose) area, where the coverage is pretty good. It would be nice to see this approach (if not this company and its implementation) make a comeback - microcells are a great idea technically, but it appears to me that the cost of getting the rights for microcell sites is what killed them, compounded by the sheer volume of sites they need. I expect Metricom's cost of site acquisition was astronomical, except in places like San Jose where the city gave them carte blanche to hang boxes on any light pole.