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Wireless Cellular Data Services?
Swannie asks: "I'm an IT consultant who is on the road a lot. Unfortunately, it's the nature of security in today's enterprise that I rarely have a client that will let me access the internet, and usually not even attach my laptop to their network. Obviously, this leads to a problem in accessing my email... a big problem. Typically, the client will provide dial up lines, but all to often those go through their PBX, which typically limits me to 21.6-28.8k... ugh. Recently, I've been researching cellular data cards, and various services. This seems like the best solution for my problem. I'm looking for something that's reasonably fast, has an 'all-you-can-eat' plan, and inexpensive. Unfortunately, I'm going to probably have to pay for it myself. Since the client does provide a way to access the internet (dialup), it gets seen as a convenience, so cost is a factor. What experience have you had with services from companies like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, NexTel, and Cingular? Are there any other services that I haven't thought off (unfortunately google searches for 'wireless internet' or 'wireless data' just turns up a whole lot of crap)? Any other advice?"
"So far, these are the options I've found:
- Sprint PCS: They have an all you can eat plan for $80 a month on their 'PCS Vision' network. They quote speeds similar to ISDN. Sounds cool, but I've had a sprint phone in the past and wasn't to thrilled with the service, and the price is a bit high.
- Verizon: Their express network plan is similar to Sprint PCS's offering... again, too much money!
- AT&T: They offer data cards on their mLife network (which is their GSM network IIRC). I didn't see anything about their speed, however, and they don't offer an unlimited plan... darn.
- T-Mobile: These guys actually have a decent priced unlimited plan at $29.00 a month. BUT, it looks like their speeds are limited to around 56k. I'd really like more speed, but I suppose that's the trade off for the cheap price.
- NexTel: I currently have a NexTel phone, and I really like it... had it about 2 years. They offer a data cable for it, which I tried, but I only get dialup connections at about 9600bps (yuck). They also offer a data card, and an unlimited plan which IIRC is about $56.00 a month, and limited to 56k... might as well go with T-Mobile then.
- Cingular: I couldn't really find a whole lot on their web site, it doesn't look like they offer a PCMCIA-card based data service...
first, bravo! to the companies who care enough about security to inconvenience you! i wish we did the same more often.
second, it's the nature of this particular beast that you'll be spending $$$ for the priv. of using the air to access the Net. at least until competition becomes a bit more fierce and the h/w is a tad more accessible. perhaps s/w defined radios will help in the next 2-5 years. the bottom line is that the providers need to make money and a flat rate on data can bite them big time when more folks use VoIP and such.
for my money, verizon's service has good coverage (i'm mainly east coast, however) and decent data rates *most* of the time. it's not a huge chunk of change for a "necessary" service.
while the windows software is integrated well, the linux side of the hard drive will need some configuration and interesting driver downloads/compiles/installes. the best i could do was achieve dialup speeds as it uses the card in a modem-type fashion (which may change your costs a bit). this was 6mos ago, so your new mileage may vary.
i plan on relying on the card and XP (for the record, OS X on the desktop, RH 8 file server, solaris home intranet and multimedia server, an XP gaming box and a work-provided thinkpad) to get me through my Maine vacation *:^)
good luck!
Mind the gap...
Not used to reading long articles, can anyone post a summary of this longish issue? TIA.
I know that US Cellular moved into the Chicagoland market. Didn't know if you had contacted them regarding rates and coverage. uscc.com
What you said about Nextel is basically my experience. Love their phone and service, but the data service (unlimited, uses no minutes, ~$50/mo) is too slow (with *very* high latency) to be usable for anything except small activity (email, chat, etc) or desperate situations (must get 500k nic driver!)
Why limit yourself to PCMCIA-card? Many new phones have bluetooth built in. I know my ericcson t68i can be used as a bluetooth modem with OS-X. I assume there is similiar functionality in Windows and Linux. The cost of service is the only barrier stopping me from deploying it.
At 4k bytes per second average rate it will take 4.26 minutes to transfer a megabyte. Or cost about 85 cents a meg. This is made especially painful as they're charging you at the full data rate while your logging in and doing other low bandwidth stuff. I'd be suprised if an efficient user actually got a megabyte of data for every $1.50 that s/he spent.
You don't have to get the expensive unlimited plan to use the Sprint PCS Vision data service. I use it all the time with my laptop and don't pay anything extra (other than the cost of unlimited wireless web).
I use a cable that I bought on Ebay. Sprint does not sell these cables anymore and want you to use a PC Card with the unlimited plan.
The speed varies depending on reception. Sometimes it will drop to 14.4k speeds but it can be about 1.5x as fast as 56k. On average I will get speeds comparable to 33.6k.
I've been using it for about 6 months not and it has been completely trouble free and very reliable (for wireless). Check out SprintUsers.com.
I've looked at T-Mobile myself. IIRC, that $30/month isn't an all-you-can-eat plan. And the additional bandwidth charges are pretty steep. It might be affordable for checking your email on the road, provided you configure your client not to download everything every time you check.
The right keyword for Googling cellular data service is GPRS. I personally consider GPRS to be the only cellular data technology worth paying attention to. Though maybe I'm just prejudiced against CDMA-based data services because U.S.-only wireless standards are a major pain.
If you must have a lot of bandwidth on the road, you should consider signing up with a Wireless Hotspot service. Then all you have to do is schlep your way to the nears Borders or Starbucks (neither is in the Gobi Desert yet, but I think they're working on it), plug in your WiFi card, and surf. Or you could just get the WiFi card and look for Free Hotspots or other open networks.
(unfortunately google searches for 'wireless internet' or 'wireless data' just turns up a whole lot of crap)? Any other advice?
ID-10-T is a way of life
I've been using T-Mobile's GPRS Internet service for about 7 months now on my Sony-Ericsson P800 phone/PDA.
Good Points:
- Very good coverage area. I've driven up and down the California coast from San Diego to Lake Tahoe and I can get at least SOME connectivity in every town. I also had no problems in South Florida. I think this is because T-Mobile is one of the few big companies that doesn't have 1 iota of its own network in the USA (they are owned by German Telekom afterall), and they have coverage agreements with Cingular, SprintPCS, etc... which works pretty much everywhere.
- Fast download speeds. I don't know about the 56k quoted in the article. I typically get much faster download speeds more along the lines of what you'd expect with a bad cable connection.
-You get access to both the T-Mobile WAP stuff, and regular Internet access with a real IP address, etc. Also T-Mobile has quite a nice image-compressing web proxy with user configurable options to speed things along for you.
Bad Points:
- Either GPRS technology is incredibly unreliable, or T-Mobile has some serious problems with their infrastructure. I am constantly getting service interuptions, even if I am not moving at all and am in an area with 5 signal bars. I experience this problem no matter where I travel to-- it will either not connect at all with "GPRS is Temporary Unavailable", or it will disconnect with "an error occurred at the WAP gateway". Expect this to happen every 15-20 minutes for an hour, work perfectly for 6 hours, and then happen again.
- Price! They just came out with that $29.99/unlimited plan, so I haven't been able to switch over to it yet-- but before then it was something like $5/mb.
I currently use a SprintPCS PCMCIA card (Sierra Wireless AirCard 550) for wireless internet access. This is the card that I have been the happiest with. Our entire wide area network support group uses these and we have been pretty satisfied with them. Over the past couple years we have used Nextel, Ricochet, and AT&T. Here is my summary of our experiances with these providers:
:). But I guess they are back now, but they still don't have nation wide coverage.
Nextel:
The service we had was called "Packet Data Gold" or something to that effect. We used this service for the most part with tethered phones (i1000+, i90c, i700+ with PC link cable). We also had one PCMCIA card (don't remember the model #). We had major problems getting this service working right. They had serious problems delivering pure IP access. It looked like their service was optimized for web surfing through one of their proxies and it was a bitch to get them to let us have IP access. Admittedly we were fairly earlier adopters of this service, so I'm sure it's improved somewhat, although I think they speeds are still 56k. The PCMCIA card we used had a built in battery that needed to be charged up, which was a nice feature for saving batteries on your laptop, but I'd rather buy an extended life laptop battery instead of carrying an extra charger around with me.
Ricochet:
GREAT! but limited. In the ricochet service areas it was great, but this isn't really a viable nation wide solution. And that whole going out of business thing kinda put a damper on it
SprintPCS:
You never get 'ISDN' speed, but its faster most cell based wireless I've used. You *may* get near isdn speed down, but the latency makes it feel much slower. It feels kind of like using a slow sat link or something. So, its definately not as good as a decent 802.11b connection, but its better than any of the other services I've used. The coverage has been good for me (most of my travel is limited to CA though, so YMMV). This service is ideal if you are going to areas with sprintpcs coverage and you need a decent method of getting IP access to things. When I use my service I am typically doing one or more of the following activities: VPNing somewhere, SSHing somewhere, surfing the web, running Lotus Notes/Domino Admin, working with 'office-ish' files (word docs, xls's, visio files, etc), running mmc consoles. The service is responsive enough that I'm usually able to have a web browsing session going while I'm telnet-ed/ssh-ed into a couple routers and nothing feels *too* slow. You can definately feel that you're on a wireless link, but its MUCH better than no access at all. It isn't cheap, as you've noted, but I think its worth it. One other thing we have noticed is that when you have three or four users in the same area heavily using the service it really bogs down. I don't know how they backhaul the data from the cell sites, but it appears that this channel can be overloaded by too many users.
If I was on the road more I would probably compliment my SpintPCS connection with a TMOBILE hotspot account so that I could enjoy faster net access from a starfucks/kinkos/etc. Pricey, but worth it if you need access while you travel. One thing you need to check out is that any VPN clients you use are compatable with your wireless network interface. Some of them act as regular NICs pretty well and some of them don't. You should try to get your hands on a card or phone/dongle combo and test out your apps ahead of time so you don't have any suprises. I'm sure there's something I'm leaving out here cuz I've just kinda rambled this off the top of my head, so I'll post a followup if I think of any more gotchas.
you could always cheap out and use the rogue access points @ the places you consult to (we all know they are there...everywhere...despite the hard-nosed security you talked about *:^)
Mind the gap...
Let's see if you can do better!
God, what are these guys thinking of? You can get voice service that's effectively flat-rate (unless you practically live on your cell). Or you can get data service that is flat rate. But you can't get both together.
And if you want to get Bluetooth or infrared connectivity, you have to get your hardware from a third party. Similar weirdnesses appear in the offerings of T-Mobile's competitors. I do not understand the thought processes of U.S. cellular providers!
of these things, back when they were just testing the "Danger" the per/meg charges were 10 free megs a month and $1 per meg.
For anyone who wanted to surf and get mail 2 megs a business day seemed like a fair estimate. Counting only business days this was ~ 40 megs a month. Which after the initial ten free doubled the cost of the plan ~$60. Yuck. This made it a poor contender.
Who knows Santa may have visited them and convinced them they don't need all that money... I sure hope that's the case as unlimied for $30 would be the best deal out there by far.
I'd have to see it in writing...
OK, so why is this a problem? You could easily set up web-based mail (I use squirrelmail), or java applet based ssh (I use mindterm).
Why not just do that?
I'm looking for something like that but for Bell Mobility (large Canadian cell provider). It'd have to be the 800MHz digital (what "tri-mode" phones use)... I've seen a CompactFlash CDMA card, but I wasn't sure if it's universal CDMA or not.... Has anyone had any experiences with these cards?
or maybe Sprint depending on where you are.
You should be more worried about network coverage than price. Verizon has it.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
www.HowardForums.com is a very active discusion board with catagories for all providers and for all equipment manufacturers
The current favorite data plan is the 29.99 unlimited T-mobile plan, but check for coverage in the area you want to use it
Free cell phone tracking
But pick 2.
Recently, Verizon changed the way their Express Network is provisioned. All new America's Choice plans get Express Network at no extra cost per month and use comply out of your minutes (i.e., billed only as MOU = minutes of use). With an "unlimited nights & weekends" plan, you effectively have unlimited data (during nights and weekends).
This isn't mentioned on Verizon's web site, but it's true nonetheless. I've been using Express Network via my Kyocera 7135 for a while now and it works great.
See this and this for details.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Two reasons I haven't done it: I didn't know how well Bluetooth works on a PDA (especially battery drain). I probably would have risked that anyway, except that I'm also out of a job.
Another issue: Amazon no longer sells this phone, and T-Mobile doesn't bundle Bluetooth phones. There's always third-party sources for the phone, of course, but that eliminates the usual phone-service-bundle discount, about $100 in this case. Where'd you get yours?
I have to thank you for mentioning the sim locking issue, which I was ignorant of. Not a trivial matter if you're buying a third-party GSM phone!
Packetstream Gold is the name of the plan, it's all-you-can-eat for $45 on top of whatever voice plan you've got.
My speeds have been ~30kbps very consistently. Under poor signal conditions it occasionally drops to 25k or so, probably because of packet retries. The phone appears as a plain old modem plugged into the serial port, unless you get the USB version in which case you get to play driver-go-round until you get it working. Argh!
Once you're able to say AT and get an OK from the phone, a simple ATDTS=2 causes the phone to start a PPP session with you. It then chops the packets up and sends smaller ones over the air, which is optimal for an interface with high interference and loss. The equipment on the tower side requests retries of air packets, reconstructs your IP datagrams, and puts them onto the back-end WAN, where they ride to Texas for some serious NAT-fu.
The reason I got the serial cable in the first place was that the USB cable does not charge the phone from your laptop, so you're limited by the battery. Plus if I'm sitting still with the laptop and phone, I'd like to use the time to top off the battery anyway. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I've been trying to find a full-pinout cable that I can hack up and make my own usb data-and-charging cable.
The RS232 cable has a jack on the side, where your regular charger plugs in, and the power is then passed through to the phone. Plugging in the charger during a session doesn't interrupt your connection, but unplugging it does. This effectively prevents opportunistic charging, as it's a major inconvenience to reopen whatever connections I had, following a charger yank. (Or worse yet, using the car charger, the power hit from twisting the ignition switch back and forth is enough to kill the ppp session!) Nextel claims that this stupidity is behavior-as-designed, which I think is corporate speak for "we don't care, neither should you."
There's another issue that the phone seems to reset itself during intense upload activity. Forget throwing a few photos into my gallery while on the road! Upload half a meg and *beep* oh look, the phone's rebooting and I've been disconnected! At least FTP restart works sometimes. The rest of the time, there's Zmodem-resume. (Ironic that we'd revert to decades-old technology to overcome today's crap networks.)
I agree with krangomatik that Nextel's IP assignment bites the bag. There's a $20 setup charge for an IP when you get Packetstream, but I'm still behind their braindead NAT system. Where's my public address, guys? I think I'll raise some customer service hell this week. Going PASV for FTP uploads bites, especially if the server's behind a firewall and can't make outbound connections either!
All in all, it's fairly workable and worth the money. I'm still a customer after all. There are some stupid little issues that Nextel could work harder to resolve, though.
Ricochet sure would be nice, but it looks like Aerie's growth plan only includes the few markets where they think they can make a profit. That makes sense I guess, but what of all the equipment in the rest of the country? It's powerful DSP-based radio equipment with FPGA's for packet logic, the closest thing we've yet seen to software-defined radio, and it's all sitting there idle because nobody in the community knows how to program it.
For quick file transfers in urban areas, nothing beats the trusty old Pringles can, I've got to admit. If only deliberate hotspots were as common as accidental ones! Oh wait, they are.