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...

Some more details, I live in Chicago, and usually my travels take me regional, so it would be nice to have a plan that allowed me to roam (all of the above do). I run Win2K on my work laptop, but I also have a Linux partition so suggestions on cellular PCMCIA cards that work with both, would be appreciated."

Comments

Did you contact Us Cellular?

[claydean]

I know that US Cellular moved into the Chicagoland market. Didn't know if you had contacted them regarding rates and coverage. uscc.com

Sprint PCS

[WuWarrior]

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.

My take on it all

[krangomatik]

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:

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 :). But I guess they are back now, but they still don't have nation wide coverage.

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.