Comparing Wireless Internet Services

Carl Oppedahl writes "AT&T has released its new "Edge" wireless Internet access service, claiming it is twice as fast (100-130K) as Sprint's "PCS Vision" wireless service (50-70K). I have written up a few comments on my experiences with the services. What data rates are others getting with Edge? I rarely get the advertised faster speeds."

Comments

VPN

[That's Unpossible!]

What I'd like is a reasonably fast wireless service that is good enough to let VPN work over it. My boss has had a terrible time getting that working on his Sprint PCS connection.

I almost feel bad when he calls from Hawaii and he can't get access to our database from the beach chair.

Re:VPN

[jpostel]

I use Sprint PCS Vision through a USB cable connected to my Treo 600 with a neat little app called PDAnet. I use the Cisco VPN client with no real problems. Most of my work is done through Term Services or PCAnywhere (which is a bandwidth hog).

I have to say that most of the people that I have showed it to thought it was quite fast. The people that thought it was slow were indeed talking about latency and not throughput.

PCS Lack of Vision

[Maradine]

My love affair with Vision ended about two weeks into the service. It's never been fast, its never worked reliably, and most important, I've never found it particularly useful.

Like a lot of products I have an early-adoptor's love affair with, it solves a problem I don't have. About the most useful thing I ever did with it was write a wap frontend for the nessus batch commandline so I could really impress the ladies. Turns out most ladies don't even know what nessus is. In a college town, I tell you!

For those of you that read Gartner, you'll note where Sprint falls on the fabled magic quadrent. Its a special quadrent reserved for those who had a great idea and then blew it. Can you guess which?

Re:PCS Lack of Vision

[Wah]

My love affair keeps expanding with PCS.

I read google news on my cigarette breaks. check 7 email accounts contstantly, IM, yadda, yadda, yadda, pr0n...

Of course, the device is a big part of this. The understand the love, you need a Treo and PDANet, for starters. I don't know what combinations other people use, but this one is the bee's knees.

I dunno, maybe you are trying to use it instead of broadband, but for a near 95% traveler by myself, it is incredibly useful to get real internet service in pretty much any city in the US. (I know their coverage sucks in some places, but I have been extremely satisfied with the service.

"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds"

[FreeLinux]

Is this surprising? Have you EVER gotten the advertised specs from your high tech products? Have you ever gotten 56K from a 56K modem? Have you ever gotten 2Mbps from a DSL provider? Have you ever gotten 17" viewable from your 17" monitor? Have you ever gotten 20GB from your 20GB hard drive?

The advertised specs are almost always inflated and unattainable. But, the sad thing is that consumers continue to allow the vendors to get away with it.

Re:Mucho expensive

[jmcneill]

Funny you should bring this up -- I just got my cell phone bill in the mail this morning, and on my $20 CDN/month GPRS plan (1.5MB) through Rogers/AT&T, I had a $16 roaming charge for doing 560KB worth of transfers in the US.

I'm left with no choice but to cancel my GPRS service -- the only time it's ever useful is when I'm out of town, but the roaming charges are too high for me to think about doing the roaming GPRS thing again.

Re:Mucho expensive

[Oopsz]

Funny, using GPRS on microcell when in the states doesn't incur any additional roaming charges.. 3 cents a kb, or flat rates for x megs of transfer, or unlimited use for $50, anywhere in north america. and voice roaming in the states is only 20 cents a minute. If you travel a lot you might want to switch, the international roaming is amazingly cheap

(I used to have a cingular line just for use in the US, because telus roaming was so high. Not anymore.)