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Review Of Verizon's New Wireless Network
jagger writes "The service gives you the speed of broadband, the ease of WiFi and the coverage of cellular... sort of. The service is currently rolled out in Washington D.C. and San Diego, CA but offers speeds comparable to broadband. Read the full review from Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post at Yahoo News."
BE DEAD CAREFUL OF VERIZON's WIFI SERVICE
This is for your New Yorkers who know what I'm talking about. (wifi service in the island of Manhattan free for all verizon dsl/dialup users)
What is to be careful of? Fake Verizon-WIFI APs. No joke. I was walking down 14th street next to Broadway, and suddenly I wanted to hop online to check what the weather would be for later that day.
I pop out my Zaurus, pop in my wifi card, and start sniffing for whatever wireless networks I can get to. I hit a Verizon-WIFI AP, which works for me being that my company is a customer of theirs. I pop in my Verizon Online password, and my password, hit enter, and I'm in.
Except for ONE problem. I typed in my username wrong! (Zaurus 5600 owners know how much of a bitch it is to type numbers with the damn Fn key.) But I still got in!!! I reconnected, typed in a bogus user/pass, and still had zero issues getting in.
At first I didn't realize what was going on (being that I was late for class, and rushing like crazy). But then it dawned on me, that this was a fake AP setup to steal real verizon user-names and passwords. Pretty slick if you ask me.
Yeah yeah, not too related to the topic at hand, but other verizon customers may want to know
Sunny Dubey
I currently pay 40$ a month and use the Audiovox 5220 card that Verizon is selling.
Thing is, this is not a new service and I'm not getting it from Verizon. I'm getting it from Monet Mobile.
...but not for long...
The service is fantastic- I can't imagine a better product. The truly sad thing is that Monet Mobile (www.monetmobile.com) is going bankrupt and shutting me down on April 1, at which point I'm going to have to pay the Verizon fees or go back to wired internet... (sigh)
I've spent the last couple weekends war-walking the National Mall, Clevland Park, Capitol Hill and dupont circle. Woodley and Van Ness will be this weekend's projects. Suffice to say, war-driving in DC will NOT get you better coverage than Verizon.
;however, I've had little luck getting signal in the Capitol/Mall area.
There are lots of unprotected default "linksys" and "netgear" wireless points in the residential areas
and I wrote a story about this months ago. Here's what you Linux geeks won't like. So far it won't work in Linux. That's mainly a driver issue with the card or really that there is no Linux driver (that I am aware of). Also I think that it is installed (even in Windows) in a funny way. It has to connect under dial-up networking?!?!
Verizon has no competition at this speed and won't for a while. Carriers using the competing GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) wireless standard aren't close; for instance, AT&T's new EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution) service tops out at 200 kbps.
So ATTWS has EDGE nation wide, and Verizons EvDO is only in a 2 markets. ATTWS already has UMTS trials in 7 major markets, at speeds faster than verizon, soon to launch commerically!
So you dont hear it much, ATTWS has the fastest nation wide network. When Cingular takes over, and the 2 merges coverage areas, expect the best nation wide coverage, and fastest speeds around.
I'm just wondering when Cingular starts expanding UMTS past the 7 markets, what will Verzion do? It cant offer what it doesnt have, or built out. Be interesting to see what Verizon does to counter the Cingular advantage.