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Cell Phone Service as High Speed Internet Link?
Gorm the DBA asks: "I live out in the boonies, where Cable is just another word for what the telegraph guy delivers and the nearest Central Office is over 27,000 feet away, so DSL is at best a (fat) Pipe Dream, and dialup speeds top out at 17,700baud on a good day. Currently we have satellite internet via DirecWay, but it's expensive ($60/month) and VPNlike applications are not supported, never mind gaming (high latency), which reduces it's utility dramatically. At the same time, I've been looking at getting a new cell phone. I see that Sprint, Cingular, and others all have cards that you can plug into your computer and use the cellular network to get data. The claim is 'wireless online surfing as fast as DSL'. I've confirmed I'm in the coverage areas, but is this really as good as they're making it sound? It's pricey ($79.99/month, plus the cost of the card), but it would be portable as well. Does anybody have experience with this sort of technology? Is it ready for prime time? Does it really work? Is it worth it? Is the internet access real, or a filtered 'You get what we want you to get' sort of thing?"
From the links you gave, max speeds are a tad above ISDN/BRI, or twice that of a 56k modem. My guess is that since you're located in such a rural area, your coverage will be spotty. You'll have to decide if that's worth $80/month. If connect speed is that important, you might consider moving.
Of course, I understand that might not be an option. I spent the late 80's and early 90's at Loring Air Force Base, in northern Maine. Most of the POP's for the services I used were in southern Maine. I spent obscene amounts of money connecting. And yes, we were on Milnet, but I was in the Civil Engineering Squadron, and we had a 9600 baud connection through a Wang VS. I did manage to download Linux onto 5-1/4 floppies, but I digress.
Wouldn't it be more practical to attempt to use a high gain antenna to ride a public hotspot in this case? If you have line of site there are a number of easy DIY solutions that use parabolic/round direct dishes and wee bit of simple soldering of a tin can web guides available.
I've had marginal success with a cell phone and accoustic modem, but it is no where near Cable or DSL data rates. It's as bad as 28.8kbps, so I use Lynx. I mostly use an accoustic modem on payphones, then use an internet phone. Ah well. Cellphone internet access is for prisoners, really; it's only good on the weekends for no-cost. Realistically, we need to not neglect two-way radios as much as we do today. I can't name one company, besides a taxi service, that uses CB radios. It would really help us all out, with these pay services that are becoming more and more an unwarranted necessity on Resume's.
without prejudice
Why not see if you can find a local guru to link up a T-1 in "town" and put up a small dish/tower to serve a few of you folks with some high speed via wireless. It won't be a money machine, but if you find perhaps 10 people paying the same $75, you should be able to cover the T-1 and hardware within the first year. NOT portable, very good potential quality.
I recently spent some time in Namibia (southwestern Africa) and can confirm this from firsthand experience. Almost no one has a land line, even in places where they're available (and that's pretty rare). Everyone uses GSM... and they all use prepaid plans too rather than monthly-fee plans. It's pretty wild.
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Remove the Greed which plagues mankind.
In many cases, this is because of regulatory reasons, and not technical/logistical ones. Cellular providers can move more quickly than a bureaucratically-entrenched state-monopoly PTT.
Cingular mostly still uses TDMA, as does AT&T. Both are in the process of migrating to GSM, but coverage is not available everywhere yet. Sprint/Verizon are CDMA only. The only GSM-only carrier is T-Mobile. T-Mobile has the best data service (at least in Florida, AT&T/Cingular/Sprint/Verizon are only about the speed of dial-up), but has horrible coverage. If you're more than 20 miles from an interstate, don't expect coverage. Make a point to try before you commit to a contract, since some of the contracts (especially Verizon) are nearly impossible to get out of, even if the service doesn't work.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
Wireless services (for phone, network, etc) and even local or co-gen electric service is popular for another, simpler reason also: People will dig up copper wire and steal it to sell. Wireless kind of prevents that from happening.