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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?"
My mom is out in the boonies. She's been on Starband for a number of years, and has spent a ridiculous amount of money on equipment.... her cable modem has melted down twice.
This last time, it stopped working completely, even to the point of talking to the computer at all. So I called Starband. It took two hours on hold before I could talk to someone. This was actually two calls, because I called, waited an hour, and then the system hung up on me. The second call took another hour and I finally got rhrough to a technician. He said "oh, sorry, your service is provided by Dish Network, you'll have to talk to them."
So I called Dish, who answered within a few minutes... but they couldn't help me. "Sorry, you'll have to talk to Starband, we don't know anything about the hardware." I had him ask his supervisor and the supervisor confirmed it.. I had to talk to Starband.
So I called Starband back. It took about 90 minutes... they had the good grace to disconnect me after only 30 minutes of waiting on my first call, so I got started on my second hour a little sooner. I explained my problem to the guy with the strong Indian accent. He said "You have to talk to Dish about that." And I said "No, I can't, it's hardware and you guys have to do hardware." He said back, "You have to talk to Dish about that." And then he hung up on me.
And note that this is the SECOND $1000 modem she's bought from them. I'm not sure she paid the full $1k for the second, but it was still a lot, over $500 for eure.
Dish Network and Starband are THE WORST network providers I have EVER seen. You are better off with carrier pigeon protocol. DO NOT sign up with these people. They define customer hostility. Their network is atrocious and their customer service... well, see the above paragraph. This company deserves to be nuked from orbit. You've gotta realize... even when the net was WORKING, it was only for a very, very loose definition of working. Starband would be a perfect synonym on Wikipedia for 'incompetence'.
So I went back in and told my mother she was changing providers. We've had various misadventures before she found one she liked. She's in a fairly remote area, but has reasonable wireless coverage, so we figured we'd try setting her up that way. (she's about 1.25 hours NE out of Atlanta, Georgia.)
In that area, Verizon's service was terrible, nearly as bad as Starband's. My guess was that the cell network was okay, but that it was grossly underprovisioned at the cell tower(s). At 4AM I got pretty good download speeds. At 4pm the network was essentially unusable. It appears Verizon is willing to accept very, very poor levels of service quality while still happily signing people up. If you go with Verizon, MAKE SURE you have a money-back guarantee. Their network was no better than Starband's, and that's as profound a statement of dissatisfaction as I can make.
Next she tried Suncom, which is the local AT&T affiliate. Their service plan is very reasonable. It's almost exactly like a 56k modem, and quite reliable. You won't get your pages quickly, but you WILL get them, which is more than I can say for either Starband or Verizon. Suncom's pricing is very good too.. the minimum each month is $5, and the maximum is $50. So if you're not using it, you don't get soaked, and the most you can pay for any given month is $50. Suncom has very good, customer-oriented price plans, and if you're in the South, they're a good choice.
Unfortunately, my mother kept roaming into Cingular space, even though she was just sitting in her armchair in her living room. Suncom tried to bill her several hundred dollars for roaming, backed off on that, but told her she couldn't use it, in the future, when the network said Cingular. It was doing that more and more, so she just cancelled/returned that service and tried Cingular's flavor.
In her area, Cingular appears to be quite good. I haven't had a chance to try it myself yet, but she says i