Viability of Mobile Broadband For Home Use?

mighty7sd writes "I am about to be released from my contract with Time Warner for my home internet service, and I am evaluating alternatives to my current cable modem setup. I would love to use AT&T U-Verse or Verizon Fios, but they are not available in my area. I have a good idea of the costs and limitations of Cable and DSL service, so I am considering using mobile broadband for my home internet connection. Most providers seems to cap the connection at 5 GB of data transfer per month. I am a relatively heavy internet user using streaming video and a web server, so I need decent down/upload speeds and a large data transfer cap. Has anyone in the /. community had a good experience using mobile broadband cards at their home, specifically with lots of streaming video or a home server? What has happened if you have gone over your data transfer limit? Cricket Wireless is available in my area for $40 per month with 'unlimited' service, but I am skeptical that it is truly reliable and unlimited. I also found products that act as a WiFi router for mobile broadband services, but it seems that this is against most carriers TOS. Can they really detect these, and are they comparable to a wired broadband router?"

Comments

Signal strength check

[NewmanKU]

First thing to check is to make sure you get a decent mobile signal at and inside your home. If the tower is too far away you'll get horrible throughput rates.

Re:Signal strength check

[sopssa]

I used my phone company's 3g connection for inet access after I moved apartments and had to wait 3 weeks for the adsl to be installed.

Unlimited 5mbit costed 30e/month and worked quite well, tho pings in online games were around 250-400ms (usually 50ms or so). After the 3 weeks period I had used 48GB of bandwidth.

The only issue is prolly the latency, which isnt so nice in multiplayer games. I live in scandinavia, so I dont know how its in USA tho. But for people in here, its a great alternative.

Works for some

[avm]

I did it for a number of months using Sprint and a USB Sierra Wireless Compass dongle (not sure of the model number, but it did work in Linux).

It worked for me, but there is a 5Gb/mo cap and would probably not fit your usage. Reliable, reasonably fast for what it is, worked flawlessly in XP and Ubuntu, and really gave me nothing to complain about.

Re:Works for some

[Spy Hunter]

I did it for over a year, and actually experienced service termination due to a bandwidth cap. Verizon terminated my contract (waiving the early termination fee) after I downloaded over 20GB in one month. I believe 20GB is the *real* cap. However, Verizon was later sued in a class action for false advertising. As a result, I believe they temporarily stopped terminating people.

As for stuff like streaming video, running a server, or using P2P, that's all prohibited by the TOS but not enforced. In real life they will only terminate you for bandwidth use.

This info is all slightly out of date though, it's been a year or so since I used this stuff. Up-to-date info about Verizon and Sprint's actual practices (as opposed to what the TOS says) is available on many web forums like EVDO Forums.

No

[chill]

Has anyone in the /. community had a good experience using mobile broadband cards at their home, specifically with lots of streaming video or a home server?

I'm almost certain that running a server would be against the ToS, and yes it is fairly easy to detect. Hmmm...incoming Port 80/443 traffic...

I know a couple people who've switched to mobile broadband for their main link, but they are not heavy users. Checking e-mail, searching Google, general web browsing, yes. Frequent streaming media? Not unless it is postage stamp sized.

And Cricket's data plan isn't 3G so it would be a dog.

The 5 GB cap will kill you cable seems to be the b

[Joe The Dragon]

The 5 GB cap will kill you cable seems to be the best that you can get for now.

No

[dr_strang]

Terrible idea. Just steal your neighbor's wifi.

Hulu / Youtube unwatchable as streams

[frith01]

I have mobile broadband for work / support issues, and it does not do well with video streaming. ( watch 3 minutes, wait 3 minutes, repeat )

Audio streaming is just able to keep up most of the time.

I can certainly confirm the latency issues are noticeable, but for ssh / remote support it is use-able. buy a host site plan from a friendly web provider, and just remote admin the info.

Er, why are you considering this?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While it has its virtues (notably the "mobile" part), mobile "broadband" is otherwise a hell of a mess. Higher latency than wired, generally higher cost than wired, almost definitely lower caps than wired, and, under any but the best conditions, slower than wired(of similar price, I'm not talking netzero dialup).

If you are on the road most of the time, or need an ISP now, not in three weeks when the cable guy gets off his ass and install, then fine. But why would a self described heavy user even consider going with it for home use?

For ATT

[moniker127]

Here is the information for ATT aircards:

Aircards: Sierra Wireless 885, 881, 881u, Option GT Ultra, Ultra Express, Quicksilver
5 GB/month
60 Dollars / Month
700kbps-1.7 mbps down, ~200 ping to google (on 3g)
75kbps-125kbps down, ~300 ping to google (on 2g)


When you go over 5 gigs, data useage is charged at half a cent per KB, but service will be turned off as soon as it is detected by the switch (which can take anywhere from an hour to a week, or forever)

Coverage map:
http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/

Phone support: 1-800-331-0500 (24 hours).

huh???

[massysett]

I have a good idea of what the costs and limitations of Cable and DSL service,

So you are...considering getting something even more expensive, even slower, and with even tighter caps than the worse cable caps?

???

Experience with Sprint

[SteveInMI]

I am a full-time work-from-home WAN geek. I have Sprint data service, with an old PCMCIA card in a D-Link DIR-450 router; it's my backup Internet connection. From time to time, I've used it in short intervals (1 week) as my primary connection. I used to have problems with the connection resetting every 6 to 18 hours or so, although the connection state has seemed much more stable in the last few months. It still won't hold an outbound VPN connection for a full day at a time; my sessions last anywhere from 4 to 20 hours before needing to be restarted (and the same connection over DSL lasts for weeks). Throughput is more than servicable, and the rate is more constant than I'd expected. Jitter can be higher than you'd want for VoIP, especially if there's any other traffic on the line. The jitter could be mitigated if I used a decent router, but I still think I'd see a performance gap between wireless and wireline delay consistency. For mid-speed service and 99% uptime, it's a perfectly viable alternative. It's especially useful in some rural areas where the cellular data network reaches farther out in the country than DSL or cable. If you need great service 99.9%+ of the time with low latency and minimal jitter, stick with wireline.

Wireless home providers....

[JWSmythe]

    I had some good success with Verizon Wireless. Really, it depends on where you are , to how good the service will be. I've had better than 1Mb/s down while driving. Then again, I've had what felt like double digit bytes per seconds in not so great areas.

    After one move I had a problem. The DSL provider said they could service the house. We gave them two weeks notice to get the new line ready. They were "provisioning" it for 3 weeks, until they finally said they couldn't do it. {sigh}

    So we put in an order with the cable company. It took 2 weeks for the "install package" to come in, and 3 more days after I plugged it in for it to actually work. During that period, I had a PC with my Verizon Wireless air card up, and it acted as my NAT for the other computers. It wasn't a great area for cell service, because of the mountains. Even the wireless service was hit and miss. I swear, when it got windy, the service would go down. More likely, trees were blowing between my card and the tower, but I still blame the wind. :)

    I highly recommend getting a card that has a jack for an external antenna. It makes a HUGE difference in service quality. Check out evdoinfo.com for good information on the card offerings from Verizon and Sprint.

    The Verizon card gave me one thing that you can't get from a residential or business provider. I had my laptop running on a cross country drive, feeding telemetry (GPS data and video) to my web site, so friends and family could see what I saw and where I was. I got a call in the middle of the desert, asking if I was ok. I showed to be about 20 feet off the road, not moving, and facing desolate nothing. In reality, I was tired, pulled off into a rest area, parked the car facing away from the only building there, and was taking a nap. The rest area was new, so it didn't show on Google Maps yet, which is what I was using to show my location. I hadn't looked when I stopped, I just saw a place to sleep so I took it.

    I opened one eye enough to look at the screen, saw where I was on the map (100 miles from nowhere, parked 20 feet off the road), confirmed that's where I was, told them it's a rest area now, and went back to sleep. :) After a couple hours, I woke back up, checked my email, did a little online recon to see what was ahead (not a damned thing), and then started driving again.

    Sure there were some dead spots. My phone would drop, and the Internet connection would usually follow behind by about a minute. The card's antenna was suction cupped to the windshield, so it had a better signal than the phone. That was very intermittent though. Most of the time I had at least some sort of service. :)

I'm on a boat

[kindbud]

No really. I'm on a boat. I live aboard at the marina. Can't even get a POTS line, let alone DSL or FIOS or cable. But I have a very strong 3G signal at the docks, and even out in the Catalina channel.

I've lived aboard my boat for the past 8 months with Verizon Wireless as my only internet access. I play Xbox360 games, EVE Online, and download songs and the occasional video from iTMS. It's got better performance than the WiFi ISP that covers the marina. They charge $40/month and rate limit to 1Mb/sec download. I usually get at least that, and often up to 2200kb/sec. Latency is OK, 100-200ms. Fast games do not seem to lag.

I use the CradlePoint CTR-350 router on the boat, and carry a PHS-300 battery-powered hotspot with me on the commute to work which I use to listen to Pandora or surf the web on my iPod touch.

I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan for $59.95 that I've been using for three years before moving onto my boat.

Sprint via tethering for over a year

[RJFerret]

I used my phone tethered exclusively for over a year and was satisfied.

However I didn't do much with videos, just Second Life and streaming music there and the like.

Download rates from DSLReports ran about 750 down at my tower (below average), if I drove down the highway I could get 1100 down from neighboring towers. I forget what the upload rate was, maybe 250ish?

SL daily plus music streams was tons of data, but I had Sprint's unlimited plan.

The only other issue was when it would reconnect, which happened fairly frequently and was only an interruption of a sec, but disrupted SL and would need a reload if a page was in the midst of loading. There were a couple outages impacting just my local tower, once for a week. However all outages still provided dialup speeds, only the EVDO was out.

It was possible to watch streaming video if you let half the video download first.

IMO the needs specified are greater than what EVDO will provide.