Mobile Wi-Fi Hot Spot

bsharma writes to let us know about a little goodie that we will be able to buy starting May 17: a battery-powered, rechargeable, cellular, Wi-Fi hot spot that you can put in your pocket. "What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go? Incredibly, there is such a thing. It's the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It's a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. ... If you just want to do e-mail and the Web, you pay $40 a month for the service (250 megabytes of data transfer, 10 cents a megabyte above that). If you watch videos and shuttle a lot of big files, opt for the $60 plan (5 gigabytes). And if you don't travel incessantly, the best deal may be the one-day pass: $15 for 24 hours, only when you need it. In that case, the MiFi itself costs $270." The device has its Wi-Fi password printed on the bottom, so you can invite someone to join your network simply by showing it to them.

Comments

Better reception with this unit

[rwwyatt]

One Advantage of the MiFi unit is that the performance is better than that of a standard datacard. Laptop Noise is an issue with usb sticks especially in low coverage areas.

Disclaimer: I work for the Manufacturer.

Rooted G1 with WiFi Tether

[SighKoPath]

I've been doing this for months. http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/

Re:"simply by showing it to them"

[macraig]

I guess you get up and leave! Or yank the battery.

great again

[u4ya]

With the story yesterday about the car-centric mobile network, and now this today... it's great to see.

As most of you know, the Internet is at risk of being restricted. Imagine a free, global Internet mesh, where the likes of RIAA and Big Brother couldn't reach. It would be a great boon to freedom of the Internet and to humankind.

Of course, naysayers would probably say they will always find a way to strip our freedoms... but we can all dream, can't we?

Three in the UK do something not too dissimilar

[Anonymous Coward]

but it is 15gig for £15 ($23), and the Huawei d100 is about £75 ($115). Admittedly the modem uses a mains a/c supply - but I am certain it is fairly easy to make a portable supply for it.

If you think that is aggressively priced - you even get a third off if you are already a customer... If I had excellent reception here - I would have not bothered with a landline/adsl..

WMWifiRouter

[doronbc]

I use this on my winmo htc titan. Cricket in Colorado 60/month unlimited everything, ftw.

Exactly

[meehawl]

I read this and thought the same thing. Have been enjoying WMWiFiRouter for a couple of years now. Binds your Windows Phone's 3G signal to the WiFi and re-broadcasts it for association by clients over WiFi or Bluetooth. Interestingly, attached clients score a higher bandwidth (~130%) of the phone's browser running a similar speed test (~1 Mbps). Obviously CPU limited. It amused me in the days before there was a 3G iPhone to let my 2G iPhone friends associate to a Windows Mobile phone using WiFi to accelerate their web browsing.

I have used this to downloaded GBs of torrents to my laptop. For $30/month to Sprint for phone and unlimited texts and internet it's an awesome deal.

Re:Why are we still on cell?

[zifr]

I'm not looking for a handout, I'm looking for better tech. Further, 3g has far better upload in my area than cable/dsl. 150kbps up 3g. 60kpbs cable (max is around 110 in my area if I wanted SuddenSuck to gut me some more). 60kpbs handles my 4 trunks perfectly. I wouldn't see it as unreasonable to dump cdma/gsm and raise the cost of packet network access assuming it cost them more.