News For You

Background :.

What I have been using to connect wirelessly was the bluetooth connection on my cell phone to connect at the standard data rate of 19.2K . While this was good enough for occasionally checking information from the web, it was painfully too slow to do any work.

Today I had to set up a laptop to work in a location without a WiFi hotspot, but that needed to connect at broadband speeds. I had seen Verizon's display kiosk in the store and had previously assumed that the wireless offerings would connect at ISDN speeds, however after reading their website today I was astonished. They claim speed bursts of up to 2.5 Mbps with average connection speed of 300-500K. That is faster than what I get on my cable modem at home.

Whenever wireless companies claim something I have learned to accept that in real life half will do. I get half the battery life on my cell phone. My wireless Access point doesn't come close to reaching half of what it says it can do. So although I was incredibly reluctant, I decided to give EVDO a shot and see what it could do.

Purchasing :.

Getting signed up was incredibly easy. The access card was $150 dollars after a $150 mail in rebate, If I had opted for a two year contract it comes down to $100 dollars after a $150 dollar mail in rebate. There was an activation fee and a contract that locks in at $80 a month for unlimited use. I thought this price was fair considering how much cell phone bills and cable modem bills are. The whole process of signing up and getting the PCMCIA card from the store took about 15 minutes.

Installation :.

The most difficult part about installation was getting the CD-ROM drive to load on the Dell X200. In order to use the network, you need to install connection software. The connection software installation took about 5 minutes and was pretty easy to set up. This connection software was intelligent enough to know when you were on WiFi and when you weren't so that it could use EVDO only when necessary.

Use :.

Connecting to the network takes all of a few seconds and then you're ready to go. At first, I was surprised at how fast google.com, cnn.com and other sites loaded. Then I remembered, their speed claims. So I decided to take it for a spin. I was able to download software from websites at about 200Kbps and I was able to stream a 300Kbps Windows Media Video file no problem. This is when I got really excited. I disconnected the laptop and walked around the office with it. No dead spots. The wireless had full coverage everywhere in the office. The connection software also came with VPN capabilities, but I didn't get to test that out. Instead I used Citrix to connect to our server and it worked perfectly.

Overall :.

I'm hoping that more people will start using this and that we'll see the price of the service come down to a more manageable $50-$60 within a year. Perhaps by then there will be phones that allow you to connect through the phone so you don't have to buy the expensive PCMCIA Adapter. Then you could add the service on as and add-on to your normal service.

This was the first time in a long time that a new service has exceeded my expectations. Perhaps its because I haven't seen any crazy ad blitzes yet that over hype this new technology. At the same time, I'm curious as to why they haven't pushed this technology more. At $80 dollars a month for unlimited use, it sure beats paying for T-Mobile Wifi Access and for cable modem at home. You get unlimited high speed internet with great coverage. Will wardriving soon become an ancient art form?

Service is available in the following cities:
• Washington, DC
• San Diego, CA
• Las Vegas, NV
• New York, NY
• Philadelphia, PA
• Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL
• Atlanta, GA
• Los Angeles, CA
• Austin, TX
• Kansas City, MO
• Baltimore, MD
• Tampa, FL
• West Palm Beach, FL
• Milwaukee, WI