aircards internet access

[jwhite]

I would like to get a aircard for my laptop so I would have a connection to the web when I am out camping.
I was hopeing I could find a prepay plan because I don't know how much I would use it unless I could also use it at home and replace what I have at home.
I had high speed pushed through to my home which is back in the woods
but I do get knocked off line alot, but alot better than dialup.
I work from home so I don't need a smart phone,I only use my prepaid cell phone when I run to town and if someone calls I have call forwarding so I don't miss a call.
anyone useing a aircard and how well does it work?

[eatatjoz]

It's not DSL and it's not Cable. It does work though.
So far, for EVDO I've used sprint and cricket.
Sprint was faster, but they raised the rates on me and changed the contract.
I'm not fond of such things so I bought an 80 dollar cricket 3g modem and prepay with their 50 dollar cards. It's slower than sprint though. I don't have the option for high speed, so it's what I use for home and play. Sprint is no longer unlimited, but cricket is.

Connections are iffy around here. Close to the freeway, it works fine, but if you get too far off the beaten path, they lose signal.
At home, it works fine, but the signal is weak. At deer camp, it's useless. Close to a city or freeway, and I'm golden!

They're better than satellite, but may not be quite up to speed yet. It depends on what you're going to use it for and if you can get by with a little slower speeds.

[kstephenson]

I use Verizon..... It works great for me.
5 GB plan with tax run like 60 a month and I use it at home. Just as fast as my other cable internet

[drcurran]

We had Verizon and it worked great. But. . . . at $60 a month and I think at least a one year contract, for a "toy' (we don't need it for work) it was a little much. But it did work great. Five hour drive had the lap top on the whole time and never lost the connection. OK just my .02

Dan

[briandudeathome]

I'm a Cricket user. It's cheap enough and works well but it doesn't have wide spread coverage areas like Verizon or Sprint.

[Engineer Guy]

I use the same Carrier and plan as Kevin since Verizon's EVDO works at our 3 locations of City, Mountain and rural W. CO. Like Kevin, I don't exceed the 5 Gbit/month allocation. Yah, it's slower than DSL or Fiber Optic, but faster than Satellite. The ~23,000 miles up and down to an Equatorial Satellite [~46,000 miles total] means there's ~1/4 second delay per the speed of Radio or Light 'waves' [~186,000 miles/second]. This long delay 'latency' means you drop connections while doing lots of things, like timeout-sensitive, secure Banking or PC VOIP [Voice]. Cable, though faster, is also a shared resource of fixed bandwidth. This is why some Cable Companies are now limiting downloading of large file types that can hog bandwidth. Wired DSL is 'your' dedicated, unshared connection.

The FCC and other Agencies rigorously mandate frequency allocation. So, at peak times after Dinner, etc., more users share fixed bandwidth. All Wireless systems slow down during peak usage times, and Satellite can slow to no better than Dialup. Our slowest connection is our City location, since Verizon oversells Aircards for the Cellular 3G infrastructure now in place. 3G is good for ~1.2 mbit speed max. 4G[eneration] will be faster, but will deploy first in Cities, and along key highways. Rural locations will see 4G eventually. Last night, this rural EVDO CO connection was 982k Download and 361k Upload. This morning, it's 720k Download and 766k Upload via Verizon on an American Tower ~3 miles away line-of-sight. News or Music Video 'burps' at these speeds, but that's an acceptable tradeoff. I'm not tethered to wire or fiber; not options at 2 of our 3 locations. Wire DSL slows with distance to the Central Office [C.O.]. We are ~12,000' away in the City, and Download was 390k to 432k on a 'good' day.

See here what users have to say about Carriers. Check the speed of pal's Aircards, or any wired connection, here @ n/c up to 3x day. Click on 'Tools', then 'Speed Test'. By testing your current online speed, you'll get some relative sense of Wireless Modem speed. Life's a series of tradeoffs...

http://www.dslreports.com/

American Tower builds Cell Towers and leases space for up to 3 competing Carriers. Find your nearest Tower at their Website via 'Site Locator', or use binoculars to locate one while driving to a campsite.

http://www.americantower.com/atcweb

A Mobile Phone can detect general Tower location. Hold your Phone to your sternum. Allow the strength signal in bars to stabilize for 30 seconds while facing all 4 quadrants: North, West, South and East. When the signal is strongest, the Tower is in front of you because the ~70% water in your musculature is not absorbing signal. You do not have to be talking or transmitting during this simple test. At low signal strength, your head 'soaks up' signal. So, you can appear to have 1 bar, and then lose the signal after dialing when you put the Phone to your head. Work around this by using a wired headset or wireless Bluetooth, and hold the Phone back - where most antennas are - toward the Tower. This test will also let you locate the Tower near a remote House. You may have to put your PC and Aircard near a Window, away from signal-weakening mass and metal. Verizon supplies a 'dongle' cable that lets you locate the Aircard ~2' from a PC.

Folks connect from 40 or 50 miles out by connecting a ~1.5' long Yagi antenna. ~3 watt Amplifiers meant for cars can extend Home range, too. See some 1900 mHz [1.9 gHz] Yagi Antennas here. 3 dB is a doubling of signal strength, so an antenna with 14 dB gain outputs a strong signal. The WiFi in a PC connected to an antenna around the Screen can be connected instead to an external, high gain antenna, but this is somewhat advanced stuff. A Bluetooth Phone can connect wirelessly to an external Car Amplifier and antenna. There's all sorts of neat stuff out there, including a box that docks your Cellphone at home. Wired Home Phones then ring in various rooms when a Cellular call comes in.

http://www.antennaworld.com/

The typical GSM System Mobile Phone outputs ~0.6 watts max. A Ham Radio pal might have to help with these advanced tricks. Some Phones with external antenna jacks make this easier, and the Verizon Aircard has a WiFi jack as well. However, their restrictive policies mean you can connect for free over WiFi to only Verizon WiFi locations. Various Chat Rooms online detail what fellow Geeks are doing to connect at long, remote distances via WiFi [>100 miles in one Australian competition]. Cellular, Aircard Wireless Modem and WiFi are not identical-protocol connections, but are nearly-identical frequencies. You can also use Skype to talk via PC, including superb Int'l call voice quality:

http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home

Depending on your Cellular connectivity, you can drop your Landline and wired DSL monthly charges, and drop any monthly ISP fees [like Earthlink]. Get e.mail via Wireless while untethered, and e.mail at 'gmail' or 'Hotmail' or 'Yahoo'.

While some might consider Mobile Phone/PC sophistication 'over the top' for Camping, our Real World experiences with loved ones in Nursing Homes, etc., dictate connectivity while 'getting away from it all'. Caller ID and Voicemail can filter non-critical calls [like Work calls ;-)]. I got hooked on optional connectivity while filing mandatory Int'l Reports years ago from a lovely Hotel overlooking the Irish Sea w/Guinness in hand.

[vreihen]

I was doing research on this topic back in the spring, because I run an amateur motorsports program and wanted to run event registration via the web from our event site every month or so.

The company in the following links had all kinds of useful info on their web site:

http://3gstore.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=24
http://3gstore.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=52

They also have several home routers available, which will use a high-speed connection and fail over to 3G data if that drops:

http://3gstore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=35&products_id=765

My search started looking for a pre-paid Verizon MiFi, which led me to the above web site. The day before I was going to pull the trigger and buy a pre-paid USB thingy, Verizon made the Mobile Hotspot feature free on my Palm Pre Plus smart phone. Long story short, I believe that they are offering the same free deal on some of their Droid phones, and it lets me connect up to 5 computers via the wifi interface in my cell phone to get Internet connectivity through the phone's 3G data link. I wouldn't replace my home Internet connection with it, but have run event registration through it and used it on the road several times. Having it built right into my cell phone is the most convenient thing. Might not be the best thing in your case since you don't already have a smart phone, but it works for what I need it for.....

[Curtis in Texas]

I just returned from a 4 week motorcycle trip on all the dirt roads we could find between Canada and Southern Colorado. and took my Verizon Air card with me to post up my ride reports and upload pictures with my laptop.


It worked well, and was fast enough for me for keeping in touch with my friends and emails.
If I had cell service, I had Internet. For uploading the videos I shot, I had to wait for wifi because of the 5 gig limit. (Went over that limit once before this trip and it wasn't pretty.)

In case some of you don't know, once your air card plan is satisfied you can turn the air card off and on with no charge other than the monthy air charge. I turned mine on for two months for this trip and just turned it off again now that I'm home.

They also have a wireless aircard, for a price, that allows more than one computer to use it at a time, but, it burns through your air time twice as fast too! I'm using the little white plug in one, because it is paid for already, and I only needed it for one computer.

I was able to get cell and computer time, when my friends with other carriers, couldn't. Boy, were they ticked off as I lay in my tent almost every night posting up and all they could do is look at each other.

It works for me!

[pete42]

My Brother has AT&T because he retireed from there most of the time it is in 3G mode at his home which is where he only uses it.
very fast I had it over here one time and his 3G was as fast as my dsl

[jwhite]

I found out that Verizon has a prepay plan
first you have to buy the USB wireless device for 199.00
then you can get a pre pay plan for or a>day> week or month.
you can also go month to month without a contract, turn it on and off as you need.

[ssrjim]

This looks interesting.

http://www.mycricket.com/broadband/plans

[PraireSailor]

I use a sprint myfi card.
It allows up to 5 devices to be used at the same time just
like a wifi unit at home
I run a laptop, netbook and an Ipod of this, plugs into cig lighter outlet.
Kricket has limited coverage away from major cities.

[S. Heisley]

pete42 wrote:

My Brother has AT&T because he retireed from there most of the time it is in 3G mode at his home which is where he only uses it.
very fast I had it over here one time and his 3G was as fast as my dsl

AT&T has been advertising that you automatically get a wireless connection at no extra cost when you purchase their inexpensive DSL plan. That might be worth looking into. Has anybody made use of that opportunity yet?

[vreihen]

I use a sprint myfi card.
It allows up to 5 devices to be used at the same time just
like a wifi unit at home

I read yesterday that Virgin Mobile now has the MiFi with an *unlimited* data pre-paid price of $40/month. It only works on Sprint's 3G data network, and won't roam to other providers like Sprint's MiFi will.....

[pmowers]

I teach online courses and picked up an att dongle that I just plug into a usb port. It seems to work very well and I get 4g where it is available. I got if for free after rebate, but have a 2 yr contract. Somewhat steep at $35 for 200 MB/65 for 2 GB. Walmart has a mifi type of device from Boost? that is prepaid at about 30/2 GB. A lot of people are tethering their phone to their laptop through either wifi or bluetooth, data plan is a lot cheaper that way.