Wireless Addiction

November 9, 2006 1:15 PM

What are my Wireless Internet Options?

Sorry, this question touches on a subject that comes up pretty much every month here. But I'm looking to substitute wireless for Cable Broadband instead of just supplementing it.

I live in Wilmington, NC 28409

I have a desktop computer with a wireless internet antenna, and I have a laptop. I have Road Runner at the house, and its hooked to a wireless router so all the computers in the house can have internet access. But I want to be able to use the internet on my laptop when I'm not at home or near a hot spot.

I'd like to find a monthly unlimited service that will provide me solid internet access most places I take my laptop but also give my computer at home access too.

Services I currently use (and would piggyback on if it saved me money):
A Alltel Phone plan for my work cell phone
A Verizon Phone plan for my personal cell phone
Time Warner Cable's Road Runner for my house's wireless

I'd love to continue having my house as a wireless hotspot for anyone who has wireless access with their laptop, but if my only option is buying 2 propriety wireless access cards for my laptop/desktop, that is okay.

What services should i look into?

posted by ZackTM to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Can't recommend a particular service, but the only sane way to do this is to keep your home set up as it is and think solely about a mobile service for when you're out. You're unlikely to be happy with using a mobile service while at home (performance/reliability).

I'd talk to your cellpone providers first.
posted by cillit bang at 2:09 PM on November 9, 2006

If you want unlimited, look into Sprint's Mobile Broadband. I've read that Verizon is capping data transfers to 5gigs/month.

There's a lot of good info on EVDO (Sprint, Verizon and Alltel's wireless broadband services) at www.evdoforums.com.
posted by Steve3 at 2:27 PM on November 9, 2006

In Wilmington, there aren't a lot of WISP (Wireless ISP) options. Verizon has deployed an EVDO network in the Wilmington area, but most folks who have tried EVDO after using cable modem connections are pretty frustrated. 400 kilobits a second is about 50 kilobytes/second. A 1 meg file is going to take around 30 to 45 seconds to download, if there is any multipath signal and retraining going on. YouTube is going to be hella choppy. CNN Video is going to freeze frame a lot. You might do alright streaming music at 64kps streams.

If you're a road warrior, like a construction superintendent, or a route salesman, it might be just the thing. But at $60 to $80 per month, you've got to have compelling reasons to be on the go, and few true broadband uses, to justify "pulling the cord."

In a few years, if and when Verizon and other cellular carriers build out their WiMAX networks, things will be radically better. WiMAX is the right technology for this, particularly in geographically flat areas like Wilmington, and I think people will be pretty happy with WiMAX services from the git go, once it is available.
posted by paulsc at 2:38 PM on November 9, 2006

Sadly, the quality of service you're describing doesn't yet exist.

Wi-Max is a new technology that promises to bring high, ultra-high speed internet to large swaths of wireless area, but it's not available yet, except in testing.

Verizon offers their Broadband Access solution, which allows you to connect to their "broadband" service from most metropolitan areas. It's decent in speed, but horrible in latency. You can except about 256 kbps average speeds, sometimes peaking a bit above this. It's passable, and better than dialup, but not a great deal so.

Plus, it costs $60+ a month (with 2 year contract) and requires you either purchase a Broadband Access card which plugs into your laptop's PCMCIA slot, or a Broadband Connect phone which acts as a modem that can be plugged into either a laptop or a desktop. Internet connection sharing through a Verizon Broadband Access connection is a sordid affair that is slow and depressing. Switching amongst the two means that you don't have the always on connectivity, but Verizon would be your phone plan, and they can help you with it.

Verizon Broadband Stuff.

Also, the Broadband Access card doesn't grant you access to all of the many, many T-Mobile or similarly equipped, for-pay wireless hotspots around the country. So you'd be stuck on the Broadband Access, which is dramatically slower, unless you wanted to pay a per-diem fee.

You're definitely not going to want to be using this as your primary internet connection while at home, though. The speed drop will kill you if you're coming from cable or DSL, as you are.

What's the attraction to having a wireless desktop solution?
posted by disillusioned at 2:39 PM on November 9, 2006

Well, for starters I never use my desktop at home anyways. I do occasionally but if I had unlimited wireless on my laptop, i would probably never even touch it. I do want to have wireless in the house so my roommates can use it if they ever need to (they rarely do, and dont own computers). I am hoping to find a way to cancel the road runner and only pay 1 internet bill instead of two.

unfortunately, now that they're putting tv shows online, the lag in the video would probably frustrate me to death...
posted by ZackTM at 2:56 PM on November 9, 2006

Here's an article from the NY Times about a few wireless routers made to take the PCMCIA cards for cellular wireless, but they're pretty expensive, and there seem to be questions about whether or not the routers violated the terms of service of the cellular plans.
posted by concrete at 7:45 PM on November 9, 2006

You could go with a service like Clearwire, or perhaps the BroadbandConnect service from Cingular might work (if you had a compatible laptop...)

Coverage in your area might be the gating factor tho...
posted by noahv at 9:06 AM on November 10, 2006