Verizon Wireless Broadband, the bees knees?

January 11, 2006 2:51 PM

Will you fill my brain with information about Verizon Wireless Broadband?

So my internet connection contract is up at the end of the month. I've see deals for Verizon Wireless broadband for $59.99-$79.99 and found quite a few glowing reviews. I'm thinking about taking the plunge and getting it for my laptop, but I haven't been able to find a lot of technical details. I'm located in Utah if that makes a difference. Does anyone have any experience with it? I know it's "unlimited" but that doesn't always mean what most people think. Are there download caps? How is the latency? Reception issues? Blocked ports? I will take any and all anecdotes.

posted by blue_beetle to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: I'm using it right now. I travel constantly with my band and I use it in the van while going 70mph and for the most part it's been suprisingly stable and relatively fast. Unfortunately, to achieve the full advertised speeds you have to be located in one of the markets that offer the VZ Broadband Access, otherwise you're basically on a GPRS-esque connection.

Really the only answer that will be definitive is to actually try it at your house somehow. I'm not so sure I know how you can do that though, other than borrowing from someone.

The latency is the slowest thing about it. The speeds, once you get a response from the server, are pretty good. I do think some ports are blocked -- I've had problems sending mail via secure SMTP.

Best of luck.
posted by Ekim Neems at 3:06 PM on January 11, 2006

Best answer: If you are used to full-on broadband with no troubles, you will be chagrined, to say the least, with using VWB as your primary internet connection.

High latency and download speed that max out at 25-50 KBps, MAX will frustrate you, especially if you're into gaming or downloading large files.

For regular browsing, it's suprisingly nimble, so long as you have a stable connection. You must try it in your primary location first, though, lest you find out how ridiculously disappointing the service is, the hard way.
posted by disillusioned at 4:42 PM on January 11, 2006

I'm in Chicago for the moment and I'm able to obtain a steady download speed of a 200mb file of about 100KB/s, give or take a few kilobytes.

But as far as everything else is concerned, I'd say disillusioned is absolutely right in saying you'll be dissapointed coming from landline broadband.
posted by Ekim Neems at 5:03 PM on January 11, 2006

The last time I had a contract with Verizon, I foolishly let them autobill me, and they kept charging me for over a year, despite repeated written and phone cancellation attempts. It cost me $600 and I had to dispute with the CC company to recoup part of it.

I hear rumor that this kind of behavior is unofficial policy at some corporations; you can find hundreds of similar stories about Verizon if you google. So I'd just warn you to pay them month-by-month by some non-credit-card method; it's not worth the subsequent hassle.
posted by ikkyu2 at 6:11 PM on January 11, 2006

Verizon Wireless Broadband is EVDO, which I suspect wikipedia or some such will be able to explain more succinctly than I.

It is a wireless technology so latency and reception issues will be fundamental to wherever you are. In Houston I have yet to run into any reception issues though there are areas of definitely better quality. Latency hasn't been a problem but I haven't ever tried anything with precise timing.

probably has the dataset you are looking for.
posted by rudyfink at 2:33 AM on January 12, 2006

EVDO Info

for some reason my link making failed ><.
posted by rudyfink at 2:34 AM on January 12, 2006