Mobile Wireless ISPs - Are There Any Left? 21
mikeyjake asks: "What is the
best choice for a (mobile) wireless ISP these days? Are there -any-
choices? My band will be on the
road for weeks at a time in the upcoming year, and two of us need to
do much of our work online (including maintaining our server). We've
been looking for a wireless ISP solution so we can work on the road. I
looked into Richochet, which I remember the old commercials for, but
they're gone now. Anybody know of anyone still doing this? I know
I can just 'dial in' through a cell phone, but the best I've seen is
14.4. I'd have to kill myself at that speed. I remember Ricochet
talking triple digits. We own our own conversion van, so some kind of
van-antenna would also be possible, but a truly mobile unit would be
even better. Thanks for the help."
Satellite? (Score:1)
satellite, although it has ugly ping times, is definitely up in the triple digits in throughput, and runs around 70 bucks a month (although the equipment will cost you several hundred dollars).
With those songs, access is the least of ur probs. (Score:2, Funny)
Satellite won't allow vehicles (Score:1)
Thanks
Mike
www.eviljake.com
Re:Satellite won't allow vehicles (Score:1)
Looked into it with the DBS satellite system. Says its not usable on RVs and such because the FCC requires some pretty heavy duty installation because of the two-way thing. Unlike the TV system (one-way), they require their technicians to do it. They make a pretty big deal about the non-mobile thing.
Become an installer. I know a carnie who travels around a lot, and used to use AOL dialups. He spent the couple of hundred bucks for the training and whatnot they make you go through, and became an installer. If you're capable of aiming the dish, the only thing you really need is an installer number so they'll speak to you if something goes wrong. He seems to think it's a worthwhile deal, especially with the TV thrown in. Of course, he doesn't use it while he's actually moving, only when he's stopped for a while. This is Starband, btw, not some other service.
-Nathan
Re:Satellite? (Score:1)
Or, you could wait about 3 years until Qualcomm comes out with the next mobile satellite-based trucking system. It should be almost 10x faster. But, I think it will still provide mainly email and geolocation.
Alternately, you could buy a Globalstar phone and get 10 kbit/sec access for only $800 (phone) plus $1.50 a minute. However, it would be a race to see which ends first : your tour, or the operation of the Globalstar System.
As a consumer in the Greenspan Information economy, you have many choices !!!
my preliminary results from Voicestream's iStream. (Score:5, Informative)
the big caveat is that i was playing with this only a few times, and all from within my cube in my office - which has degraded cellular coverage. Also, i was using a palm pilot to do the connectivity.
so, now that i've shot my own story full of holes, you can think about using this in a pinch. it promises much, and i've yet to really test it out to see what it does deliver. maybe some international
oh yeah, you'd need to spend at least $169 on the motorola phone, and get a monthly service of aorund $59 or so.
good luck!
A couple of options (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the cellphone companies, especially the PCS ones, claim to be able to deliver digital data connections. Almost none of them can, and if they can, the performance is painfully slow. These folks just don't understand the value of opening up their bit stream. (Dream On: Really, I just want a good IP pipe, and I'll decide myself whether to use it for web, mail, telephony, or whatever. This assumes that the phone companies are interested in building an open IP architecture, sadly, they're not...)
So far as I know, there are no wireless ISP services that offer both road coverage and non-painful speeds.
Probably the best option today from a coverage standpoint and a real data solution is one of the CDPD-based services like OmniSky [omnisky.com] or GoAmerica [www]. You can also start at the sites of the equipment providers like Sierra Wireless [sierrawireless.com] or Novatel Wireless [novatelwireless.com]. This approach still leaves a lot to be desired, but is likely the best reasonably-priced option available now.
Alternatively, you could try to live in the 802.11b world, hoping to find access points. Some cities have better documentation of this than others - Austin has a very incomplete list at Austinwireless.Net [austinwireless.net], mostly because RoadRunner is heavy-handedly disconnecting people they find out are running 802.11b APs. This is not a great option, but actually getting better as 802.11b takes off - lot's of offices and coffee houses have this stuff now.
Of course there are the exotic options like Iridium, but it's expensive and I expect most of their bandwidth is being used by the DoD right now...
Metricom's Ricochet was a great system if you could get it, but I was never able to consider it: they never got enough of Austin covered to really make it an option. The only people I know that were really able to use Ricochet were in the Silicon Valley (San Jose) area, where the coverage is pretty good. It would be nice to see this approach (if not this company and its implementation) make a comeback - microcells are a great idea technically, but it appears to me that the cost of getting the rights for microcell sites is what killed them, compounded by the sheer volume of sites they need. I expect Metricom's cost of site acquisition was astronomical, except in places like San Jose where the city gave them carte blanche to hang boxes on any light pole.
Re:A couple of options (Score:1)
Breaking News: (Score:1)
Looks interesting. Who knows if it will be rolled out in time for you though.
Cell phone + notebook/handheld (Score:1)
I get 14.4K with the Kyocera's CDMA modem, which is surprisingly useful for a lot of tasks. The real advantage is that coverage is really good (with Verizon, anyway), as opposed to the limited coverage of GPRS. I can grab my email while sitting in an airport restaurant in Grand Rapids, MI, and check weather maps while out on a motorcycle ride in the mountains east of San Diego. Hell, I use my cell phone with the Jornada to synch up to AvantGo [avantgo.com] when I'm at home to avoid having to wait for my notebook to boot and connect to my ISP. (Advice: Free nights and weekends is *killer* for this kind of activity -- 'net connections chew up LOTS of airtime.) If you're on the road, you really want to do as much work as you can offline and upload the results in a batch.
This kind of stuff has a very high geek-chic factor: lots of people gawk at me when they see me connect a little handheld (or notebook, rarely) to my cell phone.
Why bother? (Score:1)
Because it pisses off people like you.
YHBT buddy.
Re:Why bother? (Score:1)
Tell your mom I said hi next time she comes in to do your laundry.
Thanks! (Score:1)
Some good stuff here.
Mike
www.eviljake.com [eviljake.com]
see these related links (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/21/197
1) WWC (who used to resell ricochet service) offers a different service now:
https://www.wwc.com/products/anywhere/coverage.
2) a mobile dish connection:
http://www.motosat.com/index_001.htm
3) anybody else please add to the list - i wanna know too!