Wireless Everywhere

Wireless Everywhere
by Larry Magid

April 10, 2006

Over the past several years I've spent countless hours in search of WiFi hotspots. Sometimes it's easy – a growing number of coffee shops, hotels and other venues are installing them and there are even municipalities such as San Francisco, New Orleans and Philadelphia that are in the process of rolling out free citywide WiFi networks.

Other times, it's relatively easy but costly. For example, most Starbucks Coffee shops offer access to T-Mobile, but it will cost you $6 for 60 minutes, $9.99 for the whole day or $39 for a month unless you commit to a year in advance at $29.99 a month. But there have been times when I've simply been unable to find any WiFi access when I needed it.

There have also been times when I have been near a public WiFi hotspot but was nevertheless unable to get on. Some of the technology conferences I attend, for example, offer WiFi but sometimes there are too many people trying to use it at once for all of us to get on.

There is a wireless alternative to WiFi and, for some road warriors, it may very well be worth the cost. Sprint, Verizon and Cingular offer services that allow you to access the Internet from their wireless cellular networks.

I've had a chance to test both Sprint's and Verizon's networks. Sprint loaned me a card that I plugged into a notebook PC and Lenovo (formerly IBM) loaned me a Thinkpad X60 notebook with a built-in adapter for the Verizon network. As is customary for reviews, both Sprint and Verizon provided free access to their services during the evaluation period.

For unlimited access to data service on high-speed EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimize) networks, both Verizon and Sprint charge $59 a month if you also have a voice plan with them, and $79 if you don't.

For occasional users, Sprint has lower cost metered monthly plans. The cost of the cards ranges from free in some cases to up to $200. Promotional offers change all the time so it's best to check with the carriers to see what is being offered.

With both services, the speed, reliability and chances of getting online varied depending on where I was as well as such factors as how many people were using the network.

For example, my Sprint card worked very well when I arrived in Las Vegas two days before the Consumer Electronics Show opened in that city in January, but once the show was in full swing – with lots of people trying to access the network – I noticed generally slower service and occasional periods when I couldn't get on at all.

I've also used the service in Washington DC, New York, and San Francisco, mostly with pretty good luck. At times I've gotten download speeds of up to 1.2 megabits per second - about as fast as my home DSL line - but I've also experienced very slow access, occasionally even slower than that old 56K modem that I long ago abandoned. Sometimes I'll get knocked offline for no apparent reason but usually I can get back online a minute or two later.

I've had similar results with Verizon's service. In San Francisco the other day I was surfing the web at nearly a megabit per second and in a coffee shop in Silicon Valley I got a very respectable 700 kilobits per second but today at home in Palo Alto, I'm getting only about 130 kilobits per second. Still, even at that speed, web pages are coming up relatively quickly and I'm having no problems sending and receiving email. In other words, fast is better but "fast enough" can often be "good enough."

I've also had occasion to use the services from a parked car when I just had to get online. A couple of weeks ago, for example, I got a call from the CBS News Radio network asking me to file a short audio report as I was driving to an appointment. I pulled over, plugged a microphone into my laptop, recorded the report and used the Verizon network to send the 2 megabyte file to New York. Soon afterwards, I heard my report on the car radio, so it obviously got there.

At $60 a month these services are obviously nowhere near as good a bargain as free WiFi but they're not that expensive compared to using paid WiFi services like T-Mobile. The obvious advantage is that you don't have to seek out a hotspot to use them so long as you are within their coverage area.

As you would expect, there are places where there is simply no service. Both Verizon and Sprint publish network maps on their websites.

While there are no hard and fast rules here, I've noticed that Verizon is more likely to have coverage in outlying areas while Sprint tends to be strong in urban areas. If you travel a lot to rural areas or other places outside the networks, you're definitely not a candidate for either of these services.

The same is true if you travel overseas. None of the basic voice or data services from Sprint or Verizon work, for example, in Europe but GSM services from Cingular do work in most European countries.

I haven't carried a Cingular PC card on any of my trips to Europe but I did have a Blackberry with me on a recent trip to Germany and Amsterdam, where I had no problem accessing T-Mobile and Vodafone's high-speed networks in those countries.