Total Wireless: Verizon vs. Earthlink card

The type of wireless connections you described are presently being piloted by Verizon in Washington, DC and San Diego. AT&T is piloting it in a few markets as well. I dont' know anything about Earthlink's service. I imagine that it will be rolled out in Atlanta first since that's where they are based. Sprint is piloting the service in a few areas as well.

I read a review on the Verizon service and its pretty good in the Washington, DC area. Transfer speeds are about 350Kbps, so it's on par with DSL transfer speeds.

You should definitely check with the different providers to see if they are offering this service in your area, or any area you plan on being. Widespread rollout and availability isn't expected to happen until the end of this year.

Verizon currently offer two types of connection. If you have a 3G cellular phone, you could use that to connect to the internet free of charge via their 1x connection. It is approx the speed of dialup. The only thing it uses is your minutes. On weekend and nights when you have unlimit minutes, you could use it pretty much unlimited. All you need if to buy the Office Connect kit from Verizon which comes with the cable you need to connect to your cellular phone.

The other service is a new recently launched service for much faster speed. I believe in Los Angeles area now has that service as well, in addition to the places mentioned in post above. You have to pay 80 bucks or so a month for unlimited access. You get faster speed, roughly around dual channel ISDN speed. Though they advertise 350kps, you really don't get that high.

If you live in San Diego or Denver, look at Richocet. They offer similar service for 1/2 the cost. www.richocet.com

aren't isps .net? i'll have to check that out, since i'll be around denver soon...

edit: yeah, he means ricochet.net

Yup, them...ehehhe been awhile...

There are more discussion on these topics over at www.dslreports.com

I have the Verizon card. At first I used it with my Powerbook 17" and it worked well. Then I recently got the little Sony Vaio T250 1.2 Ghz laptop and used it in there. Today I discovered I can plug the card in the Powerbook and share the connection with the Vaio, using both laptops on the net simultaneously. Check out my thread here:

http://www.siliconpopculture.com/son...?p=37472#37472

And the last few photos on my web page here:

http://homepage.mac.com/bhardy3/PhotoAlbum34.html

So I need no base stations or routers from now on.

hello. i am not sure if you are describing what i have but you can decide that. i have been using a pcmcia wireless pcconnection card through sprint for at least 3 years now. i pay 80/month unlimited and i have great service as long as i am on the sprint network. if you are in a roaming area the card does not work. it is definetly faster than dial-up. it is not as fast as dsl but i could not do without my card. it works in 99 percent of the places i travel from california to new york. if i am not mistaken-sprint offers the fastest network for this but do not quote me on this. as far as using your cell phone to connect-blah. maybe with the new phones coming out you will get ok speeds but in the past using your cell phone to connect to the internet was slower than dial up. i think that the new 3g phones are coming out if not already but i dont think that your connection will be faster than the pcmcia cards. like i said-i have been using my sprint-since 2001 (i just looked up my start date). i was able to get unlimited access only because i have a business accout with sprint-maybe this has changed over the years i am not sure. oh, be careful if you are using your cell phone to connect to the internet-in the past they used to charge 20cents/minute to access the internet thru your cell phone agreement. like i said-i have not looked at current phone plans in the past 12 months so maybe they are changing. please ask me any questions, i will be happy to give you real world experience-i use my card daily for the past 4 years and to my knowledge i have yet to run across anyone who uses this type of access. t-mobile also offers this service and they charge about 40/month unlimited. i used it for a month a year ago but my sprint was very much faster so i canceled the tmobile service. as for att-funny, very funny. i had att service for my cell for 1 year, last year-the worst service i have ever experienced. i dont know if this would be the same for their wireless internet service and i dont know if the merger with cingular has made att network any better.

sorry