May
30
2008
Mobile Broadband
Author: Steve Martin
We are traveling to Jackson, WY on a business trip / mini vacation as I write this. Jenny is driving so that I can work on the way. I thought I would write a quick post about mobile broadband. About a year ago, we decided to order mobile broadband through Sprint which is our cell phone carrier. The idea was that it would help me to be more available to my clients from pretty much wherever I am. Sometimes it is more difficult and time consuming to try to talk someone through a problem than it is to simply hop onto their computer and take care of it. And, since time is money for both me and my clients, saving some time helps everyone involved.
So, we purchased mobile broadband and haven’t looked back. It is awesome! I love being able to browse the Internet, check and reply to e-mail, hop on clients’ computers to resolve problems…from anywhere. Right now, I am doing all of this while traveling 75 MPH. On several occasions I have pulled off the freeway to take care of something for a client real quick so they don’t have to wait for me to get back home or to my next location. It works great right now but should continue to improve over time. Sprint has upgraded much of their network to take advantage of Rev A speeds. Before Rev A there was Rev 0. The basic difference is in upload speeds, not download speeds. Rev 0 had a very slow upload speed. It was basically as slow as a 56K modem but the download speeds were burstable to 2 mbps. With Rev A you get equal download and upload speeds of 2 mbps (burstable). The average speed is probably between 500 kbps to 1 mbps. That’s pretty decent for mobile broadband.
In researching mobile broadband, I found that Sprint is actually a very good provider. They do not limit the amount of bandwidth people are allowed to use where Verizon caps you at 5GB per month. Most of the message boards I visited rave about the Sprint service and tout it as the best out there right now. Others are slower, not as reliable, and/or limit your use of the service.
The cost for the Sprint mobile broadband service when I signed up was $60/month when you sign a 2 year contract and $80/month without a contract. So, if you have a need for it, I would highly recommend getting it.
