EV-DO Broadband, Live And Direct From The Woods..

SL10

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2006/04/25/evdo_from_the_woods/

EV-DO Broadband, Live And Direct From The Woods

Scott M. Fulton, III

April 25, 2006 12:29

Introduction

Only in the past year has the promise of nationwide wireless broadband Internet service started coming to full fruition. While the nation's cable and telephone service providers continue to fight for control of the "last mile" of cable leading into customers' households, in order to pump multimedia content in high-definition at furious speeds, the wireless carriers may find themselves holding a trump card, literally: a PC card that embeds a high-speed cellular connectivity device for EV-DO networks, that can receive data from any point within cellular transmitter range at speeds which many consider equivalent to broadband.

All of which led us to ask, "But how well does it work in the woods?" Could one, forseeably, make arrangements to camp out for a week or so in the deep wilderness, while maintaining contact with his work colleagues without wires, but with something approaching a broadband connection? The answer is far less complicated in 2006 than it was in 2005.

Proof positive: TG Daily running wirelessly, at high-speed, in almost the middle of nowhere.
Park yourself beside your favorite fishing hole, take in the fresh air and the birds, and keep up with the number of cores in Dell's newest computers.

Last week, I set up shop at a relative's cabin in the wooded hills a few miles from Versailles, Indiana, a quaint, delightful, rural town about an hour's drive from Cincinnati. It isn't exactly secluded from civilization, but judging from the bullfrogs and the buzzards, you might reckon it ain't a sprawling metropolis, either.

Technically, DSL service could have been installed here, since there is a telephone line; but without a decent VHF antenna and with no satellite feed, there's no television here, which for a native Oklahoman like myself is an actual requirement for a decent fishing hole. With the trees reaching up to touch the base of the clouds, and the white noise supplied not by the FM radio but by the buzz of locusts, this was an excellent place for us to try out Verizon Wireless' PC5740 broadband access card and NationalAccess service plan.

The logon process for Verizon's VZAccess software took me back to the frontier days of internetworking, back when people "logged on," kept track of the time they spent online (often with a crude, external timekeeping device), then "logged off" in order to save money. With Verizon's system, though, these worries are eliminated in the sense that you don't have to worry about saving money. The NationalAccess plan currently costs $60/month for US customers, for a service contract that knocks the price of the card itself down to a respectable $100 (rebates may apply here depending upon your location).

Having wireless broadband access is worth the investment for us at TG Publishing, not because we're all wishing we were out fishing, but because we frequently cover conferences and major events using remote equipment, and access to an outgoing network via Ethernet is next to impossible. Recently, organizers of major events have taken to deploying WiFi jammers to prevent spectators from sending news out of an area ahead of the embargo time.

While we certainly want to respect news embargoes (I figured, while I'm telling fish stories, I'd throw that in), whenever such jammers are active and wired Ethernet access is shut down, our lifeline as reporters to the outside world becomes the telephone. Since it's illegal to jam public telephone signals, we realized that making full use of new high-speed, cellular access networks could help keep us in closer communication during major technology events.

But also for professionals who aren't, like us in the Internet journalism field, technology geeks, wireless broadband field access could become a critical resource. Field researchers, archaeologists, geologists, and emergency services workers could make use of EV-DO broadband to maintain critical network connections and VPNs in situations where establishing a physical network uplink would be too costly or too extravagant for such short-term use.
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EVDO Addict.

Scott · Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:10 pm Post subject:

Note that he may be quoting the NationalAccess plan (aka 1xRTT, older/slower network) which is $59.99/mo.

OR... he is referring to the discounted BroadbandAccess (EVDO new/fast network) $59.99/mo plan rate, which requires a current Verizon Wireless mobile phone account and 2 year commitment to qualify.

Regular monthly price for BroadbandAccess (EVDO) service is $79.99/mo and doesn't require any current line of service with Verizon.

We connect both rural customers and mobile professionals, journalists, as well as fishermen every day! ;]

Sprint and Verizon EVDO networks are the only *fast* widely-deployed wireless data networks in the U.S (eventually Cingular's UMTS/HSDPA will get there though).

Pick a card: Verizon Sprint

Have a Mac? We're the place for Apple EVDO!