It appears that I’ll be spending more time on the road this year than I have in the past couple years. That means I need to start thinking about how to stay productive (or at least amused) in airports, hotel rooms, and other normally non-productive, non-amusing places.
My local airport in Albuquerque has free Wi-Fi, bless their hearts. Denver, where I’m likely to sit around a lot while waiting for connections, doesn’t. Neither does Sea-Tac, if I recall correctly.
The prospect of giving T-Mobile or Cingular $9.99 for a day pass that will really only be good for an hour or so is pretty unpalatable, especially when I’m not being reimbursed by a deep-pocketed employer. On top of that, the $10-15 charge that most hotels levy for high-speed Internet access is pretty sucky too. With one long layover and a Net-unfriendly hotel , I could end up spending $25 a day.
So I’m thinking of signing up for a high-speed data plan from a wireless company. I already have a Cingular account, so their HSDPA-based BroadbandConnect sounds promising, but it also sounds like it’s still half-baked. I’d wind up using the slower Edge network for most of 2006, I suspect. But it should work just about everywhere I’m likely to go.
Or I could choose EV-DO from Verizon or Sprint. Unfortunately, neither one appears to offer service in my corner of the world yet.
Or I could save the $60 a month, wait a while, and learn how to work offline.
What would you do?
Ed Bott 
I vote saving your money – your brain needs a rest every now and then, and paid-for wifi is the Tech-God’s way of telling us to rest 😉
K
If I thought I could get by without the internet for extended periods of time I’d probably be kidding myself. I’ve only been reading your blog for a couple of weeks now so I’m not sure if you’re a gamer, but something like Unreal Tournament or Warcraft III can help pass those offline hours nicely. Still, even at limited coverage, $2 a day just might be worth it for wireless piece of mind. And the coverage areas can only get larger over time. I guess it really depends on just how much time you’re going to be sitting around.
Don’t know if Microtel is a place you’d stay, but there wifi is free nationwide. I often grab those coupon books along the interstate and find good deals there. No super luxury, but clean, neat, new and wifi. Lately, I’ve been finding more and more places that provide free wifi.
Make that last comment read “their” wifi, not “there” wifi. Geez – can’t even write anymore!
I would stay away from Verizon Wireless’s wireless internet. We have a number of the PCI cards for work and I find them very slow. I have traveled with it quite a bit and it is always slow, even in DC where our offices are, I would consider DC a major Verizon hub. Defiantly post any opinions that you have on any of the others. I heard that the sprint card is fairly fast.
With the prices for EVDO (and similar) access carriers want these days, there’s no way I could justify that kind of money, no matter how convenient it may seem. Just think of all the mochas I could get from Starbucks for that $60 a month… Heck, that’s a server payment a month in wireless access fees.
Just don’t read your emails or blogs for a couple days ahead of time, download both before you leave, and spend the layover reading and replying to things so they can get sent as soon as you plug back in. Wi-Fi is only going to become more popular, so chances are as soon as you get used to dealing with being offline for a flight you won’t have to be anymore…
If, however, you do decide to get EVDO / Edge / homing pidgeons, please let us know how it goes (as if you’d ever let us go on curious while you had fun with new toys…).
I survived without a card until I realized I was paying almost as much most months in hotel access fees. If you won’t lose any time or money by disconnecting during travel, then skip it.
It’s easy to think you can get by with free WiFi by locating coffee shops or staying at a hotel with free WiFi, but when it comes to covering or attending a conference, the tradeoff is often spending more time traveling to and from the free WiFi spot.
I value my personal time at a rate much higher than $60/hour, so that rate for a full month of access is well worth the financial tradeoff. I opted for Cingular EDGE/BroadbandConnect, partly because I got a better rate as a Cingular subscriber and partly because BroadbandConnect is available in the places I travel most frequently. I gave the EDGE version of the service a good test while visiting Iowa for the holidays and found that as long as the signal strength was solid, things like RDC remain very usable. I have a handful of tips on Cingular EDGE/BroadbandConnect here.
I’ve found — somewhat to my surprise — that a Sprint PPC-6700 phone makes a perfectly adequate laptop replacement for short trips. I’ve comfortably spent hours browsing the Web on it, and email integration with my IMAP provider works well. And only $15 a month for unlimited data, which is a lot more appealing than most of the alternatives.
If you do more than just Web browsing and emailing, that’s unworkable, of course; but if those are the main things you need much of the time, don’t rule it out.
Another thing that came to mind this morning as I was waiting in traffic (don’t ask…): I believe Verizon offers free (albeit slow) ‘net access with all their cell plans. You could get a bluetooth-capable cell phone (assuming you have a bluetooth-capable laptop) and use it as a modem – bingo, slow, free, national ‘net.
Just a thought that might get you by, or at least give you a big enough taste to decide whether you want to invest more in the convenience or not… As I recall, last time I looked at it, they only offered something similar to a 14.4 modem speed over this network.
What Jake said. I use Verizon’s service and have been generally happy with it. Apart from the cost of hotel wi-fi, I’ve found that it’s not always guaranteed to properly pass traffic on all ports, and at large conferences (think: TechEd) it often craps out entirely.
$60/month for all-you-can-eat wireless data is well worth it to me, and I say that when I’m already paying another $40 or so a month for wireless data from my Treo. Even at $100/month, the time value of being able to connect from wherever I happen to be far outweighs the cost.
Using the wireless Internet on your Bluetooth phone to tether your laptop is the way to go. I have Cingular’s MEdia Works unlimited wireless Internet package on my iPAQ hw6515 and I use my laptop tethered to it whenever I travel. Since the phone is EDGE, that is the speed I get on the laptop. My girlfriend is on Sprint, and I recently puchased her a Samsung MM-A940 and have succesfully tethered her laptop to it for EV-DO service. The unlimited Internet packages for the phone are much cheaper and you may already have one. Keep in mind that the carriers do monitor usage and will cut you off if they see “excessive” usage, but I use it a decent amount every month and haven’t had any problem.
For the past month or so I’ve racked up $30 in wifi fees for a few hours of use. I’m seriously thinking of getting the Cingular HSDPA as well with the Sierra card.
Lemme know how it goes.
This is a simple choice. Verizon Wireless’s EVDO technology by far outways the advantages of cingulars HSDPA. With rev a technology, its only going to get better. Its leaving all other options behind. It really comes down to ROI. What is it worth to you. How do you value your time. I personally own a treo and a pc card from verizon and spend over $200 a month. If I’m constantly connected, I will make that cost up 10x over before the month end. If your time is not valuable then you could probably do without the access altogether. Make your choice, but you have my opinion. Good Luck
I got the hsdpa enabled card a couple of weeks ago and all i can say is that it’s phenonimal. The EDGE connections I get in most places, runs about 60-100kbs which is a hell of a lot faster than dial-up. I’m sitting in Chicago as I write this, which is one of the half a dozen or so cities Cingular has HSDPA enabled, and I’m connected at 250 kbs.
Personally, I’ve been in coffee shops, motels, etc and have tried to use thier wifi, only to find out I was sharing bandwith with so many people tha i was better off with the cingular card and an EDGE connection.
My two cents: I just researched this for some of the people at my law firm who are in a similar situation. At this point in time Sprint offers the best EVDO card service and I think this comes down to three major factors: Speed, availablity of service and cost. For most of the new fangled high speed cards and service, you will find that Albuquerque (I’m from here too) has not caught up to most major metropoliton areas and no matter what service you subscribe to, its going to be slow in ABQ. The cost of the Sprint All Access EVDO service is 60 dollars a month for unlimited access and you will find that this is less expensive than the other major service providers. There coverage is equal to or greater than the other service providers and they claim that they have more of the needed EVDO towers in more areas so you can take advantage of higher speeds as well (I have not been on the road to be able to test this claim or compare with others).
Yes, you can connect to your phone with blue tooth but depending on your service provider and plan this can be pricey and you will find that the speeds are slow and sluggish. If you have an plan with unlimited internet access and have patience, by all means use take this route. I suggest getting the Sprint card if you are travelling quite a bit.
I use sprint’s service with the EVDO card. I find it “painfully” slow and I live in Chicago.
SK
The new Sprint BlackBerry 7130e has, for $40/mo., unlimited Ev-DO tethering as well as all the usual BlackBerry features. Might be a decent combo for a frequent traveler.
Hi! I have been using the Verizon card on my Toshiba Satellite for nearly a year now and love it! My husband and I both travel a lot, so both computers have the cards and we both have verizon cell phones.
We are not always in large metro areas, but have found that if the cells have a good signal, then the cards will work on “broadband” level. If the cell’s signal rate is low, then we end up on the low-bandwidth side. Either way, it works, which is what we are counting on while away from home.
The weird part is that our home is located in a rural location and the cards will not operate at the broadband levels, so we pay for a cable connection and have four computers networked if we are at home together.
I think many of the high vs. low signal rate will be resolved as networks expand and more towers are set up. The $60 is a work-related expense for both of us, so it really isn’t a big deal. Our travel is work-related, too, but hubby’s is covered under DOT’s Hours of Service regulations.
There is no way I would pay a per-day rate for WiFi. We tried using it for over a year and the limited access caused more problems than it was worth.
D/CA