Posted by ZC on November 22nd, 2005
I don’t live in a rural area, but it is a new neighborhood and the luxuries of wired high speed internet weren’t brought in with the telephone and plumbing. I have been spoiled by fast downloads and instant connections at work and school and so I am more than a little anxious to find another solution than my 56 kbp dial-up connection. Luckily, the big cellular phone players want a piece of the broadband market. This means there are options.
My first stop was T-Mobile. Their EDGE/GPRS network has been nationwide since September and I have had good experiences with their customer service. EDGE, the technology behind T-Mobile and Cingular’s network is currently providing around 140 kbps download. Not fast enough for large files, but definitely enough to make a noticeable improvement to page-rate. The price depends on whether you have it with a qualifying Blackberry T-Mobile cell phone plan. (Another fun technology I will have to explore later) With the plan adding unlimited internet is only $39.99, otherwise, $49.99.
Cingular is a little more confusing. It looks like they adopted their rate plan from an AT&T business internet plan I looked into a couple of years ago. It is scaled by the number of mega-bytes you download. Minutes can be hard enough to keep track of, but keeping track of something as intangible as the size of each web page you visit might be intimidating to casual browsers. Their is an unlimited plan for $79.99, but without any increase in speed over T-Mobile.
Last, the Golden Carrot: Verizon. They have pushed the quality of their network with their newest advertising campaign, and for the internet, it is apparent. It is not currently nationwide, but they are moving into most areas, including my own, in January. The speed, according to their site is between 300 and 500 kbps, with bursts up to 2Mbps. Unlimited access is $79.99, but if you have a qualifying Verizon cell phone plan and sign a two-year contract the price drops twenty dollars.
Hardware? Each company has wireless PC card modems for laptops and they run from free to $200 depending on your particular plan.
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