wireless nation wide WWW access, help please (1 Viewer)

[Gregg Loewen]

I am in need of an ISP that is nation wide. My local provider is starband which is satellite based and does not offer phone line connections.

What are my options for wireless and nationwide? I was looking at Earthlink, but they only support the Ipaq and do not support PCs (which I thought was weird).

I am looking for:

1. wireless PC www access, national coverage

2. Pocket PC wireless also (I guess this is secondary)

3. Wanting land line access as a back up in case I am in an area without wireless support.

Please offer me your guidance.

thanks!!

 

[Gregg Loewen]

Anybody??

 

[Jesse Leonard]

This is the problem, Gregg. There just aren't many areas around the country that support wireless internet access. Not where you can just arrive into the city, open your laptop and have wireless internet access. The only truely nation-wide wireless access plan would involve using your cell phone.
Your best bet is to go with a land line for when you are on the road and save your satellite for at home. This would cost an extra $20 a month, though. Then you could use your cell phone to dial into your ISP when you truely need "wireless" on the road.
Check back in about 10 years and we may have a better answer for you!

 

[Gregg Loewen]

Thanks Jesse (as always )
I figured that since wireless Palm technology is out there, that wireless PC would also be available. Wireless Palm PC goes for about $60 a month, which i thought was quite reasonable. The unit's hardware includes a PC card adapter that I thought I would be able to use in my laptop too. But after talking with their tech support was told not so.
Anything I get would be in addition to my satellite ISP at home.
My dell laptop shipped today This came with 6 months free access with MSN. Perhaps I will just stay with them and go with a land line. THey have a $9.99 a month plan with 20 included hours. This would be fine for answering emails while traveling.
Gregg

 

[Todd Hochard]

What sort of cell phone do you have?
Like Jesse said, you could use the land line for normal "on the road" access (through the MSN that you mentioned, for instance), and then use your cell when you need the wireless.
Sprint PCS is about to launch their supposed 3G network nationwide this summer. They were talking sustained transfer of 64kbps at first, increasing tenfold, or more, over the next couple of years (Current transfer with my Motorola is 14.4). I've had great service from Sprint PCS in every major Metro I've been to (Boston, Portland, ME, Portland, OR, Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, DC, Baltimore), except for my Home area (Orlando). For some reason, my house/yard is a PCS black hole.:frowning: I get weak signal, and dropped calls at home, with two antennas less than 2 miles away.
Todd

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Gregg I'm not sure how the US compares to what we have up here but in short its futile at present:frowning: We wanted something similar for our field guys and its simply not ready yet. We do have a wireless network but its very limited to its coverage and for the most part you need a booster to get the signal strenght up high enough. Going the route of using one of the new digital cell phones connected to your laptop is likely the best solution for ture wireless...unfortunatly if your plans are like ours there's no price break for data minutes vs communction minutes so spend an hour online and you end up with a nice hefty phone bill.
Your best bet might be to connect to someone like AT&T with a global dialer that will have a list of local numbers to connect to while traveling.

 

[ChrisB]

Greg,
There was a company that started a rollout of a nationwide wireless network that got 175kps, it was called Metrocom(we wired there towers). Well it went bankrupt(WCOM forgot to promote it) Anyways a company bought them out and is going to be bringing the system back up, here is a link-ricochet