David Brown wrote:
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 11:01:30AM -0800, Chris Louden wrote:
A friend of mine does with with a 3G connection on his RAZR via USB
with a Windows laptop I have not spoke to him about cost though. I
think that it is implied with the 3G service as it does not make any
sense to have that kind of speed on a cell phone with its limited
browser. Its either ATT&/Cingular or TMobile, not Verizon.
TMobile is the only one I know of that doesn't charge an extra premium to
do data, and given that they don't have 3G, it probably isn't them.
The pricing structure is very strange. For something like $40, you can get
40MB/month of data. Yes, 40MB. Overage is quite rediculous. Or for $60,
you can get "unlimited", meaning unless you use it too much, or AT&T caps
it at something like 5GB.
I think the problem is that it is very convenient, but there just isn't
that much bandwidth out there. If too many people were to sign up, it
could quickly become useless. You're basically sharing bandwidth with
users in large swaths of area (as in dozens of square miles).
That's not so much the problem. The problem is that 3G data swamps
spectrum of a cell tower. IIRC, something like 3 EVDO users can
completely consume all the available wireless spectrum for a cell.
Of course, the providers aren't going to allow that--voice and text
messaging are their cash cows.
I used to have an EVDO card, but I gave it up. It's just not worth it
at $80 a month. Even if I have to shell out $10 for 24 hours of
wireless at a Starbucks, I come out *way* ahead over a year.
That having been said, when I was running the IT for a startup, I made
everybody at management level run from their EVDO cards. My rule was
"Thou shalt not wireless--thou shalt EVDO" in the name of security.
This included myself.
Everybody was pretty happy. Configuration was a snap. Windows worms
tended to only take out one machine at a time.
It was a bit painful for me, but not as bad as I expected. Sure, I
couldn't download at speeds I was used to, but upload was about the same
at the time (384/384). If I needed to download, I plugged in.
-a
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