Comparing Wireless Internet Services 162
Carl Oppedahl writes "AT&T has released its new "Edge" wireless Internet access service, claiming it is twice as fast (100-130K) as Sprint's "PCS Vision" wireless service (50-70K). I have written up a few comments on my experiences with the services. What data rates are others getting with Edge? I rarely get the advertised faster speeds."
But how.. (Score:5, Funny)
Ok... I put the AOL CD in my computer but they didn't include a wireless wire. How do I connect to teh intarweb?
I can't get this... (Score:2, Funny)
VPN (Score:5, Insightful)
I almost feel bad when he calls from Hawaii and he can't get access to our database from the beach chair.
Re:VPN (Score:2)
network. You can VPN over much lower b/w
links than PCS offers.
Re:VPN (Score:3, Informative)
Ricochet (Score:2)
Re:VPN (Score:2)
Re:VPN (Score:2)
Re:VPN (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to say that most of the people that I have showed it to thought it was quite fast. The people that thought it was slow were indeed talking about latency and not throughput.
T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:3, Informative)
service, to my knowledge, in the U.S.
I need to go to Kunming. Anybody recommend
mobile Internet service that works in
all major Chinese cities?
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:4, Informative)
$80 now. That's twice as much as T-Mobile.
AT&T does not appear to offer unmetered
service.
Things change fast in this market.
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:1, Informative)
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:1)
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:5, Informative)
I have T-Mobile "all you can eat" with the VPN option (public IP and no blocked ports). The plan is called "T-Mobile Unlimited Internet VPN" if you're curious. It costs $20 per month, and I get data rates comparable to a 56K modem connected at near full speed. I go through my Sony Ericsson T610 with bluetooth for the connection.
Re:{T-Mobile,Sprint} is all you can eat (Score:5, Informative)
Overall, it works really well. It's not as slick as the PCMCIA card Sprint offers, but it works just as well, uses the exact same network & speeds, and even turns heads when they seem me surfing my laptop over my cell phone.
Re:{T-Mobile,Sprint} is all you can eat (Score:1)
BEWARE - Some of those plans (presumably the cheaper one's) are meant for use only inside the phone itself (Camera phone/Cell Phone "Web"). *not* for driving an laptop or whatever. An number of people have gotten burned because they have done this and used an "large" amount of bandwidth, to make themselves show up to their radar.
If your quiet enough, you can probably get away with it.
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:2, Informative)
Cingular's wireless internet (Score:2)
1) It's about 9 kbaud. Barely acceptable for checking a low-volume email account.
2) I have had consistent billing problems with this service for the past 3 months. Seems they think each connect is a "directory assistance" call, for which they want to charge an extra $2 a pop. I have had to call them up to get these charges deleted each of the last 3 months (one month, it was over $150 fo
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:2)
service, to my knowledge, in the U.S.
Not true. Sprint PCS Vision has several "all you can eat" data plans. It's only about $5 extra a month for unlimited data.
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:3, Informative)
However, The Nokia 3650 bluetooth stack is buggy as hell and my phone will randomly reboot or I will see an error that said "Unspecified error in Main.cpp" and drop my GPRS call. I average around 3-5k/s. They have multiple GPRS a
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:2)
I use T-Mobile's service over bluetooth with my T610. Its bluetooth stack is good for GPRS but seems to have problems syncing over the virtual serial port (I sometimes have to reboot the phone). My latency is 800-1400ms in Austin, TX. I have no idea why the lag is so high.
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:2)
I was trouble shooting a customer out in NY, trying to figure out why he was moving around, and jumping from cellsite 2 cellsite so quickly. The guy was out on the water on a boat, and the signal was bouncing off the water. They didnt tell me that untill later. (LOL) I was able to ping his phone for over 2 hours without a problem.
BTW, I vpn over GPRS with good results, Im really wanting that dual edge/wifi card, that will be perfect.
Re:T-Mobile is all you can eat (Score:2)
Wrong "K" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong "K" (Score:2)
Re:Wrong "K" (Score:3, Interesting)
No. We use a 'k' to denote the SI prefix 'kilo'. For historical and practical reasons, a kilo is either 1000 or 1024, depending on context, although (nonsuccessfull) efforts have been made to try to make people say kibi instead of kilo when they mean 1024.
However, a 'b' designates 'bit's, and a 'B' designates 'byte's. So the distinction is not between 'k' and 'K',
hopefully, there are still 8 bits in a byte (Score:2)
Re:hopefully, there are still 8 bits in a byte (Score:2)
A Sanyo phone (I have looked at a 4900 and a 8100) both have have an upper limit of 230Kbit max (burst, 144Kbit normally)
When I was looking at cingular's edge stuff it was the same Kbits/sec though theoreticly rated faster.
It's still faster than dialup, portable... and more expensive
Re:Wrong "K" (Score:1)
Disclaimer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Disclaimer (Score:1)
Not for indoor use.
I can sell a worldwide 10Gbps wireless internet access with NO HARDWARE REQUIRED for 1/year to anyone interested here on slashdot.
(Same disclaimer applies to my service.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Disclaimer (Score:1)
The K is always written uppercase. A capital "B" stands for Bytes and a lowercase "b" stands for bits.
Just writing "K" does not specify a unit. It just tells you that it's x thousand of something, in this case bits per second.
PCS Lack of Vision (Score:5, Insightful)
Like a lot of products I have an early-adoptor's love affair with, it solves a problem I don't have. About the most useful thing I ever did with it was write a wap frontend for the nessus batch commandline so I could really impress the ladies. Turns out most ladies don't even know what nessus is. In a college town, I tell you!
For those of you that read Gartner, you'll note where Sprint falls on the fabled magic quadrent. Its a special quadrent reserved for those who had a great idea and then blew it. Can you guess which?
Re:PCS Lack of Vision (Score:2)
The Delta Quadrant? ie: ST: Voyager?
Re:PCS Lack of Vision (Score:2, Interesting)
The phone also seem
Re:PCS Lack of Vision (Score:2)
It's the last 4 digits of your SS#. Consider calling their support line - *2, which is a free call. Regarding failure to ring if the phone's in your pocket - that's likely a result of poor coverage, or you have a shitty phone. Verizon is the devil, please don't give them extra money. Pick any of the other cell providers - Cingular, AT&T, T-Mobile, Nextel, etc. Cingular's even got the cool thing that makes regular phones ring, maybe then
Re:PCS Lack of Vision (Score:3, Insightful)
I read google news on my cigarette breaks. check 7 email accounts contstantly, IM, yadda, yadda, yadda, pr0n...
Of course, the device is a big part of this. The understand the love, you need a Treo and PDANet, for starters. I don't know what combinations other people use, but this one is the bee's knees.
I dunno, maybe you are trying to use it instead of broadband, but for a near 95% traveler by myself, it is incredibly useful to get real internet service in prett
Aggregate vs Burst throughput (Score:1)
Re:Aggregate vs Burst throughput (Score:1)
Being cynical, it's not in the operator's interest to make EDGE too good, at least in Europe, since most of them paid a fortune for W-CDMA (3G) licenses.
Recent report AT&T troubles. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Recent report AT&T troubles. (Score:3, Interesting)
For details check Forbes.com [forbes.com] Siebel is the largest activations provider in the USA. Dell and others use the same software. The CEO of Siebel is stepping down Jan 1 due to these types of issues.
before plunging into AT&T's more expensive services.
Unlimited Verizon is 199 a month, Unlimited ATTWS is 149. Really, a quick google search will show price plans. Check out Inphonic [inphonic.com] click check rate plans. Some good information on coverage and prices
Re:Recent report AT&T troubles. (Score:2)
"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds" (Score:5, Insightful)
The advertised specs are almost always inflated and unattainable. But, the sad thing is that consumers continue to allow the vendors to get away with it.
Re:"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds" (Score:3, Interesting)
As for 20GB disks to be fair there is space "wasted" by sector encodings and other data [ecc]. So really you do have 20GB [or more] of data on disk, just not 20GB usable by the FS.
As for the modems, again same thing. Sure it's called 56K but they've put "the 53.3K cap" on the boxes forever now. Why they don't just call t
Re:"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds" (Score:2)
Well, partially, I think it's more along the lines that 1000MB = 1GB = 1GiB = 1024MB since marketing is hardly going to use GiB...
I know the sector encoding, etc took up a lot of space on a 2MB floppy, but somehow I don't think it's taking up around 10GB on a 160GB drive.
In how this is relevant to anything to do with m
Re:"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds" (Score:2, Interesting)
There's telemetry data, to tell the heads where they are at any given time, and there also spare sectors for when some live ones go bad. Modern hard disks can tolerate a number of bad sectors without the user ever seeing it, by moving the data that's getting hard to read to these spare sectors.
That's generally the reason why when the user actuall
Re:"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds" (Score:2)
And I do get 20GB hd's.
It's not the advertising spec's that are wrong. It's the wording of the specs that are fooked.
What ISP's don't tell you is, you get high speeds TO the isp. Not to what the ISP connects to, so if the backbone is bad, so is your connection. That is usually the case.
HD manufacturererers, don't usually tell you that there is a conversion error from 1billion bytes to 2
Re:"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds" (Score:2)
I feel so dirty saying that.
Re:"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds" (Score:5, Funny)
I'm watching them very closely. One of these days, they might force me to upgrade my ethernet adaptor.
Re:"I rarely get the advertised faster speeds" (Score:2)
eh, yeah.
My SBC/Pacific Bell DSL line is advertised as 384/128, down/up speeds. I routinely see something more like 1500/320.
I'm right now downloading Fedora Core 1 at > 1 Mbit.
-Ben
Mucho expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm paying $8/mo for 1MB of GMRS data transfer. That's barely a few web pages these days. Each extra KILOBYTE is something like EIGHT cents.
Frankly, GMRS is plenty fast enough for me; it's just way, way, WAY too expensive. It's stupid, because the data rates pale in comparison to a voice call, and they're come+go...you'd think much cheaper for them to handle.
Of course, this is all because AT&T and every other provider seems obsessed with cameraphones. I don't know a single person in my office who has a cameraphone, nor a single person that wants one. They're useless toys, but because the wireless companies are fixated on 'em, and they're giving 'em away, they've jacked up the costs on data transfer to the point that anyone trying to actually use the phone for real work can't afford it unless they're a billionaire.
When I talk with friends, they don't say "oh, i want a phone with a camera!" They say things like: a)better reception b)fits in pocket(the camera phones are pretty damn big) c)easy to hold+use d)good battery life(and a battery that will NOT be gone within a year), and so on. Bluetooth is getting up there among my coworkers. Anyone at the phone companies listening?
Re:Mucho expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm left with no choice but to cancel my GPRS service -- the only time it's ever useful is when I'm out of town, but the roaming charges are too high for me to think about doing the roaming GPRS thing again.
Re:Mucho expensive (Score:2, Insightful)
(I used to have a cingular line just for use in the US, because telus roaming was so high. Not anymore.)
Re:Mucho expensive (Score:1)
Re:Mucho expensive (Score:2)
for gprs the standard price here (in finland) seems to be around 20 for 100mb which is plenty for irc/email/whatnot for regular user(i don't know if unlimited is still available for ~50). 100mb has proved to be plenty for me for my 3650(mainly irc and web browsing, slashdot for one also great for checking the non-nerd news while i walk to see some stupid lecture and also great diversion while i sit in the lecture, granted a wlan laptop would be even better but i would
Re:Mucho expensive (Score:2)
Re:Mucho expensive (Score:2)
T-Mobile, however, does have the right idea with their Sidekick phone. The Sidekick by default does not include a came
Re:Mucho expensive (Score:1)
I personally have the $99.99 Sanyo 8100, which does occasionally get me the advertised 50k/sec rate. The camera's really basic, the phone is tiny, and the battery life is just fine. A few days ago, I picked up the data link cable and software, and this morning I installed it, no sweat. It's definite
Re:Mucho expensive (Score:2)
I love the idea of a camera phone. I rarely want a camera, but once in a while it is nice to have a functional camera. Then I got one, which would be nice, but it is a seperate attachment. So I lose in that it isn't always with me, and it when I do think to carry it, it is always times when I would want a better camera. The camera in my phone is for times when a camera would be nice, but I didn't expect to need it so I didn't have the big camera. Bluetooth seems like a better idea now. Of course that wo
The realities of mobile (cell) data rates (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The realities of mobile (cell) data rates (Score:1)
Sprint for free... (Score:2)
http://www.peerfear.org/rss/permalink/2003/09/2
It turns out that most Sprint PCS Vision phones support wireless over USB... that and it works just fine over Linux.
All and all this means you can get wireless on your Linux box for only a few bucks a month (if you have an existing sprint phone and account).
Edge might amazing but it's hard to beat this price...
perhaps of interest (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:perhaps of interest (Score:2)
Verizon also offers Express Network (their name for 1X-RTT) service for free with America's Choice plans that's also MOU (minutes of use). They don't really advertize this fact at all and a lot of their CS reps are clueless about it, but, when I called to get Express Network added to my plan, they did it.
I don't have a need to use it much except, say, when I visit my parents who have nothing but a land pho
Re:perhaps of interest (Score:1)
Re:perhaps of interest (Score:2)
Re:perhaps of interest (Score:2)
Use Sprint Vision with PCS phone and save (Score:2, Informative)
Be warned though Sprint may frown upon too heavy use of Vision with an attached computer to the PCS phone. They intended the serv
AT&T Will Pay (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T 100-130 Max 200 Kbps avail to 215 Million Customers.
Sprint 50-70 Max 144 Kbps avail to 230 Million Customers.
Verizon Wireless 60-80 Max 144 avail to 230 Million Customers.
Verizon Wireless' NationalAccess has average speeds of 60 - 80 kbps, peaks at 144 kbps and is available to nearly 230 million. BroadbandAccess,
Verizon Wireless's faster EVDO service at 300 - 500 kbps on average (2 Mb peak), is offered in the San Diego and Washington D.C. markets.
EDGE makes its debut after nearly two years' delay due to technology issues. With no evolution path, EDGE is seen as a stop gap before AT&T has to invest in yet another technology like WCDMA. In addition, EDGE does not improve voice capacity and due to deteriorating data speeds over great distances from the base station, requires greater base station density thus adding to AT&T network costs.
Neither Sprint or At&T wireless is in position to provide any broadband services past their initial offerings. Vzw will be expanding the market for EVDO in 2004 to other major cities (I hope Dallas) Also sprint and verizon's speeds are slower due to technology limits with the initial offerings but compared to CDPD which was most times at best 14.4 speeds it's a leap ahead. I would expect to see 10-100Mbit wireless within the next 5 years in larger cities to compete with landline DSL and Cable which both have limits well under 40Mbit.
Re:AT&T Will Pay (Score:1)
EDGE does not improve voice capacity...
There's a standard on the way for quarter rate speech over EDGE. This should allow networks to carry close to twice the number of voice calls compared to the (currently popular) half rate.
WCDMA will need that anyway, so an increase in base station numbers will just happen sooner with EDGE.
Re:AT&T Will Pay (Score:2)
WCDMA you'll have to have the extra base stations but at the same time you'll be using several base stations to maintain a acceptable signal therefore increasing bandwidth costs on each of those basestations. Nobody's piping DS3's to cell towers yet so you're really using more resources per cell than if you developed something tha
Re:AT&T Will Pay (Score:1)
Until 1xEVDV, you won't be able to do that with CDMA. With current CDMA solutions, your voice calls will go to voice mail directly until you conclude your data session.
No Blackberry attachments... (Score:1)
From the Blackberry website:
In addition to your email, corporate data and calendar events, you require access to email attachments when you're away from your computer. BlackBerry provides an attachment service that lets you open and view email attachments on your BlackBerry handheld.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft PowerPoint(R)
Corel(R) W
Dead site, doesn't look slashdotted (Score:2)
Re:Dead site, doesn't look slashdotted (Score:1)
Standard PCS Vision and the Treo 600 (Score:3, Informative)
SOme technical details not quite right. (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't quite accurate. GPRS itself ranges from using 2-8 timeslots based on the class of the device. Classes 10-12 typically have 4 timeslots for download which gives you about 32-48Kbps (you can effectively get 8-12Kpbs per timeslot with GPRS). See here [gsmworld.com] for some specifics.
EDGE is, more or less, an upgrade to GPRS just to push more bits of data through. A quote from Ericsson's info page about EDGE [ericsson.com]: "EDGE uses the same TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) frame structure, logic channel and 200kHz carrier bandwidth as today's GSM networks, which allows existing cell plans to remain intact." Of course, there is a white paper linked off of that page that gives more technical details for eany who are interested. Note: It's not about using any more time slots than GPRS.
For carriers choosing the GSM route, the upgrade path is GSM -> Add GPRS -> Upgrade to EDGE -> Upgrade to WCDMA (aka UMTS). It is a little ironic that the eventual 3G network of GSM carriers will be a CDMA type technology (though with a massively huge spectrum requirement compared to CDMA2000). Only time will tell which turns out to be the better technology, though the CDMA carriers seem to be jumping ahead of the GSM ones. Of course, some might argue that almost the rest of the world uses GSM so it should be the logical choice. But then again, most
The 5 categories of lies: (Score:1, Redundant)
I have Sprint PCS Vision (Score:2)
The latency, however, is pretty bad. It's about 500 ms. latency, but you can't get everything perfect. I'm just amazed th
Handsprint Treo 600 (Score:2)
Re:Handsprint Treo 600 (Score:2)
Replace "fopr" with "for", "real" with "read" etc..
Higher data rate: external antenna or booster (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless you are driving in a car or reading email as you walk, "mobile" users are stationary during actual use (a car-top cellphone antenna might be the answer for truly mobile use). For semi-mobile use, a little stand and a Yagi antenna would help improve transmission/reception to the local cell tower. A simple signal strength app would help you point the antenna (for extra credit it could even help you find a tower in an adjacent, less used cell for access to more slots). For boosted use in a hotel room, cafe, or client office, a directional antenna or repeater would be quite useful.
Re:Higher data rate: external antenna or booster (Score:1)
Mailign List InternetByCellPhone [yahoo.com] is a good resource to ask other owners...
Re:Higher data rate: external antenna or booster (Score:1)
Mailing list with much more info - InternetByCell (Score:1)
Yahoo Groups: InternetByCellPhone [yahoo.com]
If you want to use Sprint PCS Vision w/ Linux/Mac (Score:4, Informative)
Instead of installing the Connection Manager from Sprint, call you need to do in is make a new PPP connection, and for the phone number, put in the #777.
This directs the base station at the cell site to direct the call to the PDSN and make a data connection. Then your phone acts just like a 70k modem. This will work in any OS that can make a PPP connection, no proprietary software needed.
Re:If you want to use Sprint PCS Vision w/ Linux/M (Score:1)
The uploads on Sprint go faster than the downloads. I can get 20KB which is actually above their 140Kbit speed claims. Downloads range in the 12 to 14KB range. When I lived in Silicon Valley (Redwood City) I couldn't get DSL/cable so Sprint wound up being my pr
Re:If you want to use Sprint PCS Vision w/ Linux/M (Score:2)
Just wanted to clarify that. If you want "Vision" or the 3G data calls, you need to use your own 3G login/password.
Unless something is broken with Sprint, and they are allowing QNC calls to connect via the 3G path. If that's the case, that opens some interesting possibilities.
Pl leave most important questions unanswered (Score:1)
Re:Pl leave most important questions unanswered (Score:1)
Dirt Cheap Wireless Internet (Score:3, Informative)
Its pretty slow, actually its pretty damn slow, its about 19.2kbps. BUT
Verizon also has a great offer. They have Mobile Office [verizonwireless.com] which is pretty much the same as Sprint's service. However verizon provides you with a virtual ISP to dial up into. (*No extra* cost to anyone either)
For a little more info, take a gander at this tread [nylug.org]
Sunny Dubey
T-mobile (Score:3, Informative)
It's not the fastest in the world, but it works fairly well and I usually use it while moving (bus, train, passenger in a car).
Fortunately for me, the mail.app client on OS X works fairly well with net connections going up and down.
Re:T-mobile (Score:1)
Re:T-mobile (Score:2)
Local wireless gets hacked... again! (Score:1)
I'm willing to give them a chance though I'm not entirely confident in their services.
Odd... (Score:3, Informative)
If AT&T can decrease the latency rather than increase the speed, I'm there!
Sprint Vision worked for me. (Score:1)
I hooked up my PowerBook to my Sanyo 4900, and it was very simple. Just plug it in, OS X showed it as a 'SANYO USB PHONE' modem, and I had it dial #777 (as has been mentioned elsewhere.) Instant 70-1