Internet Service Providers

[King Richard]

We are getting ready to start fulltiming with our Camelot 40ft coach. Escrow will close on our home in late December. I am inquiring about what and how you get internet access after you no longer have a home and DSL line? We have at&t service. Any input would be helpful and appreciated.

[tmmk90]

Hi,
My DW and I are pondering the same thing. Presently we have ATT DSL and land line at home that we are wanting to drop that and come up with something that we can use at home, and when we are on the road in our Discovery. What we have come up with is a ATT MiFi, or mobile hotspot. You can run up to five wireless devices (laptops, printers, etc) off of a MiFi. The wireless service for the MiFi costs $50/monthly. We are currently paying $100/monthly for our DSL and land line, so if everything works out with the MiFi we will be saving $50/ month. The MiFI cost around $60 (one time) after rebate with two year contract from ATT.

Hope this helps...

[Mekanic]

I pay about $72 a month for my I-phone 3GS service and I tether it to my computer.
It works quite well. Dropped the land line a few years back.
Mine is AT&T as well.

[Wayne M]

I am on AT&T, DSL at the stick house and MiFi on the road. In the past 3 years of travel from Texas, East, up the Right Coast, Accross and up and around the GL. And another trip heading West, the Left Coast, North to Whidbey Is., Across and down through Yellowstone, then home, there was only one instance when I did not have good signal strength and that was on Whidbey Is. The west coast trip was with a USB Air Card and the East coast trip was with the MiFi.

As stated, you have more versatility with the MiFi. You and anyone else in the MH can connect to it, up to 5 users. One consideration is the data usage. Typically 5Gb per month, so with two users, just what do you do on the Internet? If you stream music or video you will use up 5Gb rather quickly. If you just use it for email, Internet (not much YouTube) 5gb should do you. Just monitor your usage for awhile to see how you stand.

Another thing with the MiFi is that you can stick it in your shirt pocket and take it with you in the TOAD. Why do I mention that? Well, I have an old version 2 iPhone without a SIM card. I can turn the MiFi on and use all the functions of the iPhone except "Calling." I can listen to the police band radio (5-0 radio app) if I get into congested traffic. (if internet police scanner available in that area.) DW has an iPad, but fortunately she has the old grandfathered unlimited download/upload, but sometimes it is necessary to download an app using WiFi, and in that case she will connect to my MiFi. (There is a limit on bandwidth when downloading an app on the iPad using their 3G)

Happy trails, and good luck.

[jzick]

You have several choices for internet while traveling. Many (most?) campgrounds/resorts have wifi, either included in your overnight fee or with an additional charge. Unfortunately, many of the wifi systems you will find are unreliable, either because they are low quality, or are overwhelmed by the number of people using them. Many restaurants, like Starbucks and Macdonald's, as well as, public libraries also have wifi that you can hook onto.

If you absolutely must have internet at all times, a satellite internet system is available. Datastorm is one company that comes to mind. Initial cost is high, speeds are just ok, but you can connect just about everywhere. Most of us use an aircard, mifi, or phone hot spot to connect to the internet. Depending on your carrier and your location coverage and speed will range from very fast to no coverage. An external antenna and amplifier can help considerably in weak signal areas (Wilson). You can also use pda.net or other software to tether your phone directly to the computer. Doing so may technically violate the terms of your service agreement, but I have never heard of anyone getting into trouble over it.

We have a Verizon MiFi and Blackberry, Sprint 4G Smart Phones (one of which we use as a hot spot), and ATT 3G devices. In our travels Verizon has been most reliable for both voice and data west of the Mississippi. Sprint east of the Mississippi, for us, has had better data coverage (more areas with faster speed) and Sprint and Verizon voice has been about equal. Our ATT devices are useless for us, generally, whenever we are more than a few miles from a major metropolitan area. Even with all these, there are still some areas where we have not had coverage, sometimes voice, sometimes data, sometimes both. No coverage areas are more common out west than in the east.

Good luck with your journeys.

[DrivinMyHome]

The problem with most of the MiFi plans is that they limit you to 5Gb/Mo as Wayne has stated. My family uses The Sprint Unlimited Plan which gives us 400 minutes to landlines and unlimited EVERYTHING else!! We use it as our ONLY internet as we live in our TT. The phone (HTC EVO) allows us to tether up to 8 devices at one time. We have 2 laptops, 2 netbooks, a desktop and a wireless printer that are all connected if they are running. Haven't had any problems with it. Speeds are 3G in our current area, but have tried it in a 4G area and it works great as well, though it MUST be plugged in or it will drain quick! It goes with us everywhere: I've been deep in the woods ~25 miles south of Flagstaff AZ using it. We use an average of 80Gb (yes, that's an eight followed by a zero!!) per month and have never been shut off or throttled back.

Two downsides:
1) If connected to the internet, you can't make or accept a phone call without dropping the internet for the duration of the call. We have a Net10 phone that we use to make calls when on the internet (which is most of the time) that gives us 150 minutes for $15/mo.
2) The bill!! For the one phone it costs ~$120/mo. We saw it as replacing our landline and cable/internet bill so we came out about even. We are fully legit(meaning we are paying the additional cost to tether, not rooted either) so when the tether police come knocking, it won't be on MY door!! I know someone with the same phone and plan who is might be paying ~$35 less than me because he doesn't pay the extra tether charge and has rooted his phone for full tether ability.

I know this post is a bit heavy on the tech talk, but in short: If you want truly unlimited internet usage that will travel with you wherever you go (within cell phone range) this is the BEST deal IMHO.

FWIW: I tried the Virgin MIFI before getting this plan. I reached the 5Gb within 4 days and was throttled back to the point where it was unusable. They use the same (Sprint) cell towers as my current phone and the connection is better now than in those first 4 days... No personal experience with Verison or AT&T.

[Bill Adams]

Be aware that many of the Sprint "unlimited" plans restrict your usage while roaming to as little as 300MB/month. If you are always where you know you won't roam this would not be an issue but if you travel it's often difficult to tell when you are roaming or not and nearly impossible if you are using a Sprint air card in a router.

[DrivinMyHome]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill Adams Be aware that many of the Sprint "unlimited" plans restrict your usage while roaming to as little as 300MB/month. If you are always where you know you won't roam this would not be an issue but if you travel it's often difficult to tell when you are roaming or not and nearly impossible if you are using a Sprint air card in a router.

Simple fix: I turned roaming off on my phone so I don't have to worry about it. If I get internet, it's from Sprint.

[Bill Adams]

That's great, but it also means you end up in a lot more areas with no service. I am not trying to say that this is good or bad, only that, for those who travel, it's an issue.
Most travelers will find that Verizon has the best coverage and signing up for service with a company like Millenicom will allow you a 20GB/month limit for only $10/month more than the Verizon 5GB plan.
I got bored this week trying to update my Garmin maps using the parks wimpy wi-fi and used my 4G Verizon 12MB+ download to pull down 2GB in about 10 minutes. How cool! Now I just have to be careful for the next 15 days.

[calico]

We've used the Verizon MiFi for almost a year now, never had any problems connecting from Illinois to Arizona and back.