I am one of the clueless few that still lives and (mostly) dies at the whim of a dial-up modem.
We’re way out in the country, where DSL lines are distant rumors and cable television means the one with which you could chain your TV down to prevent theft. We do have satellite (DirecTV) and I know they’re always hawking that HughesNet thing, but we’re not all that happy with the TV, let alone tying our PC down to it.
Another old guy at the health club was talking about something called 3G and that if you can get gellular service you can get internet access on a desktop via the same tech. Which totally exhausted his actual knowledge base on the subject. And mine. I tried searching on the term 3G but got thousands of hits about equally distributed between techietalk, ads and suspected rip-offs. I was a tech myself - a decade and a retirement ago. I don’t really understand the first and I don’t trust the other two.
Does anybody know of any website, book or magazine that will tell me what I need to know in terms or langage that explain this 3G thing without assuming the reader to have an MSCE or taking a “don’t look close, just do this” approach?
3G is a wireless standard for cell phones.
It stands for “3rd Generation”. More info
here that probably doesn’t help you much: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3g
The idea here was that you could use the
3G connection for data so you could get
an Internet connection on your smartphone
or hook your cellphone up to your computer
using a USB cable so the phone will act as
your computer modem. Verizon (and maybe
others) has a few devices that are stand-
alone wireless modems that you attach to
your computer: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobilebroadband/?page=products_device
The problem with this is that cell carriers
like Verizon and AT&T don’t really want to
be data services. They want to charge you
for every call and text and the idea that
you could use the data stream to bypass
that makes them insane with rage. So they
make data plans expensive and limited. The
iPhone is finally starting to force AT&T to
start changing that, but I’m not holding my
breath. I would not suggest 3G as a wireless
solution at the moment unless you’re made
of money, or your area has some progressive
company offering good service affordably.
There are several competing technologies
that are coming about. The most promising
of these seems to be WiMax. It is kind of like
putting WiFi on cell towers. You’d get a WiMax
modem from a company, plug it into your USB
port, and as long as you were in range of one
of their WiMax broadcasting stations, you’d
have an internet connection. WiMax has the
advantage of being removed from the cellphone
bureaucracy. Here’s a list of companies that
have WiMax licenses (it’s by country, scroll
down to USA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deployed_WiMAX_networks#U
The only company I’ve heard anything about is Clearwire, which has relatively good reviews but
is having financial problems.
They also have a map where you can enter your
address and it will overlay your location with yellow
if you are covered by someone’s wireless internet
coverage area. Supposedly, you can click on the
yellow bit and see who offers that coverage, though
it didn’t work well for me.
I say that, but I was just looking at Verizon’s
Mobile Wireless page, and they’re offering 5GB
a month plans for $15/month if you already
have other services with them ($59/mo if you
get it by itself. Yeesh.)
It might be worth checking into your cell service
provider to see if there’s any deals. But if you
can’t get a good cell signal in your house, then
you probably won’t get good internet connection,
so there’s that.