Is Cingular broadband coverage ok?

I have a Cingular contract and need to buy an air card.

Should I stick with Cingular or switch to Verizon?

 

I was recently comparing my local wireless broadband options. That led me to discover none of the cellular compaines offer any broadband service in our town. Just wanted to post that because they lead us to believe that anywhere there is a signal you get their broadband...which turns out to be not the actual case.

 

Yup. "Coast-to-Coast" coverage is not with any provider.

 

WackyT:

Yeah, that really surprised me to find out. I had considered it because we do travel often for business and it would be nice to have web access w/o needing to find a starbucks/MickeyD's or whatever. Plus here in the area we live there are pretty much zero free wifi hotspots. So the cellular option sounded, on paper, like a solution. Unfortunately in reality the service is not any more useful the the tmobile, boingo, wayport or whatever options. Actually I feel it would have given less service for about 5x the price (boingo/wayport are cheap anymore).

 

I currently use the TMobile WiFi service. You can always find a Starbucks. And another good source are Super 8 Motels. Usually their wireless are unsecured and open.

 

I have had great service with tmobile's hotspots. Anymore one can;t swing a dead cat w/o hitting a Starbucks. Plus the tmobile service is in most Borders and Barnes & Noble stores too.

Add the Embassy Suites hotels as another open access wifi service. They advertise them as such. I have even just gone is and asked if it was OK to use the wifi for a while and they said it was never a problem.

 

Thanks for the tip Grumpy. I usually just sit outside in the parking lot of a Super 8 and get a great signal.

 

hehehehehe...that is seriously funny because a couple weeks back I was just not in the mood to go in anywhere and sit. so, our mini wifi has a node by this empty field next to WallyWorld and nothing else. Don't ask why there is a node there to begin with...nobody can actually use it except the way I did...I sat in my pickup and made some SkypeOut calls for two hours. ANd it was flat out a great connection. I had a symmetrical 1.5Mb connection. I joked that when I really need to upload I might just have to park there again.

 

What city/town are you in Grumpy, if you don't mind my asking?

 

no problem....Lompoc, CA

 

They have a totally open public WiFi network? Or is it subscription?

I've been reading Dayton, OH is setting up a public WiFi network that'll cover their business district and parks. Wish they'd do that here in Denver.

 

Wacky!:

D'oh!! I totally forgot to come back and answer your question about the wifi here. The service is subscription but it's really inexpensive at $10/mo for a single user connection w/o a bridge. It's $15/mo for a 3-connection account with a PepLink Surf bridge.

Lompoc decided to spend the money to build the network as part of a larger project with the ultimate goal of FIOS service to the entire town and owned by the town. We are already our own power company and when the rest of California was having brown-outs etc a few years back, because we operate outside the state run grid we had excess power at well under 50% of what the rest of the state is paying.

Anyway, because Verizon has no plans to build out a fiber network in Lompoc pretty much EVER and Comcrap is completely worthless here the overall plan of the project will be a city owned fiber network that includes phone, television and internet all using fiber.

We have a bit of a leg up on it because the state ran a major fiber backbone pretty much from one end of CA to the other about 8ish years ago. So I guess the plan is to use part of that and build out from there.

As far as the wifi, it's just so-so. And support is pretty much invisible. I have yet to get a single email response from the support people. Hopefully once the user group gets organized we can help get them on the ball. Heck, if you look at the site http://www.lompoc.tv you can see that it looks like something a kid did with a handy dandy edition of FrontPage '97...

But like I said I am just using the service for when I wanna take a walk for lunch, coffee or whatever. And also as a backup in the house. But even with the bridge I have yet to get a connection inside. I can sit out on the back deck and get one using the bridge though...oh, joy... ??? :/

OK, ramble over...