I've been traveling to a lot to different cities in the US over the past week, and it gave me an good chance to try out how well my Verizon UTStarcom XV7000 works as a broadband modem. I've used it everywhere, and it has been superfast and flawless. Below, a look at that, along with how it compares to one of the Verizon wireless broadband cards, which I also had briefly.

I started off with a broadband card back in March, when I was out in New York for the Search Engine Strategies 2006 show. My voice plan was about to expire, and I strongly considered dumping Verizon and going with another provider that uses GSM technology. As I've explained before, doing that would have meant I could own one phone and simply swap out a SIM chip to go from using it with a US or UK provider.

Verizon's Cellular Broadband Cards

However, I'd heard lots of good reviews about Verizon's broadband cards. These are PCMCIA cards that you slot into your laptop, giving you wireless internet access not through WiFi but instead through a cellular phone connection. It was a reason to consider sticking with Verizon.

Verizon was running a deal -- still going at the moment -- giving existing customers unlimited broadband via one of these cards for $60 per month. At first, I thought that was sort of pricey given that I'm only in the US for a few days at a time. Most of the time, my plan would be effectively wasted.

Thinking about it more, going to this plan was a no brainer to do. WiFi at a hotel typically runs me from $10 to $13 per night. Then consider I often try to grab WiFi at an airport when I'm traveling, another $10 or so pop. I easily hit the $60 in WiFi fees on a typical trip. Going to a card wouldn't cost me more, plus I'd have it everywhere. I jumped for it!

I ended up with the Verizon Wireless 5740 card, which was part of the offer at $50. There's one other card you can get, the Kyocera KPC650 for $150, but there's little reason I can see to pay extra for it. The antenna on the Kyocera is slightly smaller and can be moved, but the 5740 worked great for me, while I had it.

When you buy one of these cards, you effectively are buying another phone. They'll have their own phone number, though you won't be getting calls on them. Instead, you'll be calling out whenever you want to connect to the internet. They'll automatically connect any time you switch your computer on, or you can make a manual connection, if you prefer.

The card comes with Verizon's VZAccess Manager software, which was pretty handy. It can handle both your WiFi or cellular access settings. It can also show you how fast your speed is going, a very useful tool for determining if all's going as it should. Sometimes you can't always get a fast "BroadbandAccess" connection. When that happens, the software lets you know.

NationalAccess (1xRTT) Versus BroadbandAccess (EV-DO)

This is a good time to explain the two types of wireless access that Verizon offers, plus how fast you go with both of them. Verizon has a good page on the difference between NationalAccess and BroadbandAccess here, but I'll also summarize myself.

NationalAccess is widely available across the US from Verizon. It's somewhat faster than a dial-up modem but less than ISDN. Verizon quotes speeds of 60-80K with "bursts" of 144K. When NationalAccess kicks in for me (more on this below), those speeds feel about right. FYI, the generic name or technical specification for NationalAccess is 1xRTT.

BroadbandAccess came out toward the middle of last year, primarily to major cities in the US. It's much faster, offering quoted speeds of 400 to 700K with bursts of 2MB. Again, this has felt about right to me. Large downloads happen quickly; pages load snappy fast. The generic name or technical specification of BroadbandAccess is EV-DO.

When I say "generic name" in above, I mean the name for the underlying technology that different carriers may use. For example, Sprint also offers EV-DO access, but the specific name for the program giving you EV-DO access might be different.

Also, just a quick aside on EV-DO. Apparently, it's pronounced Eee-Vee-Dee-Oh. I think that's stupid. I say Ev (like the name Ev) Do (like Homer Simpson saying Doh!). I encourage everyone to do the same :)

Why Use The Card If You Have A Broadband Phone?

When I bought my card, I also decided to upgrade my voice phone to a newer EV-DO capable model. I also asked if there was a way to hook my phone to my laptop and use it to make a high speed connection. Sadly, I was told that wasn't possible.

Why care? It's a heck of a lot cheaper, if you can do this. Consider my plans when I walked out of Verizon with my new phone and new broadband card:

• Voice Plan (450 daytime minutes/unlimted night and weekends): $40
• Data Plan (unlimited broadband on my voice phone): $40
• Data Plan (unlimited broadband on my laptop): $60

Soon after I got my original phone (a Treo 700W), I found myself disliking some features and began researching the UTStarcom XV7000. As part of that research, I came across several references to software you could use to make the phone work like a high speed modem. I downloaded it and was pleased to find it worked exactly as advertised.

The software is called PdaNet and comes in two flavors, for Windows Mobile users and for Treo Palm OS users. Install the software, and it will automatically or manually start your phone as a modem, when it detects that it is plugged in.

Plugged in? Yep, I hang my phone off the laptop via a USB cable. Doesn't that suck? So far, no. Typically, any time I'm doing a long laptop session, I'm already plugged into power. Hanging the phone is easy, and I just set it on the floor, on a chair, in my laptop bag or whatever. As an added plus, this keeps my phone nice and charged. Still hate the idea of wires? A new Bluetooth option has been added relatively recently. I haven't tried it yet, so I can't comment on how well it works.

Isn't Tethering Your Phone For Laptop Broadband Wrong?

As part of my research, I also came across some people saying that using PdaNet was a violation of your terms with Verizon against "tethering" your phone to your laptop through a cable or wireless connection to make it provide broadband access. Here's one example, and I came across more like this elsewhere.

Wow, was Verizon going to terminate me if I used my phone like this? The consensus seems to be if you are a super heavy broadband user, perhaps so. If not, they probably won't notice.

Of course, I don't remember any terms about this at all. When I signed up for my PDA plan, I was given a store receipt, and that was it. It had some terms, and I don't recall seeing anything about tethering in them. Perhaps there were more terms elsewhere or stuff I might have missed.

To be safe, I asked June Fabrics, which makes PdaNet. I was told:

As long as you do not call Verizon and tell them you are using PdaNet. You should be fine :-) We have more than a hundred thousand users using PdaNet with no troubles.

I also went into the Verizon store where I bought my phone and explained the situation. I found software that let me use the phone as a modem. Any problem in doing this? No, I was told. And so I returned my data card and have been using my phone ever since.

I also came across some people upset that Verizon has disabled the native ability for the Windows Mobile smartphones to work as modems, forcing them to pay $35 for a third-party app. It's especially annoying in that for some BlackBerry phones, they've not done this and do allow tethering. Obviously, that's inconsistent behavior and something that should change. But in the meantime, PdaNet is a relatively cheap solution to the Verizon madness.

How's The Network?

Mechanics aside, how consistent is the network. In New York, it was mixed. In the middle of Manhattan, it would automatically switch for no good reason between EV-DO and a lower NationalAccess speed. I mean, I'd be sitting my hotel room, not moving, and the broadband would drop down to a slower speed all of a sudden. Then later, it would come back up.

This week, it's been EV-DO everywhere. I had high speed in places like:

• My hotel room in the middle of San Francisco
• A conference room in the hotel well removed from any windows
• San Francisco airport
• Dallas-Ft. Worth airport
• My hotel room in Seattle
• A conference room in the Seattle hotel, again away from any windows

Unlike my New York situation, there's been no automatic drop down to slower speeds. FYI, you know what you are getting by looking at the phone. There will be an icon that says EV-DO or 1X, if you drop to a slower speed. Unfortunately, when PdaNet is running, the icon is replaced by one showing that there's a active connection. Hopefully, PdaNet will add some status indicators into the software that runs on your laptop.

Also, you will still get incoming calls when connected. I tested it out. When the call happens, your phone will ring. Broadband access won't work for as long as you are talking. So if you need to talk and surf, you can't do both at the same time on your phone. Keep that in mind

More Stuff

For more from Verizon, see the Verizon Wireless Broadband area.

Above, I mentioned that I didn't want to stay with Verizon because I wanted to have one single phone, a GSM one. EV-DO isn't available on GSM phones -- and since it's a lot faster than what GSM offers, sticking with Verizon made sense.

If those acronyms are still puzzling, it goes like this:

CDMA: A type of cellular technology used by Verizon and Sprint. CDMA has two main types of internet access it can provided, the slower 1xRTT and the faster EV-DO technology.

GSM: A type of cellular technology used by T-Mobile and Cingular in the US and providers elsewhere, such as in Europe and Australia. With a GSM phone, you just swap a smart chip (easily done by anyone) to change providers. GSM offers the slower GPRS service (about 45K quoted and in reality, often much slower I find when using it in the UK) and the faster EDGE (which is like 150K) and then 3G (which is like 450k). This forum post explains a bit more, and see also this article.

Since EV-DO is faster and more widespread in the US, where I need mobile access the most, that's why I went with it.

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