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
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.
