pay-as-you-go wifi

[Ray LeTourneau]

We've had a Verizon plan for 3 years. Initially I had a USB modem and was normally pleased with the connection speed no matter where we were. There was one summer in central WI we had issues but VZ was very generous and credited me for that period wnd did not extend our original contract. When 4G came about we stayed with the USB modem but I really wanted to get that 4G speed whenever we had it in an area we were visiting.
This September, I went for the mifi. I had concerns right away. I need to point out, in WI we are in a Verizon Extended Wireless Area. With the USB our speeds compared to any other area we'd been in. With the mifi 4510, we were much slower, worse than dial up. Verizin replaced the device but the 2nd one was no better. We've since left for FL and are now in Charleston, SC which is a 4G area. We are near the outer edge of the 4G area based on the VZW coverage map. Our speeds are still near dial up. There are short periods of time that we get decent speed but it's never consistent. I visited the VZW store with my computer and the device and we tested it there, well within the 4G area and it was very fast.
I guess my point to this reply is the mifi 4510 seems to work very well when we're well inside a 4G area but in a 3G area it's not near as good as the USB modem. We have also learned how to use the mifi support network to update everything that needs it and set the device as suggested by VZ's technical people.
I guess you could call me an unhappy mifi user.

 

[Jim & Harriet]

thanks Ray. It seems that, in addition to the speed and connection issues, you found that the set-up and continued "maintenance" of
the USB modem was easier than the mifi? I want something that I don't have to "play" with too often. Also - do you have a contract
or a pay-as-you-go plan?
This would be so much easier if the CG's would have a pay-for-wifi policy and their connections were actually worth paying for...

 

[wdk450]

Not sure what your service restrictions are, Bill, but with the Verizon MiFi, I still use Comcast (our home service) as my home page and get my e-mails there.

John:
What I was think of was dropping my home internet provider (Surewest) in favor of fulltime Verizon mobile. The price is just about the same. But I have that Surewest e-mail address with all my contacts, credit cards, banks, etc. that it would be a major hassle to change. If I dropped Surewest as a provider, I would have to drop the Surewest e-mail.

 

[branson4020]

John:
What I was think of was dropping my home internet provider (Surewest) in favor of fulltime Verizon mobile. The price is just about the same. But I have that Surewest e-mail address with all my contacts, credit cards, banks, etc. that it would be a major hassle to change. If I dropped Surewest as a provider, I would have to drop the Surewest e-mail.

Made the same mistake when I went with my satellite internet provider at home. Now I have a wildblue.net email address and I'm gonna have to get everybody switched over to my gmail account before I switch to Verizon. It's a real PITA.

 

[JohnDar]

Made the same mistake when I went with my satellite internet provider at home. Now I have a wildblue.net email address and I'm gonna have to get everybody switched over to my gmail account before I switch to Verizon. It's a real PITA.

I just opened up a separate gmail account (free) to send info out to our USAR team members. It was simple to import my email addresses from my Comcast (Xfinity) account over to the gmail one. Try setting up the gmail account and then using the import function. Might save you some typing.

 

[mmomega]

and iCloud is free as well. Does email, calendar, contacts + more if you have an iPhone. I've never had a service provider delete my email account. I still have access to my roadrunner email account from 1999 and I haven't had time warner cable since '03. I can just log into the webmail frontend and enter the same username and password I had back then.

 

[Ray LeTourneau]

thanks Ray. It seems that, in addition to the speed and connection issues, you found that the set-up and continued "maintenance" of
the USB modem was easier than the mifi? I want something that I don't have to "play" with too often. Also - do you have a contract
or a pay-as-you-go plan?
This would be so much easier if the CG's would have a pay-for-wifi policy and their connections were actually worth paying for...

I have a contract. I also verified and have it in writing (e-mail) that because of my location in the Verizon Extended area, I can suspend service while there but any length of suspended service will also extend my contract. When we're back in WI, I plan on contacting Charter or our local service for month to month service.
I may just decide to pay the penalty one of these days and buy out of the contract. I'm beginning to think the 3G/4G USM modem may have been a better option.

 

[mmomega]

This would be so much easier if the CG's would have a pay-for-wifi policy and their connections were actually worth paying for...

The major problem I've seen with many a Campground Wifi was that most of them use a cheap motorola DSL modem and a Linksys router from 2002 (fine for a single house with 2-3 users), a lot are still 802.11B w/ very few that are 802.11 G. I have yet to see one with N.
-->Maximum<-- throughput speed of "B" is 140 kilobytes/sec.
The most used DSL speed is 6Mb/s to residences and small business. Notice the little b which = Bits, large B = Bytes . So 6Mb/s DSL = 768 Kilobytes/s ( I never got more than 600KB when I had it.)
So 768 KB coming, funneled down to a max speed of 140 KB through the WiFi, then 20+ people in the park all trying to share this connection.
-->Maximum<-- theoretical speed of "G" is 54Mb/s or 6.75 Mega-Bytes/s. Which is much better but you pretty much have to be standing on top of the antenna to get 3/4 of that.
Again most of the time it is the modem or a real cheap router that is not configured properly and it crashes quite a bit. Especially with the number of WiFi devices these days. Laptops, phones, kids handheld games, a good size park could have over 100 devices trying to connect to it but with only 40 people in the park.

Now 802.11n, has a theoretical top end of 75 MBytes/s and can operate on a 2.4GHz and 5 GHz frequency, while every other WiFi device known to man (for the most part) all use the 2.4 GHz freq. This equals a lot less interference on 5GHz. The range of N is also significantly larger than G, which greatly decreases dead spots.