I’m a reasonably frequent visitor to my parents’ house in Bethesda, Maryland. Mom and Dad are both Harvard graduates and consequently have little trouble recognize the utter worthlessness of something developed to a large extent at MIT, i.e., the Internet. There is thus no high-speed Internet connection in their house and their neighbors apparently share the belief that Internet is not worth paying for because there are no wireless networks from which to steal.
Frustrated at having to drive to a friend’s or sibling’s house every time I wanted to check the weather or email, I signed up for an $80/month Verizon data card. Washington, D.C. area is one of its flagship service area, promising “typical speeds of 300-500 kbps, capable of reaching speeds up to 2 Mbps”. Getting the PC 5220 card to work at all required a couple of calls to Verizon tech support, which, unlike Vonage and Lingo, involved minimal hold times and knowledgeable staff. I needed to download a newer version of some software, which, of course, required an Internet connection…
How does it work? The average throughput on the “broadband” network here in D.C. has been 50-100 kbps at most. The software shows that at one point this computer achieved a peak rate of 450 kbps but there are long dropout periods when the rate is 0 kbps. Most distressing, the service only lasts for 10-30 minutes, after which time this supposedly “always-on” service turns you off and you have to manually disconnect and reconnect to get back on. Sometimes the software is smart enough to notice that you are disconnected and a little box comes up in the bottom right of your screen noting the fact of the disconnection. Underneath the note are the words “Verizon: We never stop working for you (R)”.
On balance the service is somewhat similar in feel to a 56 kbps modem except that you never know if that 3-second wait for a Web page is going to turn into 60 seconds because you’ve been silently dropped from the network.
Using Windows XP it is sometimes necessary to reboot the machine in order to switch from 802.11b to Verizon or vice versa.
[Update: Verizon service in Richmond, VA: Richmond is part of the “broadband access” service area. This translates into an average speed of 10-20 kbps. There are enough dropouts that downloading a 3 MB email attachment proved impossible after four tries. However, unlike in Washington, DC, the connection did not have to be manually reestablished every 10 minutes.]
It’s too bad the service doesn’t work well. If it is dropping signal in the relatively flat DC area I have no hope out here in hilly San Francisco/Berkeley/Oakland. When you switched over to WiFi did you find any decent coverage? Is it widespread enough yet to compete with Verizon’s pay service (assuming Verizon eventually fixes it)?
I’m surprised Verizon’s tech support was even available for you to talk to. Their customer service is bunk when it comes to any phone service.
And at the moment, my office uses Verizon DSL. Either the internet or the outgoing mail servers have been down at least once a week for the last three months.
I hate verizon. Sadly, other providers of cellular and DSL services are even worse.
Well, that sucks.
My experience with this card is the exact opposite. I’m using it on a Mac laptop and didn’t even need to install drivers — it’s already part of OS X. I just stuck the card in, it configured itself, and put a icon in the menu bar. I just hit connect and I’m online a few seconds later. I’m using it right now at a truck stop in upstate New York.
I haven’t used it much in the “broadband access” areas, but in the 1xRTT zones I’m usually in it just works. I’ve been online for hours at a time and have never been disconnected. The latency in the network is high (ping time of 500 ms to 1000 ms is typical) so it doesn’t work to well for interactive stuff like terminal logins, but for web surfing and email it’s quite useable and faster than dialup.
Philip, your experience sounds considerably worse than what I’ve heard other folks in the DC metropolis say about the Verizon wireless wide area network. In Walt Mossberg’s favorable Wall Street Journal review, the service consistently delivered higher-than-specified data rates with few disconnections. I considered installing it at home to replace my $98 per month 144 kbps DSL connection. Maybe it’s fortunate I never got around to it.
Your observation “the service is somewhat similar in feel to a 56 kbps modem” reminds me of Ricochet, who ran a wireless wide area network in the DC area several years ago. Ricochet were ahead of their time and provided around 56 kbps for $30 per month with surprisingly decent reliability and coverage. Too bad they didn’t survive. I’d expect Verizon’s service to be better than what a little startup company kludged together almost ten years ago.
It seems to me the Verizon service isn’t meeting its specifications for you. Perhaps another call to Verizon technical support would be worth considering.
Hi, Philip. Sorry to hear that the Verizon data card isn’t working that well. I’ve been thinking about adding one myself – in part for when I also go back to visit my mom in Bethesda. But my main motivation would be to use it as a means to give me a way to get connection that’s faster than dial-up AND that I can use as the basis for a WiFi network at my home. (Living in the New Hampshire woods, my only broadband alternative currently is satellite, but I’ve only heard about negative experiences with satellite.)
One company you should check out to get more value from your Verizon data service is Junxion (www.junxion.com) – they have a nifty box that turns a cellular data card into a WiFi access point. A great way to create a local wireless network wherever you go.
Please keep us posted on your Verizon data experiences. Do you find it useful in the Boston area (especially arond Waltham, Lexington, Concord)?
Phil F., I have the Verizon data service and it works very well (300-500kbps) for me in Waltham and Lexington. Standard cellular caveats apply — it does not work well in basements or in metal buildings.
Phil G., the behavior you describe has happened to me perhaps four times in 9+ months of using the service. Each time, I was able to fix it by “re-activating” the modem. Also, my co-workers and I have had more success with the original Modem Connection Manager software (http://www.evdo-info.com/Downloads/Drivers/Windows_Mobile_Connection_Manager_%28MCM%29_2005022373/) than with Verizon’s later VZAccess program.
I have Sprint/Nextel data card service and it’s terrible. Customer service has
got to be the worst in the industry. I hope Verizon or Cingular has a better
data card service. I am not very excited about the prospect of more bad
performance and bad customer service. At the present time it’s $66 waste
of money each month. Good luck to all of you if you dare to experience
this nightmare! D.K.
I just got the Verizon USB modem. I set it up on a Mac easily. Windows required a 60-minute tech support call.
I went to a show in the immediate vicinity of Chicago’s O’Hare airport and the modem automatically disconnected every 5:42 minutes whether I was actively on the Web or not. Called Verizon and they are replacing the modem. (I just got this thing a month ago.)
But at home, no problem on a Windows computer. I took my MacBook to a user group meeting, again no disconnect.
Is Verizon deliberately disconnecting in a high-traffic area in a specified time period? I had about 25 disconnects, most within 5:41-5:49 minutes; the others were disconnects after a few seconds. THIS HAS ONLY HAPPENED IN ONE GEOGRAPHIC AREA, but it was extremely consistent.
I’ve been using the Verizon mobile broadband connection for a month and a half. During the trial period of one month, my connection was never dropped. Immediately after a verizon update I’m dropped all of the time. I don’t expect to post this comment without reconnecting. I live in a rural area so traffic is not an issue. I tried satellite and it seemed as slow as dial up. Verizon was much faster to begin with but not lately. I may try to reactivate my modem as James Clippinger mentioned. (The connection was automatically reset once while writing this.)
Carol – We have two attorneys on the road, one in Florida and one in California, experiencing the exact same problem you are having. Where are you located? Verizon support is making us think we are two isolated cases.
I have had the opposite experience. I have a Verizon Card and have been using two years. I travel the US and have hardly ever run into a issue where the card did not work well.
I would follow up with Verizon. Something doesn’t seem right.
I’ve own a Verizon data card for over a year now and the connection speed is becoming extremely slow. I tested everywhere including in house, on the road, airport etc. The avg download is about 400K and upload 140K. These are significantly slower than what I was promised at the store and the results of my tests when I first bought it (800K/400K).
I called Verizon. The tech support guy was very rude and basically said this speed is normal and “broadband”. He also tried to come up with excuses such as you are indoor although he had to agree that my signal strength was good. He also said as long as you could connect, you couldn’t argue because there was no promise of the speed on the contract. (So basically even if your speed was 1K, they wouldn’t see a problem with it.)
My conclusion, I will never use Verizon again.