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Taking The Plunge On Sprint Mobile Broadband

sprint_mifi_2200_2-432x479After thinking about 3G based mobile broadband for the past month, and suffering through another bout of paying for less than stellar access at hotels, Andy Abramson finally broke through the last of my resistance with a post about weekend Mifi deals on Amazon. I fell for the offer of the one cent Mifi device and decided on Sprint as the carrier.

As I mentioned earlier in the week I had been wanting to add the service to my T-Mobile account, since that where I have my cell service…and I’m happy with them. But many people told me that T-Mobile’s 3G network was not up to the task. Also, they don’t yet offer a Mifi-style device. That left Sprint and Verizon as my options.

Call me a sucker for underdogs, but I decided to try Sprint. Most reports seem to indicate that Verizon has the faster network, but I just don’t want to support their heavy-handed handling of devices. They micro-manage their phones, restricting what customers can/cannot use.

I’m especially disappointed that Verizon Wireless is the sole source for OpenPeak hardware in the US. I’m very excited about the OpenPeak systems, but Verizon’s product offering, the HUB, appears to be deliberately crippled. It’s very limited in it’s capabilities compared to the potential for the platform. I suspect it’s doomed as long as it offered through Verizon.

So, I choose Sprint. I’ve never used Sprint before. I’m also curious about their WiMAX locations and their relationship with Clear. I could see possibly changing to a 4G/3G access device at some future time.

To close, I’d like to say to the folks at Verizon Wireless…”Can you hear me now?” I went elsewhere for a mobile broadband solution. Some of us truly care about open networks, and we’ll vote with our budgets.

This Post Has 4 Comments
  1. Mobile broadband consumes battery life of the gadget that is being used quite fast. The faster the broadband is the more taxing it will be on your phones battery life.

    1. Sometimes, but it depends upon the device & the application that it’s running. For example, if I run a Twitter client on my Blackberry 9700 I can adjust the timing used to fetch tweets. If the interval is shorter it will use the radio more constantly and battery life is reduced. If I open up the polling interval then the battery life is increased. I’ll actually vary this depending upon how much attention that I’m paying to twitter on any given day.

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