4G

The Sprint 3G Mifi: One Year Later

It’s just over a year ago that I took the plunge and ordered a Sprint 3G Mifi. It was move inspired by a tweet from Andy Abramson pointing out a deal on Amazon.com. The device was free with a two year contract at $59.95/month.

I’ve put the device to good use over the course of the year. It’s been very handy indeed. However, I suspect that we shall part company shortly.

I really don’t have any complaints about the Sprint 3G service. It’s been pretty good. There have been a few places where the Mifi could only connect at 1xRTT, but I’ve usually had decent 3G data rates in the locations where I tend to travel.

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Evolving The Mobile Data Billing Model

AT&T 3G USB DongleEarlier this week AT&T has its quarterly earnings call. Normally I would not give it any notice at all. It’d just be another bunch of noise in my Google Reader in-box. This week they did something that simply jumped out at me; they called for an evolution of the current billing model for mobile data plans. Oddly enough…I agree…sort of.

Of course, their perspective on this is not quite the same as my own. AT&T want to be rid of the $60/mo for all-you-can-eat billing model and charge based upon actual usage, perhaps in some sort of tiered fashion.

Literally everyone knows that the current billing model is badly broken. Their flat rate “unlimited” plans are not really unlimited at all. My Sprint 3G service was pretty plain about it being capped at 5 GB/month. Beyond that I’d guess that it gets costly. Moreover they claim performance levels that almost no-one ever achieves in practice.

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One Week Using Clear 4G In Las Vegas

I spent last week in Las Vegas working through the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual convention. This was my 18th NAB convention. It’s my one annual trek to the desert.

This time I took advantage of the time in Las Vegas to try Clear‘s newly launched 4G network. Fellow VoIP blogger Andy Abramson connected me with people at Cheetah Wireless, a Clear reseller, who offered a special price on the short term rental of a 3G/4G USB dongle. Since recently launched 4G service in Houston I was especially interested to see how it differed from the 3G service that I’ve had via the Sprint Mifi these past months.

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Sprint & Clear Light Up Houston With 4G Wireless

You know what they say about a fool and his money…soon parted. Or was that “soon partying?” I can never recall.

It seems that Sprint & partner Clear have just launched their 4G/Wimax service here in Houston. Not too long ago I noted that the service was already offered in places like Austin and Lubbock (Yes, Lubbock!) but not in the major cities.

Houston is the 4th largest city in the country and covers a lot of ground. The Sprint press release claims the 1,900 square miles are now covered, or over 4 million people. Clearly, this launch had to be a major undertaking.

The trouble is that I’m only 7 months into a 2 year contract with Sprint for 3G wireless using a Novatel Mifi. I was tempted into the service by Andy Abramson who tweeted about a free hardware deal in early August.

I am soooo open to influence in some cases.

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Wifi Business: AT&T Buys Wayport

Andy Abramson has posted with respect to AT&T deciding to purchase Wayport and so expand their Wifi hotspot business. Although I still prefer to not do business with AT&T I have over the years spent a considerable sum with Wayport. Such is the life of one who inhabits hotels quite frequently.

Andy notes, and I’m very pleased to hear, that one of the beneficiaries of the deal will be Boingo. While I haven’t posted about this before I’ve been using Boingo for about a year. In fact I just upgraded my account to their Boingo Unlimited access.

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