Mobile Data Performance in Lebanon, IN

I found myself at the Starbucks in Lebanon and decided to run the mobile data performance tests again. Same setup as before, but with some slightly different results. This time, both T-Mobile and AT&T could only manage an EDGE connection, while Verizon was able to supply a 3G connection.


For ping time, lower is better. This is the amount of time that it takes for a packet to travel to the server and back.




I think the T-Mobile upload rate on test one must have been a fluke. I've seen the SpeedTest.net tool report incorrect results like this when the connection is lost mid-test.

Given these results, if you use your mobile data near SR39 and I65 in Lebanon, IN, Verizon is your best choice for a provider.

Mobile Data Performance in Castleton

I had an interesting opportunity to do some mobile data performance testing. I have a Motorola DROID on Verizon that I carry around, and I recently got access to a Nexus One with a SIM good for both T-Mobile and AT&T. I did a little testing to see how these different carriers performed in my location. I used the SpeedTest.Net Android app. I ran the test 5 times, all to the same server (Carmel, IN - nFrame). I ran the test from my client's office in Castleton, IN. I ran the test five times each on each network. The results were interesting. Both T-Mobile and Verizon reported 3G service, while I was only able to get EDGE service from AT&T. These results are very location specific, and should not be considered a blanket reference. If you regularly find yourself in the Castleton area, these results may be useful to you.

Rural Internet

My family and I are preparing to move out of the city and into a more rural setting. As part of that move, I've been researching what sorts of internet service will be available to us. At our current residence we have a number of different options for high speed internet service. We currently use the U-Verse service offered by AT&T. We are using the 1.5Mbps service, which adds $15 / month in cost to our U-Verse television bill. Comcast also offers high speed internet service, and I'm sure we could get DSL from any number of folks. Go a few miles outside of a dense residential area and your options quickly become limited.

There are four types of service that I have found that will be available at our new location:

• Dial-Up
• Satellite
• Cellular Wireless
• Microwave Wireless

Dial-Up

Dial-up internet service is the old standby that hasn't changed in over 10 years. The top speed is still pegged at 56kbps (ignoring the "speed boosting" tech that some vendors claim). Depending on the service provider, rates run anywhere from $10-$20 / month. However, we don't plan on having a home phone, so add to this cost the price to install a home phone (around $25 / month with AT&T) for the sole purpose of using dial-up, and it comes to $35 or more per month for that sluggish dial-up internet connection. It would be useful for the most basic internet uses: browsing basic web pages and sending e-mail. Forget about online gaming or rich web media though. Compare this to our U-Verse service, which is the equivalent of 1,500kbps for $20 less each month, and it would be a serious step backward.

Satellite

There are a few satellite internet providers, Hughes and WildBlue being the most prominent. Hughes offers 1.0Mbps down, 128kbps up service for $60 / month, while WildBlue tiers their service at 512K down / 128K up for $50, or 1.5M down / 256K up for $80. Those are fine speeds, if a little pricey. The real gotcha here is latency. It used to be that with satellite internet you only received data over the dish, and all of your uploads were on your telephone line. Now you get both your up and down data from the dish, but the latency can be anywhere up to 5 seconds. Compare that to the typical sub 0.1 second latency of other internet connections, and it is a big downer. This makes the satellite internet service unusable for things like voice chat, VPN connection for working at home, or online gaming. Using a VPN connection and online gaming are high priorities for me from my internet connection, so that eliminated satellite from contention.

Cellular Wireless

Cell phone companies offer data plans for their users who have smart phones (Blackberry, iPhone, Android, etc.). This offers a fairly speedy (348kbps or faster) way to access the internet. Most carriers offer mobile broadband service with the intention that you use it occasionally with your laptop, not as your dedicated home connection. Across providers, the standard seems to be to offer up to 5GB of downloads per month for $60 / month. That may seem like a lot, but it really isn't when it is your dedicated connection for home. You can quickly exhaust that 5GB quota and start paying exorbitant rates per additional kilobyte downloaded. For example, let's say a new product revision is released, and the download is 1GB or more. If there are alternate versions, I could exhaust all 5GB in a single afternoon. The idea of these caps is to prevent folks from hogging the network with P2P applications, swapping movies all day, and to keep usage as intended: occasional use on a mobile device. The net effect for me is that cellular is not an option as a home ISP.

Microwave Wireless

I found microwave wireless service to be the best mix of speeds, price, and availability. There are several service providers that can provide service to our location. With microwave wireless you need line-of-sight to the tower providing the signal. A small antenna is mounted on your home and communicates wirelessly with the main tower. Depending on geography and tree line, these systems can offer service in a 15-30 mile radius around a tower. Prices vary by speed, with it ranging from $35 / month for 512K down, 256 up service to $90 / month for speeds over 1Mbps. There isn't a single dominant player in this market like there is in the national cellular market. The best deals I found were offered by a local company: Hoosier Broadband.

512K/256 $34.95 Residential Service

768K/384 $44.95 Residential Service

1.5M/512 $69.95 Residential Service

512K/256 $54.95 Business Service

768K/384 $64.95 Business Service

The difference between residential service and business service is that Hoosier Broadband reserves the right to lower the priority of residential traffic in deference to their business customers, and business customers are guaranteed support within 24 hours. Residential customers are not. I'm not yet decided on whether I would choose the business or residential service. As the majority of my usage is late at night, I think the residential service should suffice, but given that I also intend to use this service when I need to work from home, the business service might be more prudent. Either way, I would be selecting the 768K service, which is half of what we get now from AT&T. A cut back, yes, but not a terrible one.

DSL, FiOS, and ISDN

Just a quick note on these services: they aren't available. In fact, you probably can't remember the last time (or ever) hearing about ISDN. When I contacted the phone company, they said they are not selling new connections, but only maintaining existing accounts. That's fine, as ISDN has all of the drawbacks of dial-up with a higher cost and only barely better speeds. FiOS would be awesome, but there's no chance of getting that in a rural area as it is too expensive for Verizon to pull new fiber down country roads for a handful of customers. Maybe someday DSL will be an option, but not now.

Summary

I think that microwave wireless is one service that we will hear a lot about in the coming years. One of the president's major policy initiatives is to increase access to broadband internet service for rural Americans. Installing a tower for wireless transmission is one of the most cost effective ways to do that, and the FCC is in active talks concerning opening up more of our wireless spectrum for data traffic (this is a major reason why we had the recent switch from analog to digital television over the air). I'm hopeful that these changes will result in more options for me as rural internet consumer, and lower prices.

The Continuing Saga of the PrePaid Number Transfer

So after my ordeal last week with trying to get my number ported, I went back to the store today to "finalize" the transfer to a pre-paid GoPhone. I arrived at the store to greetings from the manager and clerk (who recognize me at this point). They invited me to have a seat while they took care of modifying the account.....this is when the sinking feeling set in. The clerk was unable to modify the account, again. So he called customer support, again. He waited on hold, again, for 15 minutes, and finally came away with a new excuse: this can only be done from a corporate store. The store manager rolled his eyes, apologized profusely, and asked me to drive about a mile down the road to the nearest corporate store.

Arriving at the slightly more busy corporate store, I wait while the clerk there is on hold with the same customer support folks (he couldn't change the account either). After another hour of waiting, he gets off the phone and say, "It just can't be done." Apparently, once a number is associated with a business phone, it can never, ever be made into a prepaid phone plan. I suggested that I go to T-Mobile and transfer the phone number: no dice. I was hungry (skipped my lunch again) and frustrated at this point, so I asked him to just cancel the account and credit me back the cost. He agreed to do that. He then set me up with a new phone number and I bought a $25 airtime card for my phone. What a hassle.

At this point, I have no love for AT&T and their pre-paid phone system, so I'm going to shop around with other service providers to see if they have anything interesting (possibly with a cheap phone included to upgrade my aging Nokia). Any suggestions? Anyone out there on a pre-paid phone plan that they like? Is AT&T, warts and all, really the best bet?

Phone Transfer

As mentioned previously, I'm giving up the cell phone that my employer has supplied and switching to a personal phone. I still had my old Nokia at home, so last week I switched the SIM card out of my BlackBerry and turned in the hardware. I received a notice from my employer that the phone number had been released so I could now transfer the number to my new personal account.

So today I went into the local AT&T store to switch the number. I wanted to put it on a Go Phone plan, as I hardly use my cell phone and a $25 card should last me 3 months. The reps at the store were friendly and helpful, and put me in touch with AT&T customer support. This is where the trouble set in. First, apparently you can't transfer a number from a business account directly to a non-contract, non-plan account (aka Go Phone prepaid). If I really wanted to keep the same number, I needed to first create an account with a plan (although I was assured this could be done without a contract). The business number would be transferred to the individual plan, and then the individual plan could be converted to a Go Phone. Fine, so one hour later, I'm setup with the minimum individual plan ($39.99 / month) with no contract and I'm all set to switch to the Go Phone. I was warned that I might be billed for the one day of service that I'm on the individual plan, but I figure that $1.33 plus tax is a small price to pay to keep the same cell phone number I've used for the past five years.

Here is where trouble starts again. Apparently the person who setup and transferred my number to the individual plan didn't realize that there was a clause that said you had to keep the individual plan for one period (a month) before it could be transferred to a Go Phone plan. This isn't what I was told (and $40 is way more than I'm willing to pay to keep my number). The in-store rep steps in at this point and starts calling his own set of numbers using his AT&T sales rep code in an attempt to get in touch with someone who can make the first CSR's statements a reality. Meanwhile, the store manager is jotting down all of my contact information and profusely apologizing for the delay and confusion (the phone was on speaker, so all of the store help heard the first CSR say that I could change to a Go Phone that day, and we made him repeat it explicitly).

Another hour later and the in-store rep is still on hold, this time for the fifth person who might be able to help. I've been in the store for over two hours now, and I still don't have what I walked in for. The store manager walked over to me at this point and said, "In all likelihood, you will probably be stuck with the one month of service at $39.99. If that's the case, at the end of the month, come back to the store and I'll switch you to a Go Phone plan and credit you with the cost of this month. In the meantime, go ahead and take care of whatever you need to do, and we'll call you when we get this settled."

This isn't what I had in mind. I have to say, the in-store rep and manager did a great job of trying to set things right for me, but the customer support reps on the phone were not helping them out at all. They first had to talk to business accounts, then transfer of service, then national individual accounts, then Go Phone accounts, and they were on hold with the next department when I left. I'm not happy with the result at all, but if the manager follows through with his promise of crediting me for the trouble, at least I'll have a positive opinion of the in-store staff. If I knew it was going to cost $40 to keep my number, I would have learned to live with a new number.

Cell Phone Search - Continued

I got a couple of interesting suggestions on that last post.  The parameters of my search have modified slightly.  I have the following choices before me: 

• Choose any phone I want, and any plan I want, but I have to pay for both
• Choose any phone I want from Verizon and get voice only service, completely free to me

I know a lot of folks are passionately averse to Verizon due to their draconian tactics with regard to phone features.  They do have the best coverage though.  Free is definitely a good thing to me.  If I were to go the Verizon route, I think my choice would be between a Samsung Saga and a LG Decoy.  If I were to go outside Verizon, there are lots of interesting options.  Is it worth the cash outlay on my part though?

I think I'm leaning towards the free option.  Any reasons why I should change my mind?  Any suggestions on a particular Verizon phone model?