AirCard and Cellular Data Information

I sent this document to a client and felt inclined to post it here...

My assistant mentioned that your new notebook has an ExpressCard slot and you were curious if the standard PCMCIA Cingular card would work in this new port. The answer is no. There are ExpressCard options available from all of the major cellular carriers and you�ll need to purchase a new card and add a new account if you want to have a PCMCIA option and ExpressCard option.

In order to save money and avoid future incompatibilities, this might be a good time to rethink the cellular card options. Going for a Sierra Wireless USB AirCard is great because you�ll get better reception �more bars in more places� since they have a more powerful antenna and USB cards are compatible with everything (even desktops) because all you need is a USB port.

Something else to consider is that Cingular / AT&T; only offers 3G aka HSDPA (high speed) cellular data rates in major cities. Their map (http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/) has an option to only show 3g speeds and you�ll see that there�s not any coverage south of Southside in Jacksonville and north of the boardwalk in Daytona. In St. Augustine, we only have EDGE available to us which maxes out at 22K per second. In comparison, cable Internet from Comcast maxes out at 750K per second. Other carriers like Sprint and Verizon offer 3G aka EVDO (high speed) rates in almost all of Florida including St. Augustine.

I have purchased and used cards from AT&T;, Verizon and Sprint and each carrier has different benefits. I was able to save money on my AT&T; bill by adding the AirCard but overall Sprint was the better option for just a data plan. AT&T; has limited high speed and Verizon only gives you so much bandwidth per month. If you use more than 5gbs of data transfer a month they will cancel your service. Sprint is the only company that does not cap your data rates for monthly usage. In theory, you can cancel your home Internet connection and use the Sprint card as a full time connection without being penalized for the amount of data transfer.

The speeds from Verizon and Sprint are equivalent to a midrange DSL connection. The only company that has announced faster speeds is Verizon when they will begin deploying EVDO Revision A connections in Florida over the next 6 months. To break it down:

Cingular EDGE is about 22k per second
Cingular HSDPA is 1.5 megabits down
Verizon EVDO is 3 megabits down
Sprint EVDO is 3 megabits down but a faster upload

EVDO Revision A from Verizon and Sprint is 6-12 megabits down and double the current upload speed. You�ll just need to buy a new Rev A card when they make the change. If you travel to Dallas, LA or New York you�ll automatically receive the super fast download / upload (faster than cable Internet) if you have a newer card since these select cities are already sporting revision A of the spectrum

All three of these services are similar in price and offer PCMCIA, ExpressCard and USB options and I would recommend the cards from Sierra Wireless since their drivers are just rock solid with limited issues compared to other manufacturers. Sprint is the best carrier for this kind of Internet connection right now but if you stay with Cingular, I would recommend purchasing the USB card so everyone can use it with zero compatibility issues.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Read More...

搬家公司
在职研究生
北京律师
营养师

做个友情连接
wow gold
wow power leveling
wow powerleveling
wow power level
wow gold
wow power leveling