MacMost Now 133: Mobile Broadband

Gary Rosenzweig talks about the mobile broadband service from Sprint that he has been using. With a wireless USB modem, he is able to get broadband speeds just about anywhere. Good as a travel solution, or as a backup to a connection at home or at work.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. Today I wanna show you a great alternative for broadband internet for traveling or just for everyday use.
Now way back at MacMost Now episode 2, I talked about these cool little usb sticks that you can get for your Macbook, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air that will give broadband internet access using usb mobile data network like the one from Verizon, Sprint, T-mobile, or ATT. Now, you can get this basically form any of those but the one that has the unlimited access is Sprint; the others cap their data bandwidth, so I went with the Sprint one and got this a while although and I've been using it ever since. Now, the cool thing about this Sprint card is that really ready for the Mac, so you plug this thing into your Mac  and you instantly get an installer for this application that will connect you to the Spring Broadband network. And the application is a Mac data application so it runs great on the Mac, it evens has some extra apps and gps functionality built-in to this little dock, so you have access to all this. You hit connect and connected you can access all sort of data, as to how fast your connection is, how good your connection is and then how much bandwidth you are using. Now, the cost is about sixty(60) dollars a month and its not more than that, for some reason, I guess the taxes and fees for just pure data are lot less than they are for voice. So it comes may be about to sixty-two dollars a month for me; and the coverage has been excellent, in matter of fact, I've been able to use it in every hotel room I travel to and every airport I've gone to in the last six months; I was even able to use this while traveling on an interstate highway, through a couple of states on a recent road trip and I was constantly connected, I was amazed that I was actually able to go and log in to my server through the terminal, through ssh, and work on the server while traveling about 75 miles an hour for several hours. Now of course that doesn't mean that coverage is everywhere, there are some places where coverage isn't that great and there are blind spots just like with the regular mobile phone. For the advantage of having one of this isn't just for travel, although that's a huge advantage, I mean you take your count of how much sometimes the airports charge for  broadband wifi access, and you take to count how much hotels charge you can simply make back your sixty dollars in one single trip per month. But then also you can get to use this while traveling around town; you can go and have dinner with somebody and wanna show something in your laptop, you got access. And also is more secure, when you think about it, this public wifi hotspots, they are not secure at all; but using your own little private network through this card is completely secure, is encrypted. So you can surf without worrying about somebody stealing your passwords from a local public wifi hotspot. Now, I assume that all the data networks are pretty much the same, so you can choose your favorite mobile company; but my experience has been with the Sprint card and I must say that I am very pleased with it, not only is good for traveling but it's a very comforting backup to have, in case my home dsl or the internet connection goes out for some reason. To find more about what I go to sprint dot com(sprint.com) and click on plans and then click on mobile data plans. Now, since I've got my plan six months ago, they have actually switched sprint to be a 5 gigabyte bandwidth limit, just like the other networks. So it looks like you can look back you can pay sixty dollars for 5 gigs but for mobile access that's still a lot of bandwidth, and it's still hard to go over it, specially if you are only using it as your secondary internet access. Ok, so here is the deal, I love for more people to be able to see this show and the best way for them to do that is to be able highly ranked in itunes but you can't be highly ranked in itunes until a lot of people subscribe so it's like kind a chicken and the egg kind of thing; here is how you can help, if you can tell some of your friends, you may think you can get something out of the show, two subscribe to it; they can just go to MacMost dot com slash itunes dot html (MacMost.com/itunes.html) and if they subscribe to the show, it will help boost the ranking in itunes, which in return we will get more subscribers. So I really appreciated if you tell some of your friends about the show, thanks a lot, see you the next time.

Comments: 3 Responses to “MacMost Now 133: Mobile Broadband”

MobileDataUK

16 years ago

Good show. Looks like Mobile Broadband is more expensive in the USA than in the UK, but you do seem to have higher 'Fair Usage' Policy's. One great thing that we have in the UK, which I'm not sure is available in the USA is Pay as you Go Mobile Broadband.

Daniel

Very good show Gary! I wondered how good that Sprint mobile USB was but I think I would hit my "cap" each month.
Funny, I left Sprint and went with AT&T when the iPhone came out. :-)

Bobby79

14 years ago

i did subscribe Garry and i spread the word among my friends hoping that they would realize how good is your show...i my self found very interesting tips and news for my Mac!Thank u and good luck !

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 133: Mobile Broadband

Comments: 3 Responses to “MacMost Now 133: Mobile Broadband”

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