Review by jameswade 
member for 10.1 years, 2488 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 2.5 years ago
 Marshall,Madison,NC
 $60 per month- (24 month contract)
 "Available in most places in the US" "High latency, slow, expensive, no recourse to poor service if roaming" "See if US Cellular EVDO is now available in your area..."
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Original review:
We are located a little North of Hot Springs, NC. Only choices for Internet access are dialup (except dialup in this area is very limited, it's usually a long distance call, and only runs at about 21k), satellite (POOR service, unreliable, latency makes VOIP and VPN unworkable), and cell phone.
We are using cell phone. Until recently we had to climb up the side of a mountain and plug in a high gain Yagi antenna to make a call or get Internet access (1xRTT - slow) . Barely! This only worked with Verizon or US Cellular. After years of requests Verizon still isn't covering the area, but US Cellular put a site in Hot Springs last year.
Fortunately Verizon roams on US Cellular because Verizon won't put in a site and US Cellular wouldn't sell me a data plan.
So now we can make phone calls and get Internet access in the cabin. Unfortunately the latency is worse than satellite Internet access! It's at about .9 to 1 second! This kills VPN and VOIP.
If you read the Terms Of Service VOIP, streaming audio or video, almost anything but email and light web surfing seems to be forbidden in the TOS.
I can only get about 80kbps up and down, I could actually live with that, but not the latency.
I can't call and complain to US Cellular because I'm with Verizon and Verizon won't cause US Cellular to fix the problem.
There are other problems:
I'm paying for EVDO, but it's not available.
While I'm using Internet access I can't use the phone, nor will it ring. I could do this with a card, but then I would have to pay another $45 for email on my phone.
While traveling I can get EVDO, but it's not all that great either - I can get around 120k, but the latency is still high.
I'm using a tethered Palm Treo 700w. Verizon told me that I could tether the phone until I bought it. Then they told me that I couldn't . I had to buy third party software to make tethering work. The phone crashes and locks up often, forcing reboots and multiple attempts to troubleshoot.
In summary, this works, but just barely, and it's expensive...
2009.03.16
I switched to a wireless data card and installed a yagi high on the roof about a year ago. It sort of worked barely - we just don't get a good signal from Verizon and their roaming partner here (US Cellular) just can't seem to get with EVDO.
For a couple of months we got usable Internet access, but the signal would just go away occasionally. Since Verizon Wireless claims that they don't cover this area they won't do anything about it - but they were glad to sell me service when I signed up!
I'm not really happy with Verizon - they have the local phone service and won't provide DSL. Their telephone service has hum and noise on it so can't really be used for dialup. Their wireless division won't cover the area, charge too much, and have this ridiculous 5 GB per month cap with an even more ridiculous fee if you go over the cap.
Not recommended if you have any other alternatives. (Except satellite, that's even worse!)
Updated 7/2009 In May of 2008 we got one of Verizon's wireless cards and roamed on US Cellular's tower (1X only  ).
I put a high gain Yagi on the roof and hooked it to a cell amplifier then hooked it to the wireless card and got a weak EVDO connection from a Verizon tower. This might work (not well) for a couple of weeks and with no change in weather, sunspots, or any other reason that I could surmise I would lose all signal and have to go back to US Cellular's 1X. I would call Verizon support and be told that I was not in their service area (apparently they've worked out an agreement with US Cellular that they wouldn't compete here!) and there was nothing that they could do. Then magically it would start working again!
A couple of weeks ago I found out that US Cellular got EVDO working here the middle of May 2009. I immediately picked up a card from them and after a lot of miscommunications on their part it started working with EVDO. (Local store said that they had EVDO, but corporate support insisted that they didn't!)
I get a good strong EVDO signal from US Cellular and 1.3 Mbits down and 667 kbits up! Fairly low ping times too, VOIP works great now!
Verizon's solution was to always offer to let me out of my contract, I finally was able to take them up on their offer. Next Verizon loses us as cell phone customers. Then our neighbors... 
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