DataJack: $40 A Month For Truly Unlimited 3G

Of course "unlimited" usually means "very limitied" in wireless industry parlance, but DataJack's website insists they really mean it. "Yes, DataJack Service is truly unlimited," says the company. "You can leave it connected to the Internet 24 hours a day and not worry about any overage charges," insists the carrier.

I can do the above now with any carrier and they do not care. It is if you are downloading data at full speed for 24x7 that is the issue. Seems like they are already side stepping the issue with their vague language.

I predict they will be no better than the current options.

My thought exactly as soon as I read that.

Here is something to add to your theory:
Source: datajack.com

DataJack Bonus:
If you stay connected for 12 consecutive months, you will earn one FREE month of unlimited 3G Internet access!

Sounds a lot like "unlimited access" vs. "unlimited usage"

Coverage?

? The article notes it's mirroring T-Mobile's existing coverage map:

»www.datajack.com/

Guess it helps to actually click in before responding. Hehe

That won't be much use here then, T-Mobile is just rolling out service in our area, and it's a mix of GPRS and EDGE. Maybe when T-Mobile gets 3G here, then it might be a good thing.

While I hope it is not the way they choose to go, they could be using a throttle similiar to the fap satellite uses.

As far as coverage, they provide a map which looks like Tmobile.

Like all mobile services, they include legal language that allows them to drop you for ANY reason and also change TOS by publishing changes to their web site:

»www.datajack.com/termsMeaning that if they want to they can boot you if you truly become an annoyance by using more GBs/mo than they think is reasonable.

Usually though they'll use more specific, vague language (if that even makes sense) when caps are present.

I suspect they will allow unlimited use unless provoked by very extraordinary circumstances and maybe only if T-Mobile complains about a specific user at a specific cell location.

There are a couple of backend providers that resell T-Mobile service like this and they all say unlimited, so I'm guessing your prognosis is correct.

It just makes sense that it can't be "unlimited." There's not enough radio spectrum to do that. If everyone dropped their cable or DSL, and went for this, we'd find out in about two days how "unlimited" it is.

I just read an article the other day about how the wireless industry (including the international ITU) is pushing for more spectrum to cope with the growing use of wireless personal-communication (and computation) devices.

This whole preoccupation with the word "unlimited" reminds me of when I was a kid and saw iron pyrite in a dry desert gully one day. I suddenly felt all giddy and light-headed. I'd stumbled upon an immense amount of gold! It took 5-10 minutes to realize it was too good to be true.

There's no way the available radio spectrum could be "unlimited." It defies the laws of physics. Now, everyone should let that 5-10 minute feeling soak in.

Mark

It can be nearly unlimited if you split cells. Look at campus wifi systems. 15mbit/s for 1000 or 2000 sq feet AP, each AP on unique frequency (of the 3) doing frequency reuse. If you don't have enough spectrum, SPLIT CELLS YOU CHEAP *******!!!! If each cell was the size of a wifi cell, or a tower on each street corner, there would be no problems, in Asia they put base stations on every street corner, no bandwidth problems there.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fi ··· 74as.jpg

There was an article awhile back about how MetroPCS used microcells to offload traffic in high-use, small areas.

Also, 20 MHz of spectrum (which T-Mobile has in places) is enough to push out a DOCSIS 1.1 channel worth of bandwidth over wireless. Put enough cell sites so that you're serving about as many customers as the cableco does and you'll have no problem giving everyone the bandwidth they want.

You're talking about a different band which naturally limits itself to 1000-2000 sq. ft. To create a mesh network like that would be something entirely different than what we have now.

And, even within that band you'd invariably have limits. Or, be forced to split to a finer mesh to serving fewer people per access point.

Nothing's unlimited except a dedicated pipe. In that case, you get exactly the limit you paid for -- and you pay for unused capacity just so you'll always have a connection that meet's your peculiar "unlimited" needs.

Mark

So put up more cell towers. Same friggin` thing. The wireless carriers charge obscene prices for obscene plans (why does receiving a call use up minutes?), and make obscene profits as a result. Considering spectrum is tecnically a public good leased to them, it`s their obligation to provide optimum service to all their customers. Put up more towers!

that would work with towers but then you have the cities where you can't put up towers and there is actually no room for them due to the what little land they have left the city generally owns.

Have you looked at the operating costs to put up *one* cell tower? (I'm not talking about what bandwidth costs the cell carrier or other fudge-able data, but straightforward operations expenses, such as electricity, taxes, and fees, not to mention the expense of actually putting up the tower, including land taxes, labor costs, and legal expenses.) NIMBY-style legislation (designed to restrict or simply ban cell towers) creates further headaches for cell providers; all that further adds to expenses. Now multiply that by the number of towers required to cover one thousand square miles with 3G.

In such a anti-cellular atmosphere, having voice may be a necessity, but having 3G is not. (And I say that as a VZW customer living in the core of the best portion of VZW's 3G network - Washington, DC and the suburbs thereof. While New York City may have more towers, it also has a lot of metal that plays hob with wireless coverage - voice or data. Because of one of the Original NIMBY laws - the Height Act of 1903, which restricts structure sizes in Washington, DC and the suburbs thereof; it was passed by Congress and has been held valid and applicable to everything from buildings to broadcast towers, including cell towers - we don't have the NYC issue with cell coverage, and because of the rather large government presence, we have a very dense cell-tower system.)

Um, you do realize that you use the same resources whether you received the call or made the call, right?

Before you go on about how in other countries cell users don't pay for airtime on incoming calls, you might consider that the caller pays to extra to make a call to a mobile phone.

Use lower transmit power plus encode each digital signal with properties for reject or detection by the client, IE »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co ··· e_access .

CDMA is a dying standard.

CDMA2000 is dead, WCDMA AKA HSPA isn't.

We need to define unlimited. If we're talking about providing your customers as much as they can eat with a relatively low bit rate (say 128Kbps or 256Kbps), perhaps that's possible. Of course what's the definition of a "broadband" connection?

I think you had it right before you made the dedicated pipe exception. Even a dedicated pipe isn't unlimited. I've read that we have not yet hit the limit of a fiber optic cable but eventually there will be a limit, regardless of how big it is.

That's why this discussion is rather pointless without an extremely narrow definition of what is being provided. What does 3G mean in terms of bandwidth? Isn't that definition different between carriers and based on modulation techniques? (At least I've read where AT&T's 3G is slightly faster than Verizon's because they fundamentally use different techniques.) What about latency or packet loss? Shouldn't those be factored into the equation? I've seen ping times on my 3G connection range from a reasonable 100ms to thousands of milliseconds. Is it OK if I can get unlimited bandwidth with 2000ms latency?

I agree that bandwidth can be magnified by lowering transmission power and adding cells. This seems plausible provided customers are reasonably stationary. However, what happens when they get mobile? Can I really expect consistent streaming audio or video while driving down a micro-cell street that required a hand off every block? And even if that works well for a few folks, does it work well for hundreds without butchering the stream? And what about the ever increasing complexity of the backhaul with regards to tracking to which cell the packets need to be sent?

My calls get dropped all the time as I travel between cells. To be fair I am an iPhone user and obviously AT&T has some challenges in this area. But if hand offs are imperfect with respect to large cells and the measly bandwidth requirements of voice-quality streams, I think the wireless industry has a way to go to claim quality unlimited, low-packet-loss, low-latency, megabit or multi-megabit bandwidth to truly mobile users.

I would say you hit the point right there. When we define "as much as they can eat" it becomes an average of "they."

When the buffet calculates how much to charge, it considers how much the average customer eats. If a group of boulemics show up, and plan to spend the day binging and purging, I'm pretty sure the buffet will throw them out. And, average customers (for whom "all you can eat" was defined by) will completely understand.

Now, I'm sure someone will say buffet's aren't a good analogy. But, they'll object regardless of what analogy is used. To them, "unlimited" is a literal word (even if 95% of those it is targetted at never reach a limit, and thus experience "unlimited" service in the sense the provider used the term).

Mark

English applies to 100% of readers, not to the 95% a crook decides to redefine words for.

Maybe they should read up on the definition.

# having no limits in range or scope;
# outright: without reservation or exception
# inexhaustible: that cannot be entirely consumed or used up; "an inexhaustible supply of coal"
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The reason they can (still) get away with this shit is because the FCC and the FTC are NOT doing their job.

Let's look at an analogy here. Do you think that the FDA would let a producer get away with selling a subpar product just because 95% of the customers would not get sick ?

Why should they when, for all intents and purposes, they encountered no limit?

You're sounding like the group of bulimics at the "all-you-can-eat" buffet, after their 6th round of binging and purging, and being ejected, turning to the other patrons, furiously shaking a dictionary at them: "the word 'all' is well-defined. You people need to...."

You might want to look up the word "irrelevant."

Mark

It is that 5% of "bulimics" that pushed technology so that you are no longer on dial-up, running a 386 or have electric power.

We are willing to pay for what we use, we just have an issue with deceptive advertising. Maybe it is time for the government to do their job.

And yes, if a buffet advertises "all you can eat" and someone wants to eat 40 lbs of food, they should be able to. If they advertise 1 plate, or 2 lbs of food, whatever clearly defined, it is fair to enforce a limit.

Words are supposed to have clear meaning for all parties involved. Only crooks and lawyers benefit from obfuscating the clear communication.

I guarantee that the unaffected "all-you-can-eat" buffet patrons will have little sympathy for bulimics who believe they should be able to binge/purge all day just because "the dictionary says 'all' means *all*"

You've just placed yourself firmly within the irrelevant fringe.

Mark

Actually, I remember hearing a legal case about this very topic many years ago. An all-you-can-eat pizza place had a couple of patrons removed. They sued, company settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money. Restaurant nearly doubled their prices for the buffet.

The fact is, if you advertise unlimited, you flirt with legality. Most companies get away with it because people are too lazy to sue and it costs an arm and a leg. If an 'unlimited' case ever made it to court, the offending company WOULD lose. Just look at comcast removing the word 'unlimited' a while back. They did that to avoid getting the shit sued out of them.

I can agree with this. The "All You Can Eat" Buffet near me, where I sometimes eat, has a set of rules on signs near the door which are repeated on the walls. These include the usual of "Eat what you put on your plate" (ie: Do not waste food) and has a Time Limit listed. These former give them the right to toss bulimics (who were mentioned up thread) due to Food Wasting as well as exceeding the eating time limit (they only really enforce the time limit when the restaurant is packed.

Thats GSM TDMA for you (not sure if an iPhone and ATT do voice calls over WCDMA). CDMA2000 does very good Radio Resource Management, the phone can tune to multiple towers and use their bitstreams for error correcting each other.

I honestly don't think that part of the TOS is legal. I believe that businesses need to provide a reason, a canned reason could work, to why they booted you. Otherwise this will turn into the next Verizon fiasco (people getting booted from the Verizon network for using X amount of data and never told exactly why).

This would be great if T-Mobile had a fair amount of 3G coverage around here. At least, by the looks of it, you can roam on there 2G.

My question is, are you also able to roam on AT&Ts 2G network? This would be a big deal around here given T-Mobiles spotty service.

If all white-label T-Mobile unlimited plans are equal (including this one) then no, you can't roam onto AT&T 2G. You're stuck using whatever T-Mobile has in the area, at least around here, which in my case is 44 kbps GPRS.

When you do to their website and click the banner you see this.

850/1900/2100/AWS - Quad band 2G, 3G and 4G

Say what 4g?

If they are on Tmobile they are probably talking about the new HSDPA and HSDPA+ that Tmobile is supposedly rolling out in certain parts of the country. Right now though I think Tmobile is just doing HSDPA so maybe they are trying to claim that is 4g? Who knows the company looks like it was thrown together in a weekend meeting between 3 guys and a few six packs.

I would love to have this but there is no 3G service in my area. it is all edge which is really really god awful slow.

T-Mobile has a cap on aircards @ 5GB
For smartphones, the softcap is 10GB (no "tethering" allowed, but I have done it).

Can someone explain to me how 'unlimited' became '5g cap'?

I'm sure a lot of you know the legal side of it and I'm curious how everything that has to do with data whether it be phone or pc is advertised as 'unlimited' yet it really isn't.

Why aren't carriers etc forced to advertise what it really is? 5g limit?

You can basically lie in an advertisement as long as the small fine print shows the truth?

Its like there multiple definitions of unlimited

theres the fake unlimited which is really capped at 5gig
then theres slightly unlimited which is capped somewhere over 5gig
now this company seems to want to introduce really unlimited

Bought one of these a few weeks ago. EDGE-only service in my home area (not DataJack's fault) but I have used 3G while travelling and it is great. Can't beat no contract...and certainly far better priced than the other prepaid 3G options (like the Virgin Mobile one with a 1GB cap which costs more monthly!)

Long-term, who knows. You're only out the cost of the device and what's $100 these days?

Would anyone give up Fios internet for this service to have the portability to take the internet with you if you wanted to?

I been struggling with that because now there is Clear close to my area too.
My first instinct is to not give up my Fios internet and perhaps change my AT&T Blackberry phone/internet service or eliminate it to have a service like this with a netbook or something.

I would not switch from FIOS to Clear, their service has been absolutely horrible and the speeds are far from worth paying what they are asking. I looked into it because here in Dallas Clear is all over now and I even tested out some units and it is an extreme waste of cash especially if you got amazing FIOS service.

Just like grid lock on the tollways adding million more on ramps does not help

but adding lanes does help as well as adding high speed ETC.

adding lanes doesnt help either as more cars will just use the highway and make it congested again.

Does anybody know if it would be possible to use other t-mobile devices with the datajack service? I assume these devices use sim cards. How would I go about buying just the sim and the service?

Check out their FAQ on "Q: How fast is 3G?"

The Data Jack rides the Fastest Growing AWS 3G Broadband Network. T-Mobile?

All we have to do is upload for 1 minute and that'll piss 'em off enough to slap the 'ol violation of the TOS in our laps.

I just got one of the Virgin Mobile cards for Christmas. This seems like a fantastic service, but for me pre-paid is a necessity because of my extreme infrequency of using the device. It's really more of a backup for me, and something to bring along for a long card ride or while traveling.

I did see the post mention that this can be canceled at any time though and re-activated whenever, which I suppose would be a nice option. I think I'd rather have the coverage of Sprint's network though, especially if I need to use it at my house where I at least get a bar or two of Sprint's EVDO, whereas I'd only have spotty EDGE with T-Mo.

I've been using a Virgin Mobile card for a couple months now, and I've been rather pleased.

There are several things I like about it: 1) I only paid $99 for the usb modem itself, no contract. 2) Easy to install (can even use it from Linux if I desired). 3) It's fast (average 1.2mbps down in most of town, although in larger cities the speed does drop). 4) The $20/250 megabyte plan per month is a decent price point for someone using this from his mobile netbook. I find that I use the 250 meg in around 3 weeks or so--that's driving around town listening to internet radio, using the connection to check emails, and do some server administration over ssh. At which point I just buy another $20 card and slap it on my account.

And some things that I don't like: 1) The plan doesn't scale too well: Dont bother with the $10/10day plan... and if you are going to use 1+gb per month, it gets pretty expensive. You CAN do so (just keep buying the bandwidth as you run out) but expensive. 2) You get charged for upload and download bandwidth. 3) It's fast. Really fast. You can download a 50 megabyte file in about 5 minutes... and use up the full 250 meg in under 30 minutes. 4) I get very good coverage (it's Sprint after all)--even in this 3rd world country named Arkansas where you cannot even get DSL in most of the state. Heck, I can't even get basic CABLE here.

It'd be a no go up here, Sprint doesn't have service here, while AT&T, Verizon, U.S. Cellular and T-Mobile do.

Wait time was 20 seconds, the CSR was pleasant and assured me that it was truly unlimited, I mentioned the T-Mobile cap and she repeated that it was unlimited. Sounds good so far. I just may go for it. You can get second day delivery for about $4 more.

"You can leave it connected to the Internet 24 hours a day and not worry about any overage charges," insists the carrier.

Sometimes you have to read between the lines.

Maybe it has "automatic network management" IE it auto-throttles.

Sure, you're still connected to the Internet, but your speed is capped.....

Cricket sucks

there is a map for that!

Oh wailt there coverage sucks so bad

all you need is pins for each city they cover!!!

30GB to 40GB CAP would be fine for Wireless due to it's poor bandwidth

Lets just say my active account is numbered in the 1100's...not very many subscribers thus far!

Okay, this deal from DataJack sounds great, so I contacted them and they verified that they used the Tmobile network and that I had 100% 3G coverage at my zip code. So I contacted Tmobile both using their website and on the phone and they verified that I DID NOT have any 3G coverage in my zip code area. So I called DataJack back and asked about this, and then the sales rep. told me they use other carriers but could not tell me who.

So are they telling the truth? Do they really use more than Tmobile's network, maybe Verizon and Sprint as well? I can get 3G from Verizon and Sprint, so if DataJack is really using multiple carriers, this is the only way I would be covered. I don't know if I want to gamble with this company.

Sounds a tad disingenuous. How many telcos actually offer 292 to 583 DSL tiers?