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Can you use your cell-phone as a modem?

Posted July 10th, 2009 by Charles Langley

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Weathering Tethering.

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Filed Under
Communications: Wireless - Communications Technology -

Using your cell phone as a modem

On July 30th, 2009 philwells says:

Hi Cookor,

There's no question that "WiFi ... or other broadband connection method" is faster than the fastest (at this moment) cellular-based broadband connection. My questions to you are:

  1. do you think you can get WiFi pretty much anywhere    and
  2. what exactly are you using your broadband connection for?
  3. how can you go back and forth from fast WiFi to dialup? You're a better man than I am!

    4. If you are OK with the Zen of ONLY web surfing wherever there's WiFi, like at a hotel, restaurant, airport, home, or business, then you're a lucky person because wherever you are that there's Internet, there's Internet (a gross grafting of "wherever you go, there you are" and "it ain't
    over till it's over"). Many of us are not so "in the moment" and want Internet wherever we happen to be. Short of having satellite-based Internet which works pretty much anywhere in the world and costs a
    fortune, the most widespread portable BROADBAND Internet access is via cellular providers since their networks are so ubiquitous. Trust me, you can't get WiFi along I-15 near Scipio, Utah, but you can get Verizon and, undoubtedly, other carriers.

    There are lots of places where WiFi signals show up that are pretty far from civilization - I know because I do contract work on places like Mt San Miguel and up there I can see a number of WiFi SSIDs - but most of them are secured and all of them are so ephemeral that they're worthless.

    As for #2 above, if you're playing World of Warcraft with folks all over the globe and you need the speed, Wifi - worst case being about 3Mb/s realtime throughput for 802.11b - surely beats 1.2Mb/s down x 600Mb/s up as provided by Verizon with Qualcomm's EV-DO RevA via a recent model phone. But typical web surfing and emailing and even VoIP calls work fine over EV-DO and the GSM carriers' current equivalents. In fact, Mrs. T and I just returned from a whirlwind 4000 mile driving vacation of The Northwestern US. Sitting in the car before the majestic Grand Tetons, I called my friend Kathryn on Skype, from my laptop, using Verizon's broadband, and we had a pleasant 2-way video call . It worked fine. BTW, there was not a single WiFi signal present

    Lastly there's the dialup Internet suggestion. A good one, in fact. If you've got a cell signal but no WiFi (and no cellular broadband), using a dialup provider like Simple.NET ($15/mo), Earthlink ($22/mo), NetZero/Juno ($10/mo - their "Half the Cost of AOL" is misleading advertising and possibly a reason to pass them over - see * below), even (shudder) AOL ($10/mo), can get you basic internet and the same account. Copper.net ($10/mo) has an interesting, though surely biased, look at the big players here: http://www.copper.net/AboutTheCompetition.aspx HOWEVER, in the same post you go from saying that cellular broadband isn't as fast as WiFi to espousing DIALUP!  I'm not sure how fast dialup can actually get over a cellular call because of all that audio compression and - IMPORTANT - because this is an analog connection, not a digital one like WiFi or cellular broadband. But even using laboratory speeds, your Simple.NET connection will be .056Mb/s down by maybe .03Mb/s up compared to .5Mb/s down for older cellular broadband, and over 1Mb/s down for EV-DO RevA.

      To summarize

  4. You can pay your cell provider $30 to $75 per month and get roughly 1Mb Internet pretty much any place your cell phone works or you can wait until you get lucky for WiFi or you can go out of your way to find it or you can use dialup at ~ 20% of the cost of cellular broadband (and 5% of the speed). Depending on your needs (especially business people) many of us will take "likely" over "lucky" at a premium

  5. You are arguing that WiFi is faster, then you're espousing dialup! Which is, like, so 90's!

  6. You are saying that WiFi is faster but you're not saying what you need all that speed for. If you're playing MMORPGs you aren't using dialup! Many big businesses still do fine with reliable T-1 circuits which max out at about 1.4Mb/s (down and up)

    7. Love and Connectivity,  Dr. Telecom

    -----------------------
    *NetZero' web site, on the day this reply was posted, says "References to AOL?? pricing and savings amounts based on standard monthly rates as of 01/01/0<b>3</b>". That's over 6 years ago. At http://www.netzero.net/start/landing.do?page=www/signup/comparison they say "References to AOL®, EarthLink, Yahoo, and MSN pricing and savings amounts based on U.S. standard monthly rates for standard versions of service as of 10/15/2006". They're right about Earthlink - at $22/mo(after 3 months at $10) they're the most expensive. Even their 12-months-paid-in-advance plan is $12.50

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