Can you use your cell-phone as a modem?
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Standard analog modem over cellular
There are addons that will allow a standard telephone, fax or modem to plug into some phones. However due to the latency of the connection, as well as compression and other factors, you're not likely to see any usable connection take place.
I have tried it over both GSM and standard CDMA digital cellular with a 20%success rate and maximum CONNECT speed of 1200 kbps. Some ISPs will not even bother connection at that speed, so your mileage may vary. It's also interesting to note that during my tests, the connection becomes unstable and drops carrier (hangs up) after a few seconds of connecting. Faxing is more reliable over these connections since the protocol is 100% asynchronous and handles the poor latency much more gracefully.
Using your cell phone as a modem
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:
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
Love and Connectivity, Dr. Telecom
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*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
gps modem
on a similar subject, I have a gps with a sim card installed that gets its info from the internet via cell phone sites.
can it be hacked to use as a modem for internet access?
gps modem
Dear MurphyJunk,
First off, if there were a way to "hack" the modem for Internet access, assuming that you're attempting to circumvent a service fee from your provider, I would not give it. No matter what you may think of the cellular providers' fees, there's no justification for theft. If you don't like your provider's rates, the beauty of the marketplace is that you can sign up with another provider. If you don't like any of their rates, then you can simply not subscribe. Internet access is not a privilege nor a necessity of life so I don't believe that anyone has a "right" to it.
Technically, the answer is still NO. Even if your handheld GPS receiver is getting map files from the Internet (am curious to know which provider it uses), unless the unit has a router and the ability to send data out its USB port, it could not be used to access the Internet for general purposes.
As per Carly Baltes of Garmin International, most handheld GPS units have enough memory to store the map for an entire continent (some store the world) so I'm wondering why it would need Internet access for updates. I also would like to learn why it would have a SIM card since a SIM card doesn't make the unit a cell phone. From WikiPedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subscriber_Identity_Module):
There's some confusion "out there" about the difference between triangulating on cell towers and using GPS signals to get location data. The former is used by the cellular providers for the benefit of emergency agencies to find people who may be missing and whose phones are turned on - it's called Radio Direction Finding and lets people find you if you're hurt without those people having remote access to your phone. GPS works by picking up signals from multiple satellites whose positions are known and constant. Similar to the previous example, the GPS receiver does some math based on the timing of these signals and computes its location. This raw data (latitude, longitude, speed, heading, and sometimes altitude) are provided to the software that then plots your location on a map.
I'll soon be posting a commentary here about my poor experience with Verizon's VZ Navigator software.
gps with internet access
philwells
I just noticed your reply to my posting ( sorry for the delay)
the gps is a insignia brand with sim card in it.
the unit can access google to find addresses by using name of business, phone number or any other info that will allow google to do a search.
MM
cell phone as a modem
Using your cell phone as a modem will not be as fast as using a Wi-Fi hot spot or other broadband connection method. Even better, if your cellphone provider doesn't charge you for 1800/toll-free numbers(most don't), you can use SIMPLE.NET to access the internet through your cellphone, virtually from anywhere your cellphone works! I use such services at my patio with laptop.
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