Best wireless card service

[tosugrad]

My parents live in rural WI and don't get any wired service. They are on (gasp!) dial up!

I don't like satellite as I believe it still uses phone line for upload.

Thinking of switching them to wireless card. Verizon has good coverage but the plan is $60/mo for only 5 GB traffic. They are not on that much but I suspect will be once they have acceptable service.

Anyone else have a good plan from another provider? Im thinking $60 a month is fine but I want closer to unlimited traffic.

Thanks!

 

[robr]

My parents live in rural WI and don't get any wired service. They are on (gasp!) dial up!

I don't like satellite as I believe it still uses phone line for upload.

Thinking of switching them to wireless card. Verizon has good coverage but the plan is $60/mo for only 5 GB traffic. They are not on that much but I suspect will be once they have acceptable service.

Anyone else have a good plan from another provider? Im thinking $60 a month is fine but I want closer to unlimited traffic.

Thanks!

Nobody offers "unlimited" cellular data service. All "unlimited" plans actually have a limit. However of all the ones I've tried, Verizon does appear to be the fastest. Rather than get a card (or USB dongle) that plugs into a laptop, I'd recommend getting an EVDO router. Plug the card/USB into the router, then all computers just connect to it via wired or wireless like normal and share the connection just like any DSL/Cable type router. As long as your parents are downloading warez or movies or streaming lots of video, 5 gig should be OK.

See here for hardware options:
http://www.evdoinfo.com/

The is the one I purchased (though it's sitting in a box still, so I never actually used it and probably never will - it was purchased as a holdover solution until a T-1 was installed in a new remote office, but it was decided to wait to move until the T-1 went in)

http://www.evdoinfo.com/content/view/2144/40/

The Kyocera is the same unit, only it also has support for EVDO PCMCIA cards (in addition to USB cellular modems), however firmware updates for it supposedly don't happen nearly as often as they do for the Cradlepoint which is why I went with that instead.