Believe the Hype: 3G Broadband Data Cards Rock!

Wi-Fi is great...when it works. Overall, Wi-Fi hotspots aren't universally reliable—in other words, I never know where I'm actually going to be able to get a signal. Thankfully, the cell phone carriers have been offering a solution that access-hungry users need to know about: 3G data cards.

For months, I have been praising—at the top of my lungs—the virtues of high-speed, 3G data cards from Verizon, Cingular and Sprint. These cards go into the PC Card slot of your laptop and use the high-speed networks of cell carriers to give you broadband speeds anywhere there's a mobile signal. You can also use some PDA phones, such as the Treo 700, as an EVDO modem. If you live in a major urban area, you'll get about 10 times the speed of a dial-up connection. In more rural areas, you can still surf but at slower speeds that are about three times faster than a dial-up connection. The easiest (though also the priciest) option is to just get one of the new laptops from Lenovo (the ThinkPad series) or Panasonic (the ToughBook 74 and the new W5, pictured), which have EVDO capability built right in.

This means I no longer have to worry about whether there's Wi-Fi or not in the airport lounge where I'm trapped due to flight delays. I also don't have to spend the lousy $6.95 for one-hour's Wi-Fi network use, buy cards with codes on them, search around for a strong network, or any of the other countless little hassles and expenses that come with trying to get online with Wi-Fi. Of course, this comes at a price but one that I don't think is exhorbitant for anytime, anywhere coverage in metropolitan areas. Right now, you can buy cards for anywhere from $50 to $100 on the Verizon, Sprint or Cingular sites (in fact, right now, Sprint is offering the Pantech Wireless PX-500 for free after a mail-in rebate). Monthly charges hover around $60 per month for unlimited usage in the United States—again, worth it if you're a frequent traveler who needs access anywhere there's a cell phone network, anytime.

It seems as though not a day goes by without a full-page newspaper ad by Sprint or Verizon advertising their Broadband Connection and BroadbandAccess services, respectively, and yet, I don't run into many people outside of tech circles who actually use these thing. And that's too bad, because they actually work. I can't say that about a lot of tech—that it actually works. My experiences with Sprint and Verizon have so far been seamless—nary a glitch and I've been using their cards for months (in fact, I'm using Sprint's card right now).

My limited experience with Cingular's card was less than flawless. I wasn't able to get the fast speeds that I got with Sprint or Verizon during a recent airport lounge wait (and the software takes forever to load), but I'll follow up with a more extensive review in the future. What the Cingular cards—in particular, the Option GlobeTrotter GT MAX LaptopConnect card—have over the Sprint and Verizon cards is the ability to get a signal in GSM zones with midspeed GPRS and high-speed, 3G UMTS networks (essentially, using networks around the rest of the world except for South Korea and Japan, for those of you who want to use these cards when they travel internationally). This option is pricey, though: Cingular's international plan costs $139.99 per month for unlimited use (that includes the United States).

The next step for these cards is even more bandwidth. Good news for those who like to download video and load up graphics-intensive sites—Verizon will be upgrading download speeds by up to 50 percent some time this fall, according to an earlier post by Chris Null. For an overview of the EVDO services, check out these posts from Becky Worley, Robin Raskin and Dory Devlin.