Cellular internet

[jimson]

I have broadband in town, but I also have some property with a mobile home where I frequently spend time. It is in a remote area with no high speed available other than satellite. Right now I use dial-up out there and it works pretty well for the game, however, I've missed some special events because when I logged into the SEA, the terrain download would take more time than I could allow for.

In an effort to improve cell phone reception there, I bought a powered booster and put up a yagi antenna and much to my surprise I now have full bar cellular reception, much better than I have in the city.

So now I wonder if I could use cellular for internet, There is a USB adapter for laptops available through AT&T wireless and my booster/antenna system will hook up to it. Since it's USB I believe I can make it work with my desktop and it's got to be faster than dial-up, but will it work for gaming  or would it be more like satellite with tons of lag?

Anyone have experience or thoughts about this?

[The Fugitive]

Air time on cellular has always been a problem, the longer your on, the more you pay. Our vending machine use to time out pretty quick. They didn't want to pay the high cost waiting for a long time out.

If the dial-up works fine, just download the terrains on your highspeed at home, burn them to a disk, and load them at the other location.

[jimson]

That is true, the cost of airtime may well be prohibitive.

Currently, I already pay for a cell phone. I also pay for a land line and dial up service, the last two just for that location. Now that I can get cell reception, I could dump the land line and dial-up sevice if I could connect another way.

Even though dial-up works for the game and I could get around the terrain dl issue, I would like something better for general surfing as well.

Not being my main residence I wouldn't likely use a ton of minutes, so It would just depend on how It would work performance-wise, and what kind of plan I could upgrade to.

[BaldEagl]

My brother moves around a lot for his job and has Verizon high speed wireless service.  The speeds are pretty good (much much faster than dial-up... probably similar to DSL) and I think he only pays a flat monthly fee.  His signal strength depends on where he is as it does with cell phone service but i think he's got an antenna booster that he uses when the signals not that strong.

[jimson]

Thanks BaldEagl, It might be worth investigating.
Fugitive, I'm having no luck preloading the terrain files from disk. See my post "SEA downloads."

[jimson]

So I checked it out to see if cellular is an option for people in rural areas whose only choices are dial up or satellite.

Yes and No..........

At least in my area they don't offer unlimited plans, the plans are based on data transfer, not minutes used.

About $60 per month for 5g. I don't know, but I'm guessing gaming would use that up in no time.

So for limited surfing, it might be an option, but for gaming or streaming video,
I don't think so.

Also in my area, the 3g network is not yet available, only the edge network which is only about twice as fast as dial-up.

At least for the time-being it looks like accepting the slow crawl of dial-up or a combo of satellite for faster surfing and a cheap dial up plan for gaming is the best way to go.

[Chilli]

Relatively new and pretty unpredictable for gaming, but we found a local (Rural) company that uses Radio Frequency Broadcast, and have all but ditched our satellite broadband.  We subscribe to use for home business, but I tap into it.    Dial up is a much more dependable connection but costs not much less than broadband, seeing as I would need to add another line to keep from tying up the business line. 

If you are in a rural area and cable is not an option, like here, then maybe RF is offered there also.  I still do not recommend it for gaming due to frequent disconnects.  Having said that, it all that I have at the moment that won't cost me the other arm and a leg.

[rpm]

I have unlimited data for my PDA thru AT&T, $19.99 a month.  10Mb connect on Edge, even faster if you can get 3G.

[Fender16]

I use Sprint Mobile Broadband and get DSL like speeds. Depending on location, of course.
Costs $60 a month and is 4gb cap but I don't go over it.

I play AH a good bit, download torrents (which don't register in the cap for some awesome reason), and just cruise the web.