Take Your Work Anywhere with Wireless Broadband

After a long debate, I eventually decided that I wanted to try out Verizon's wireless broadband for myself. I had heard reports of great speeds and reports of slow speeds, but never personally heard from someone who used the service. I also knew that Sprint and Cingular offered similar services, but I found it impossible to get any sort of information about their coverage areas. Once I heard about Verizon's 15 day money back guarantee, I knew I had to find out for myself what the service would be worth.

At home I utilize a Qwest DSL connection, wirelessly, quoted as 7.0Mbps, much faster, and cheaper, than any cable service offered in my area. I expected Verizon's wireless service to get maybe a fraction the typical speeds I receive on my DSL connection, but I was still pleasantly surprised. On average, when downloading updates to my Linux computer I average speeds of 120-200Kbps, not bad for service I could use nearly anywhere. It was probable that I could have even faster signal if I lived in a town of more than 22,000 people; my signal probably came from a cell phone tower nearly 10 miles away.

In order to get a better idea of the service quality, I had traveled from point to point in town with my laptop patiently downloading several update files in the passenger seat, to get an estimated range of where I could find the best signal. Surprisingly, the service stayed constantly connected, and I received a pretty consistent connection speed. To further test my luck, I decided I would go out of town, at least a little ways, to see exactly how much signal speed I would get. I went about two miles out of town, about as far as I would ever go, and found the speeds were still excellent. Overall, the signal quality varied as any cell phone would, but I never completely lost signal, and speeds hardly dipped below 50Kbps.