Replacing home DSL with mobile internet ?
 

I'd like to know what hidden costs to look out for when using mobile internet.
After seeing what the guys at work can do with their "phones", I thought " Why the hell can't I just ditch my phone line and DSL and get one of these little buggers ?

From what I gather, you are charged a fee for being on-line,( even with so called "unlimited data usage" plans ?? ) and limited to a certain amout of data per month.
I assume this means that I can only be on-line for only a few hours a month.
( There are days when I am on-line for six hours straight on this PC that I use now . )

You can't download anything without a charge - right ?
( And you can't download things such as a program right ? ) ( If you could, at what charge ? )
What about Google maps ? If I use the phone for that is there an extra charge ? What about if I do a search - is there a charge for that ?

I have also been told that mobile internet and normal internet are not the same. Does this mean that I might not be able to post anymore on this site ?
( Is there a charge for typing out something on a forum too ?? )
What about sites like Hulu ? iPhones won't play the site, but other phones will. How does streaming video work in regards to charges ?

I know you guys are probably asking why that I am asking all of this here, versus just talking to a salesperson . Well ... I don't TRUST salespeople, and I thought some of you might be savvy with this sort of thing.

If it were really a possibility to use a cell phone for my internet, I could cancel my home phone and DSL charge ( $ 65 a month ) as well as have the GPS and camera feature on me when I need it.

As far as having to watch on a tiny little screen, there are phones that have monitor hookups, as well as hookups for keyboards.

As a side benefit, think of the energy savings from using a set up like this :thumbup: .

http://media.onsugar.com/files/ons/2...las.xlarge.jpg:

;)

Im on alltel and I can bluetooth to my computer and use the phone to dial in. I have unlimited data usage and dont get charged for anything. However that dialup connection is for when your desperate at best. Most of the time it is around a 100kbit connection but if youre lucky you will get an EVDO connection which is like 500kbit. Its laggy and drops the connection a LOT.

Also alltels gps navigation SUCKS.

Are there cheaper providers in your area?

M'net is not I'net... M'net is optimized for phones, not computers...

This analogy, hopefully, will give you some useful information:

You don't take a bike to a drag race.
You don't take a knife to a gun fight.
There are more.

Basically, if you're on the internet, doing internet things, you won't like doing those things on a phone. It's different. The phones aren't optimized for 'net use, and most websites don't have M' versions. If it doesn't have an M version, you can still view it, but it will be out of place, completely. (in most cases.)

I have this problem when checking my Gmail on my phone.. until Gmail enabled the Gmobile service, now it's fine. It still sucks, but not as bad.

Use a computer for computer stuff. If you're really freaking about your DSL service, find yourself a McD's and move in next to it. Free wireless Hi-Speed. Most libraries also have a wireless connection that's free to use. Several bars and pubs have them, to name a few. Most are not secured.

Some services also allow tethering a computer to your mobile phone data connection. It allows you to use your computer just like anywhere else.

I'd personally be reluctant to go off of DSL because even my 3G service is spotty at best, and compared to 7Mbps over the DSL, simply doesn't compare.

Bhazard has a sweet setup; wish it was still available. . . . .

Every provider I can find now has a 5 gb/ month FAP.

That said; I'm tethered to an Iphone right now and it works GREAT (same as every other phone I've tethered).

http://www.speedtest.net/result/542080134.png (tethered iphone)

It is not M'Net (never heard of that anyways); as with all tethered phones it is the internet; everything works just fine no issues

I have satellite internet (huge power draw; limited monthly usage and crappy)

Oh; and for my up and coming home internet connection http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ower-9650.html

Bhazard has a sweet setup; wish it was still available. . . . .

Every provider I can find now has a 5 gb/ month FAP.

That said; I'm tethered to an Iphone right now and it works GREAT (same as every other phone I've tethered).

It is not M'Net (never heard of that anyways); as with all tethered phones it is the internet; everything works just fine no issues

I have satellite internet (huge power draw; limited monthly usage and crappy)

One of the dirty little secrets behind 3G service and similar offerings is that the backbone feeding many of the sites doesn't even support the maximum wireless speed with a good signal. Just two people using it at once can easily max out a single T1.

If you don't want to pay for the land line ask about dry loop DSL, it's DSL over copper without the voice services, instead of it being tied to a phone number, it's tied to the circuit directly (remember the phone service is just a big copper CAT-5 network in most cases because it's cheap to build it that way) .

If the telco handles that type of request then they should tell you what they will need to get you patched up for DSL. It should cost more to get setup, but around half the cost of a phone/dsl package.

As an FYI AT&T refers to dry DSL as "DSL direct".

The problem we have with seperating DSL from POTS is that we get a very decent bundle discount, so the POTS service really only costs us about $12 per month extra. That and we will never accidentally leave our POTS phone somewhere, have it stolen, or likely run it through the wash - an extra cost for either replacement or handset insurance.

I guarantee that a person can get much more bang for their buck with home internet over DSL than wireless when all of the other factors are thrown in. I pay $30/month for 3G service that rarely if ever delivers over 1Mbps, usually much less, whereas my 7Mbps DSL for $29/month, is always on, always at maximum speed - and not subject to being misplaced. Nevermind the cell sites that won't allow me a simultaneous voice and data connection!

I have considering doing this very thing. Dumping my home DSL and POTS in favor of using my 3G internet via my mobile phone. If you have Windblows Mobile 6, there should be a program buried in the Windows folder called "Internet Sharing". When you enable this and connect via the USB cable to your computer, you can surf the Internet like normal. I had to do it for a few days when I moved and we did not have phone service yet... I am keeping my POTS/DSL at present because I also have Dishnetwork, and keeping my tuner plugged into a phone line saves me a few bucks a month, and expedites service. I also keep it for my current position at work...
I was wondering if a similar service exists in the Iphone. If so, I will be super tempted to dump POTS/DSL, even though I would have to buy out the rest of my contract...
[edit[ you can make a shortcut to the program by doing a copy then paste into the programs folder. This tip I got from xda developers...

Hmm, I did a little searching, and it looks like you need a tethering plan if you intend to do this, or you risk violating your terms of service...at least with AT&T.

for iphone you need 3.0.x and help.benm.at

violates terms of service . . .

For dish; most receivers will do ethernet; you could drop pots and go dry loop

I heard that if you get a Windows Mobile Phone like the Touch Pro from Sprint (who BTW have a $99 everything plan that is unlimited internet, texting, and minutes) you can get this little program to connect your PC/Laptop to the Internet at DSL speed.

WMWifiRouter - Welcome

The other issue I have run into with 3G is that sometimes it just flat doesn't work! My phone is maxed out on bars with the 3G icon on and I can't get any data outside of simple text messaging. This is likely more an issue of specific cell sites, but it has me seriously questioning committing to the idea if other options remain available. Even in areas where the data is working, inevitably if I can hook up over wifi to a public hotspot in the same area, it is significantly faster.

I don't believe AT&T requires a tethering plan if you have the regular data plan. I regularly push 100s of MB through my phone streaming audio. I don't know how they would know the difference if the phone does any kind of proxying. But I'm using a cooked ROM too, so maybe that's the difference.

O.K.
So DSL through a phone is not what I thought it might be. I just assumed wrong based on what I had seen from the guys at work with their iPhones.
I had noticed how fast that Google maps was, as well as YouTube.

Plug in a monitor and keyboard to the thing, and I thought I had a good solution to my home phone and DSL problems. Guess I was wrong.

Currently, my DSL through ATT is horrible. My speeds are less than half what they are supposed to be and I am ready to switch.

Streaming video has now become a complete joke ( buffering every ten seconds or less )

For you guys around the central Texas area, who do you use as a good provider ?

Cd, you might check to see how far you are from the switch. There is a distance limit for DSL, as the signal drops off. YOu might check into HughesNet, internet via satellite!

For anybody with DSL, there are some very simple things you can do to boost your signal and reliability:

#1 Use the damned filters the telco provides! Too often, as a technician for a telco, I run into people who get intermittent connections, only to find out something silly like a caller ID or satellite receiver has an unfiltered connection to the phone line. Unfiltered devices can even degrade performance without any obvious signs of it, providing feedback in portions of the DSL spectrum that may not kill the connection, but limiting the use of channels within the spectrum.

#2 Even better than #1, but a little more work, is to install a single filter at the telephone network interface (the main phone feed to the house), and route the DSL signal over it's own dedicated unfiltered home run wire to the jack. Don't connect anything else to the line except to use the sometimes provided phone out jack on the back of the modem. This means no other jacks, phones, fax machines etc - unless they use the jack on the back of the modem or a splitter with a filter at the wall end - not at the back of the dang machine! Even a simple moving of filters from the device end of a phone cord to the wall end can make a difference. (Yes, they are reversible.)

#3 Test the remainder of your house wiring for potential problems such as any shorts or grounds - or anything else that might send static back into the line. Any extra noise from poor wiring just cuts into the signal to noise ratio and should be avoided if at all possible. (Minor stray noise in the audio spectrum like a nearby radio station or a little AC hum by themselves generally won't affect the signal - but suggest the possibility of other problems that can.)

After taking the time to do #'s 2&3 on my own home, I watched my own SNR go from a range of 6-9dB to a more stable 9-11dB. For my installation, that extra 2-3 dB has made all of the difference between regular retrains and fallbacks from my 7Mb service to only a 5Mbps actual connection speed. It hasn't retrained more than once in the nine months since I did that.

Thanks for that tip Snax. My phone is hooked up to a filter at all times. I have around 4-5 jacks in my home, but only have the filter on the one which the phone is hooked to.
ATT told me that this is fine and will not affect anything.
My current speeds at the moment are 470 kbps download and 327 upload. I'm paying for 1.5 Mbps.
I had a technician that said I can't get better than the 470 / 327 because my signal is too "weak". Thing is is that I'm not using wireless, and I live right next to Dell computer and Samsung.
Sounds like BS to me !

It would have been cool if it had become possible to watch movies on an iPhone.

Netflix on the iPhone Will Work - But Only With Offline Mode | Epicenter | Wired.com

Cd, I put a filter on the phone, the DishNetwork receiver, my fax machine too! This reminds me, I think I forgot a phone. I really appreciate Snax' inputs, I think I will file that in my computer tips book so I can dig it up each time I move. My neighbors just moved in, and this will probably be useful to them too. I like the completely separate line idea, I just cannot do that in the house I am renting.

One other option...
 

I currently use an air card, which is like a cell phone, but no voice capability at all. Plugs into the USB port on my laptop. My current plan is about $60 per mo, I get good signal at home and at work. In my region (three states, more or less) I get unlimited download/upload/data. Stability has been pretty good. It drops out perhaps twice a week. I use it 10 hrs per day for work, and >8 hrs/day overnight to get my podcast stuff for the Ipod. Lots and lots and lots of data.

The big drawback is speed. It's noticeably faster than my dialup, but slower than any other kind of high speed. Youtube takes 3x to 4x the time to download. So, 4 minute video = 12 minute download.

It works for me, maybe not for you, as no voice unless you do skype or something. Probably too slow for that.

Finest regards,

troy

A cell phone data plan is expensive and AFAIK all of them require a 2 year contract.

But there are data only services that don't have a contract. Look into Clear 4G which I think is available in Austin now.

I have Verizon Wireless internet, using a MiFi 2200 router device. It basically acts as wifi for my and my wife's computer. I live out in the country where DSL and cable are unavailable. I had dish internet through WildBlue for a year; it was fast enough but the latency even browsing was a killer. We live 1/2 mile from a 3G tower, so I get full bars and an excellent signal. It's also nice that when we go somewhere, we can bring the internet with and whoever is not driving can surf (wife runs a home-based "party" style business, I am sometimes offsite support for IT stuff).

I'm planning on moving soon and high on our priority list is ending somewhere with DSL or cable. It's not the speed of 3G that kills me, it's the download cap. With no kids, it's very easy to hit 5GB every month. I'm a geek so I like to surf a lot, but I have to curb a lot of that. On the other hand, my counterpart at our corporate office uses Sprint's 3G network and doesn't hit the cap, and he's got 3 kids at home (although he has a firewall setup to limit daily usage to 1 hour). If you can find Sprint 4G, that's claimed to be really unlimited, capped at 5gb if you roam back onto the 3G network.

I have a US cellular wireless modem. Connection speed is a crap shoot. At my farm I have seen speeds of 1.5mhz at my house It is usually 200-400kbs. I am further away from a tower and through many hills at my farm. My connection goes dormant about everyother day and then a dance of disconnecting and updating prl begins.

I have a 4ghz/month contract. I never go over 1.5ghz. cost including the spanish/american war tax is 73 dollars a month. Where I live and commute to US cellular is the main player. Verizon and others are purported to be weak by their users.

The icon on my desktop for it is labeled "lame internet connection" I mean it.

We don't have any wired connection that can pull more than 3kbs.

I am using an old dish network dish to improve the power of reception .

I have internet sharing with my android phone, costs nothing more than having the phone and data plan (unlimited data is the only option my provider has). It is a nice crutch for when not in a WIFI but it sucks dead frog compared to my dsl at home.

I give t-mobile an extra $10 a month for unlimited gsm "internet for phones". My old sgh-t639 and some really crappy software and a $3 usb cable make for an internet connection for my laptop when no other is available. It's slow but manageable and lets me work from wherever. I do have the top tier data pipe to the house though, but without the phone/tv. I don't need two phone numbers, can skype when the minutes get low, and use netflix and terrestrial broadcast now that the reception doesn't suck.

Hey... wow. Almost forgot about this thread.
I have had an HTC EVO 4G phone for a couple of months now, and I can confidently say that dropping home DSL for mobile internet is finally a reality.
I have had some issues with the cell towers where I live, but in other areas of Austin, I have seen speeds of right at 9 Mbps. ( 8.9 )
Gone are the days of ' mobile' web pages. Smart phones display the web every bit as good as a PC.

If you drop your phone and internet and simply replace them with a smart phone, the cost even out.

( And yes I'm on the phone typing this )

And the best part ? This particular phone is one of the least efficient smartphones out there, yet uses only 4 watts. Compare that to a desktop PC and the difference is staggering.
It takes me roughly an hour and a half to fully charge the phone, which uses 4 watts per hour measured with a Kill-A- Watt meter.
Browsing the internet, I can get 8-10 hrs on a single charge. That's 6 watts consumed in 10 hours :)

It's slightly amusing to think that at 1ghz, this phone has a faster processor than my desktop did just a few years ago.
I'll be laughing again next year at how slow this thing was to have only 1ghz.
I read that a typical dual core pc today will out run the fastest super computer from just fifteen years ago. Imagine that - a dual core laptop takes under 100 watts to do what a 15 year old supercomputer did with several megawatts of electricity.

I normally look at the web at home on my cell phone modem. As far as performance goes it is borderline pathetic. Still better than the 3kbs that my home phone had 3 years ago.

Not everyone lives near a state capitol or major city. I have two main locations that I access the internet at on my cell phone modem. One is in Missouri and it usually gets 160-300kbs I have another location in Illinois that I am lucky to get 160kbs. Neither location is line of sight.

The place that gives me the best signal is in the woods. The place that gives me the worst signal is at the highest point in the county and is about the same distance to a tower. I can barely view a you tube video.It is full of starts and stops when everything is perfect.

Nothing happens in my world at a million characters per second. Of course the best thing about my location is the lack of people. No traffic lights, lack of civilization. No one around me has anything funny on their vehicles.

Everything Snax said. This is then in addition:

I'm not sure what detail you'll get from ATT but there's a few things that you should be trying to find out.
If you have a login into your modem you can get most of it.

a) Distance from the node/dslam. To get a decent 1.5Mbps down I'd say less than 18,000 feet on 26AWG copper. 20,000 if you're on 24AWG (unlikely).

b) wiring routes within the house from the demarc. If your telco provider service ends at their demarcation point outside, run a dedicated pair to the modem. Avoid splitters like the plague. They corrode and get noisy. Check all connections for signs of corrosion. Wall jacks go bad for no reason, even when they look good. Older jacks lose the springiness in their pins and make for noisy connections.

c) 3-way splitters from Radio Shack and Walmart are evil and for some reason cause problems with DSL. Throw them away. They all seem to be made the same and have crosstalk problems.

d) What transmission mode is your ISP providing? G.Lite? G.DMT? ADSL2+? (Three of a possible many). At distances over 16,000' if your modem is trying to train G.DMT and be throttled you'll get abysmal throughput, even with Reach-Extended ADSL2. Some modems can work a lot better at distance by being switched onto "Interleaved" mode. This is at the ISP end, and I'm not sure how willing your ISP will be to discuss the way they make their system work for you.

e) What's your SNR and attenuation? Ideally you're looking to get the entire-line attenuation below about 31dB. in the mid-to-upper 20's is good, low 20's to about 15dB is excellent. 6dB on the SNR is about the minimum to give a solid connection, albeit slow, over 12dB will give a much better connection. Forget not that you eat into the SNR margin the greater the bandwidth is being able to be used. The better the SNR, the more bits per tone can be encoded accurately, and the faster your connection will be, and the better the error correction and recovery. See if you can find out if your HEC (Header Error Count, basically packets that arrive so mangled they can't be repaired and are discarded) climbs steadily. It should hardly move- on my line here my HEC is 1350 packets in four months of operation.

DSL can be wonderfully reliable, given good line characteristics. You just have to make allowances for the fact it's a newer technology piggybacking over a very old technology. Wireless is fickle compared, and subject to transmission problems totally out of your control. You can control the copper within your house and improve it. You can't stop your neighbor arc-welding...

Clean the line up inside the house and you should see an improvement. Also note that if your modem has been fighting poor line conditions for several years the amplifiers might not be in tip-top shape any more, having run at max amplitude for a long time.

Hope that helps.

--Phil

Thanks Phil.

I actually had a funny story with my DSL over WiFi (medium range) link today.
Basically, I lost signal, drove over to my remote site, and there was 2 dump trucks and a road paver parked right in front of my remote equipment. Now if only they would pave the road with traffic:rolleyes: .

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the exceptions to the rules on DSL. I've seen solid 1.5Mbps connections on loops as long as 22,000 feet, and crappy connections at the same on under 10,000 feet. Even when all available techniques for getting the most out of a circuit are employed, sometimes it simply boils down to the type of cable the signal runs through and what other circuits occupy adjoining pairs.

In that vein, it's reasonable to try to get more speed out of circuits that don't meet the rule of thumb, but often counterproductive to touch those that do. I.e., if it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it! ;)

It's also worth noting that telcos use a mix of technologies to deliver DSL. Just because they serve one area with G.DMT, doesn't mean somebody next door isn't running on the original CAP! (Yes, there are still a few stragglers around here.) It's also worth noting that proximity to the central office isn't the end-all indicator of speed potential for non-fiber DSL. I live less than 1000' from the central office that serves me and can only get 12Mbps/896. People further out running on fiber fed remote DSLAMs by contrast can get 40M/20M! (Knowing the system, it boils down to a trunking layout issue, but that's beside the point.)

Yep. We have one or two customers on 26AWG at 33,000'. That's cheating a little because we've got a line repeater in the circuit. That was pulling 2.6Mbit and 350k.
We have one or two customers at 21,000' and they have a fairly steady 1.5Mbit/512k running on reach-extended adsl2.

Over 90% of the time our DSL problems are in the last few yards of wiring.

Multi-core wire put into an auto-punchdown demarc (yeah, it has dialtone but the attenuation is so high because you're only just making contact with the wire), splitters into splitters into splitters.

The last thing we have trouble with is load coils on the lines. We've had a few that haven't shown up on the line test equipment, which is usually good down to the last few feet of wire to locate it. That really attenuates DSL. That and waterlogged crimp connections.

Like I'd said, and I think you'll agree, that's what you get when you push something over a line that was never designed for it.

That said, I'm currently running 16.5M down and 2.5M up over copper. I'm 3200' from the office.

--Phil

I don't completely understand the nomenclature but I understand 26g wire, distances and waterlogged connections.

My land line at home was verizon and they would not consider anything more than was already in place, I am 5.5 miles from their hub. A mile away the rural coop was running TV through their lines I could not pull more than 3kbs. My office is across the street from their switching terminal, I refuse to use their service as they are being prickly about extending their "good" coverage out from their hub.