Thanks to all who have ever discussed satellite internet vs. using an air card on this forum and other RV forums. After reading your posts for a few months, I made the decision to go with a Verizon air card and wireless router setup.

I just received my air card and equipment from 3G Store.com last night and installed it quickly.  It works great.   Very fast speeds, nearly as fast as the shared T-1 based network at my office.

Glad the aircard is working so well for you where you are.  Hopefully it will continue to work well for you on the road.  We picked one up with a router and amplifier to hook to our mag mount antenna from 3GStore.com in March.  Our plan was to stop using our Hughes.net satellite internet in September.  We have needed the amplifier and antenna to get a decent signal in many places, be prepared to buy them.  I am thinking of getting a trucker antenna since it will do better than the mag mount.
But now we have two ways to get internet because both do not work everywhere.  We have places we camp where satellite is a very difficult to find a spot or unusable, others seem to always find that whole in the trees but we don't always.  But we also find places where the aircard is dirt slow, like right now in Mina, NV we have weak extended network and down/up speeds of 15/16 (really).  Normal high speed for Verizon is 500-1500 down and 150-500 up.  Places we had no aircard service even using the amplifier and antenna since March: Lakewood, NM and Kamiah, ID.  Places we had slow aircard speed, mostly from extended network: Cottondale, AL (Verizon map showed fast, but it was not), Burns, OR, Sunriver, OR, Ilwaco/Seaview/Long Beach, WA (where we just spent a month), and here in Mina, NV.  Plus we are thinking of going back into Canada where satellite works and aircards cost a small fortune so we are stuck with both internet solutions.

It is not a perfect world for RVers and internet access.  But we are addicted to it.

Bill, We tend to stay close to interstate highways with lots of cell coverage and currently travel mostly in California, Nevada & Arizona. Based upon the maps I've studied, it looks like we have good coverage at all of our normal spots. The air card seemed like the best solution for us, since we still have a sticks & bricks house plus the RV. I ordered two setups from 3G, one for the RV & one for the house. Both have wireless routers, antennas (solid mount) and the RV setup has the amplifier. We will simply unplug the aircard from the router in the house and plug it into the router for the RV when we leave. As we transition into semi-fulltime someday, I plan to add an internet satellite setup. I hope you're just passing through Mina. I drove through it on the way from Tonopah to one of the FAA Radio Navigation sites up in the hills above Luning, NV. I remember seeing an RV park at the opposite end of the town from the cemetary. Looked like an OK park for the area. Hopefully you have one of the sites with a shade tree. Thanks for the info....that's what I like about this site, you can get tons of information as you need it. the bear II

Glad you have an antenna and amplifier, you will need it on the road, those campgrounds are not all on the interstates.

There is only one campground in Mina, Sunrise Valley, and it has huge full hookup sites with 30/50AMP for $26/night (AAA, AARP, FMCA) plus you can get wi-fi for $2/day.  Maybe we should have paid the $2/day instead of having such a slow internet. 

We drove from there to Caliente today, going through Tonapah and Rachel.  Saw this huge vulture soaring and realized it was a condor, it was bigger than an eagle.  Very cool.  We were also surprised by all the Joshua Trees along the Extraterrestrial Highway.

Here is Caliente we are staying at Young's RV Park, with large full hookup 30AMP sites for $18 under large cottonwoods.  Verizon is extended network here, but it is much faster than in Mina.  Tomorrow Hurricane, Utah with a stop for fuel at the Cedar City Love's which has diesel at $3.599/gallon cash price. 

I know this thread is kinda old but I am a little stumped. I went to the Verizon web site and the way I understood it you can't get Internet without bundling it with another service. Did I read that wrong? We have used T-Mobile pre pay cards and have been very happy with it and the cost( We don't talk on phone much) but their internet service is pretty much limited to certain hot spots.Would like to keep T-Mobile phone and use Verizon for Internet service.Is this possible?

Verizon has both data plans that use an aircard (modem) and data plans that are addons to your cell phone. To add on to your cell phone the phone needs to be able to be "tethered" using a cable to hook to the computer and only a few cell phones will work. The cost is the same, $60/month. When most cell phones are tethered to a computer they will not work as phones, just like the old days with modems on phone lines. You do not need a Verizon cell phone to get a Verizon aircard, there is no discount. But if you have a Verizon cell phone they will combine the accounts and billing.

I was confused as well until I started thinking of my aircard as a cellphone. That's the way Verizon treats it, in fact the aircard is assigned a telephone number just like a cellphone. You just can't make or receive telephone calls with it.

We receive a separate bill for the aircard.  We also have other telephone services with Verizon and have kept them all separately billed to make our accounting easier.

And we have an AT&T cellphone with internet access and bluetooth so we can use our laptop with it or use the aircard.

The aircard speeds are much faster, very near DSL speeds.

We are very happy with the Verizon aircard and have learned to stay under the 5GB limit so we don't get charged for overage.

-- Edited by thebearII at 10:36, 2008-12-09