I have a possible opportunity to move into a new position with the company I work for.   I will be able to work from my home office, which also would mean I can travel and work from the RV as often as possible.

Here's my question-  For those that now have or have had a Verizon AirCard and travel around the US, has your experience been that as long as you stay in an RV park near a big city or interstate, you received a fairly good signal.  By fairly good I mean a signal that would allow you to use the internet at an acceptable speed to do work or research using most non-video type websites.

Here is Verizon's own coverage map - Verizon Coverage Locator, just select "BROADBAND & V CAST" and then "Refresh" to get the data coverage. Where it is white you have no coverage, where it is green (light or dark, which you will see when you zoom into some areas) you have slow 1XRTT speeds, a bit better than dial-up but not by much. The rest (blue and yellow) is high speed. 1XRTT speeds might work for you in a pinch, but I don't think you will like it for days on end. Our experience is close to cities we mostly have high speed but the towers are very busy sometimes due to many others using it, so time of day can matter. A bit more rural in high speed areas and we often have great service all day. But we do find places we camp with no or slow service and some of these are close to cities, mostly in the west. No definitive answer because it does vary.

We use Sprint, but the conclusions are the same. The maps do a good job of showing the type of service you can expect.

Once again Bill comes through for me. I have been asking the same question. Appears to me that Verizon will be the best choice for Sherri and I. As I look at the coverage map all the areas we will be going to have coverage. I do understand that the amount of usage at any given time during the day can effect the service you might get. I will just have to get on line early and get all I have posted. Thanks Speedy

We've been extremely pleased with our Verizon broadband modem. Today driving across southeastern Kansas I was amazed that we had broadband service in the middle of nowhere. Once we were on Interstate 70, I had consistant broadband service across Kansas. Remember you can increase your range with a Wilson antenna and amplifier (although I have never needed that on an interstate highway).

There is a difference between most RVers who would like good internet everywhere and those working who need good internet everywhere, every day.  Most of use can handle staying a few days or even a week without good internet access.  Those who have to have access most every day to make a living get a Motosat Datastorm automatic roof mount internet dish ($5000 and $80/month) and some add a data card from Verizon or Sprint for $60/month for service while driving, as a backup and for the few places where trees or buildings block the satellite dish.

If you are willing to change where you stay based on service then you should have no issues with Verizon or Sprint. We prefer Verizon since we find the coverage in the West to be a little better, but either will work for you. If you want to be ANYWHERE, without thought to signal, then you will need to go with a satellite system. There is no other answer.

PLAN from the beginning on installing an amplifier and external antenna. In fact, assuming you will need reliable voice service you might consider starting with a splitter as well, which will enable you to share the antenna/amp between your phone and aircard/router.

I've updated my website recently with what I would buy today, so you might want to take a look. Basically, I'd get a Cradlepoint MBR1000, a USB760 aircard, a Cyfre amp, and an appropriate antenna. The antenna type depends on the mounting location. All this would be WIRED, not wireless.

-- Edited by Jack Mayer on Friday 27th of March 2009 07:15:16 AM

Thanks for the feedback. That's what I was looking for. Based upon the coverage map it looked like if I stay close to cities and interstates there would be good signals most of the time. Your comments confirm it, so it looks like I will be able to work from the RV at will. I will be using a wilson antenna and amplifier along with the CBR1000 router as Jack suggested. Now all I have to do is hope I get the position and will be able to semi-fulltime.

I currently do what your planning on.

In more urban areas the air card has been good the only issue being when I must down load large numbers of large files then I try to find a wifi location to pull those.  (The five GB limit kicks in on those).

My wife and I do try to stay at campgrounds that have wifi when I know I'm going to get slammed with work.  Beyond that we don't worry too much.

The amplifier and antenea are both on the short list to pick up but so far (knock on wood) I haven't needed them.

Mallo

We use the Verizon AirCard for our internet.  In the past 8 months we have travelled down the east coast, along the southern states, and now we're in California.  The only areas I recall not having a signal are Mt. Rogers, VA and Big Bend National Park, TX.  We have had pretty good coverage, although it can be slow depending on the area and time of day.  I would not recommend it for viewing videos or downloading large files on a regular basis.  Funny - as I'm typing this I'm down to no bars.  Hope this goes through. 

If you are constantly sending and receiving large file, I might consider a satellite dish.

-Colleen

I'd also suggest that you can determine type of coverage on your Verizon cell phone so that you won't have to boot up the computer to do so.

If you see EVDO somewhere on the phone's screen, you are in broadband coverage.

pierreandcolleen wrote:

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If you are constantly sending and receiving large file, I might consider a satellite dish.

-Colleen

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That's not much better. We have a MotoSat dish and they also limit the download quantity every day. If you exceed it, they put you on 56K for 24 hours. It's called a fair access policy, or FAP. I don't believe it regulates uploading though.

 

But with Motosat/Hughes.net you can download all you want between 2AM and 7AM Eastern Time where the download limit does not apply.  I use Free Download Manager (FDM) to schedule large downloads in that time, which you can get from download.com.  You do need to use IE for FDM to come up for the download since Firefox has its own download manager.  Last night I downloaded two big files, one at 11:01PM Pacific Time (2AM Eastern) and the other at 11:50PM for a total of 770MB.  The downloads were complete between 1AM and 2AM.
Uploads do not count and people have used online backup systems with Hughes.net, though it takes weeks to upload the first backup.
Where we are right now, just SW of Portland, OR, Verizon is broadband speed but big emails sometimes time out and restart while Hughes.net is working fine.

I am considering doing the same thing. I can work at home and travel at the same time. I never gave this idea any thought until I read this blog http://www.macandchris.com/. They seem to have a good setup. You may want to check it out.