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Good morning John Valenti,
I've been using SBC/Yahoo DSL at home for a while now, and I'm quite
pleased with it. (They have plans that start at between $19.99 to $34.99
a month for a year of service, depending on speeds and IP address type
you want.) SBC also offers some discounts if you group other SBC
services together, such as SBC local phone and long distance services,
Cingular wireless, and others. If you already have SBC for your local
and long distance, you can lump them together on one bill and reap some
small additional savings. The lowest price tends to be available if you
signup online.
As for roaming and travel, SBC also offers SBC Freedomlink service,
which is a pay-as-you-use hotspot service for access around the country.
See:
http://www05.sbc.com/Products_Services/Residential/ProdInfo_1/1,,1315--10-3-3,00.html
for some more details, including a link on that page to available
hotspots in every state. SBC is contracting to provide internet service
in McDonald's, Barnes & Noble, Wyndam Hotels, and Embassy Suites, and
other locations in every state. Unfortunately, they aren't everywhere,
but the are in a surprising number of locations.
They have two Freedomlink plans: in plan one, you buy a pre-paid
activation code that gives you a certain number of sessions good for 24
hours of service at the location where you activate them. So, you look
up your destination, find a Freedomlink access point in that area, you
can get three sessions for $25.00 prepaid. For someone who travels a
lot, and knows they will be in an area with FreedomLink hotspots, you
can also buy a membership which bills you $19.95 a month for unlimited
access to any Freedomlink hotspot in the country. I basically got one
free Freedomlink session free with my SBC/Yahoo DSL service, and it does
work pretty well. If you know where you are going, and there is a
Freedomlink AP at or near your destination, this isn't a bad way to get
access if there isn't anything free around. It's a little cheaper that
the Toshiba MyConnect plan (which is $29.95 a month, or $18.95 for 30
hours through their MyConnect hotspots used in 30 days of activation.)
You can always try your luck at finding a free hotspot as well. Do a
Google search on "wifi hotspot locator" and you'll find lots of options
including JWire (a service mostly funded by advertising), as well as a
few open source, public domain efforts to map EVERY existing wireless AP
in the country. These effort rely on people to report APs in their area,
often times found by people wardriving with wireless sniffers to try and
map the names and locations of hotspots. As with anything free, you do
get what you pay for, and the service isn't always reliable. In the
Cincinati airport (where I was stuck last fall with a long layover due
to a flight cancellation last fall) they advertise free WiFi service in
the terminal buildings. However, I found that if I wasn't sitting
directly underneath an AP, my signal was mostly worthless, and speed was
closer to a 56K modem, or the connection dropped more than it was up,
etc.
When high-speed services became available, I swore I wouldn't buy until
the price came down to about $20-$25 per month. I was paying about $20
a month for my second phone line to do dialup without tying up my
primary phone line. At that price point, dropping the second phone line
and getting DSL while keeping my primary phone line and number was
almost a wash from a cost perspective. I don't push the online gaming
envelop very hard, and I'm not running any services at home that need a
fixed IP, so the basic residential DSL service more than meets my family
needs at home. If your retired professor is in a similar situation,
perhaps that is all they will need as well.
I hope this info helps.
John A. Resotko
Head of Systems Administration
Michigan State University College of Law
208 Law College Building
East Lansing, MI 48824-1300
email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: 517-432-6836
Fax: 517-432-6861
>>> John Valenti <[log in to unmask]> 04/19 3:09 PM >>>
1. Do people have any good strategies for cheap wireless while
traveling? I suggest to people that they look for hotels with free
wireless and visit Panera's, Beaners etc. Any other good sources?
And I was wondering if there might be a similar service to the Merit
800 for nationwide wireless access. (I saw an ad from Toshiba offering
this) Would it be a good idea for Merit/MSU to get into a system like
that?
2. One of our retired profs lives in East Lansing. They have been
using
dialup, I finally recommended that they get broadband. Should I
suggest
they get ACD ($20/mo for 6 months, then $50/mo) or SBC for $20/mo. Or
something else - they do have cable tv, so a cable modem is an option.
I know ACD gives them an MSU IP, but I don't know how important that
is
anymore (is it worth $180/year?).
Thanks for your advice.
-John
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