Review by lastmile 
UPDATED: 292 days ago
member for 2.1 years, 520 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Robertsville,Franklin,MO
 $65 per month (24 month contract)
 "Cost, good improvement over Dial-Up and Satellite, especially for VPN's. Cost is fair"
 "None"
 "Beats pants off Satellite / Dial-up. Can't wait for next-gen 3G/4G improvements"
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(ratings match consensus)
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AT&T (cingular) 3G wireless is a good improvement over Satellite Internet. 3G wireless also improves IPSec VPN performance as compared to Satellite which was a primary motivator for me
The latency seems relatively consistent around 100-200ms but sometimes drops into sub-100's and at times, peaks over 1000ms. It would appear that some games may run over 3G that don't require twitch reflexes, i.e. Quake-like games, i.e. Quake 3 tested in 200ms+ range with some latency-spikes. The only sour-point would be latency-spikes as it would be great to have a consistent sub-100ms ping.
Signal stability has improved since 3G was originally turned-up in the area. Initially experienced occasional dropped connections but as of January 2009 it is maintaining good stability with very few dropped calls -- hope it remains this way.
60.00 is cheaper than some Satellite packages so cost seems fair for customers' with no alternatives. Hopefully the cost will also keep the bandwidth / network utilization at fair levels so they don't get overwhelmed with too many customers.
Interestingly, my upload speed consistently seems to be better than my download speeds with and without VPN -- see below. Have not ran into issues with 5GB monthly cap yet.
I'm currently using an AT&T Mercury USB (Sierra Wireless Compass 885U) for the USB ubiquity, an available external antenna jack and the modem's upgradeability. Sierra indicates prospective download speed up to 7.2 Mbps and upload to 2 Mbps (upgradeable to 5.76 Mbps) so hopefully with firmware and 3G network updates, the card will have upgradeable throughput for awhile.
Also using a Cradlepoint MBR1000 Wireless-N router which is a tad pricey ($239.00) but works well as a mobile broadband router to share the connection for several computers. It is equipped with two USB ports, one Express Slot, one 10/100 WAN, and four 10/100 LAN ports.
The router has many configurable options, WAN failover, logging, SNMP and several firmware updates to support newer broadband modems. It also appears to have pretty good reviews over a few sites.
Some tests during Internet prime-time:
Normal ISP test
:::.. testmy.net test results ..:::
Download Connection is:: 1128 Kbps about 1.13 Mbps (tested with 1024 kB)
Download Speed is:: 138 kB/s
Upload Connection is:: 1495 Kbps about 1.5 Mbps (tested with 2992 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 182 kB/s
Tested From:: »testmy.net (Main)
Test Time:: 2008/12/09 - 9:04pm
D-Validation Link:: »testmy.net/stats/id-9WX32TOFE
U-Validation Link:: »testmy.net/stats/id-JMLPCNAB4
User Agent:: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1) [!]
IPSec VPN tests:
:::.. testmy.net test results ..:::
Download Connection is:: 147 Kbps about 0.15 Mbps (tested with 512 kB)
Download Speed is:: 18 kB/s
Upload Connection is:: 362 Kbps about 0.4 Mbps (tested with 748 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 44 kB/s
Tested From:: »testmy.net (Main)
Test Time:: 2008/12/09 - 9:02pm
D-Validation Link:: »testmy.net/stats/id-Q4K719LAY
U-Validation Link:: »testmy.net/stats/id-FNVCJIH6Z
User Agent:: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; InfoPath.1) [!]
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