HSDPA-ddicted

A year ago this month, I decided to bite the $80 per month bullet and invest in GPRS wireless service for my laptop - the Cingular EDGE network. It's a service that uses a PC card with an antenna to traverse the cellular airwaves so that you can connect to the Internet from anywhere that you can use a cell phone. I use it to connect to church and ministry customers' networks and perform remote administration - the cost is a justifiable business expense (Oh, yes it is). The speed? It's about 3 times faster than dial-up, not terribly fast, but capable of meeting my needs.

Fast forward to December and Cingular announced that they had launched their new 3G network called HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access). On the website, it boasts speeds of 400K-700K with bursts up to a full megabit (translation: way fast). The bonus about this service is that it runs alongside of the existing EDGE network and is automatically available to EDGE customers. All I needed was a new HSDPA card and since the price of the new card was $199.00, I was going to wait a while to buy one. However, a buddy of mine at the office scored a $99 deal on one and was evil enough to loan it to me for about 30 minutes (Uh-oh). Wow! In a number of speed tests I was consistently seeing speeds of 1.1 Mbps, file downloads averaged 140Kbps, full-size QuickTime movie trailers were able to download way ahead of the playback, and Remote Desktop to my clients' servers was much smoother.

So naturally I ordered one for myself (er BUSINESS), it arrived today and now I'm working on the Internet at DSL speed without a lick of Wi-Fi to be found anywhere. Ah, the world is my hotspot!