Working while traveling, but need internet.

Broadband mobile data service. It is business, however much data you need, the cost is a cost of doing business, work that into your business plan.

Verizon has good coverage nationally, AT&T has good coverage in some places where Verizon is not licensed for business and might rely on smaller carriers for roaming.

If I were traveling everywhere, I would probably buy data plans with both providers, but with most of my time in what used to be SBC country, AT&T works better for me. When the Baby Bells started reconsolidating as mobile providers, both coasts ended up merging into Verizon, and the coasts are where most of the population exists.

You probably want LTE performance. That is going to limit where you stop. LTE is still mostly found in densely populated areas where 90% of the customers are, you don't find it so much in the empty places where people like to get away from civilization to camp. In a city of 30,000 with the headquarters of a large international corporation, I can get LTE downtown, I can get it along the main highway through the city east of downtown, but there are dead spots between, LTE disappears 1 mile west of the CBD, I'm down to Edge three mile out then no mobile data service at all until I reach the next town. You might be familiar with this if you get outside of Austin on rural roads, but not on the major highways, not in the suburbs, they get covered.

WiFi tends to be unreliable or slow in rural RV parks because hey, they can't get broadband service, so they do the best they can on a slow wire and share that with everybody over WiFi.

Same for going to the library. Libraries in towns with broadband service might have good enough connections to share. If they can't get affordable broadband, what they can provide might not be useful to you.

Companies like McD's can offer WiFi as a perk because they have to pay whatever it takes to get the connection to run their business, even if it means footing the bill for the optical cable all the way from the nearest telephone company office. RV parks often don't do enough business to support the cost, and they can still use dial-up to talk to the credit card processors.

Pangaea Ron wrote:

RV daytrader wrote:

Us out West wrote:

ford truck guy wrote:
I use a Verizon MIFI Jet pack.. get the largest data plan

X2

Works great for us.

X3...I day trade for 7 hours a day...I use on average 60 meg a day usage. I have my computer set to not open any ads or pop-ups. I dont open pictures or view videos either.

x4, and we also use a Wilson Cell Phone Signal Booster.

x5 - I work while on the road also and I also have the Wilson

I fear I may be one of the few that can give an answer you can take to the bank. If you look at the map of states colored in that is in my sigfile, you may get the plan that we travel a lot. While not all of those states were with this coach, we have been to most in the last ten years. I carried a computer the whole time and turned in reports the whole time.

Yes, Verizon does have the best coverage, but you still will want a repeater (booster) in a lot of the west. Be careful of services that say they use Verizon towers, because V buys links on a lot of other's towers and you won't get those. Whether you use a jetpack or your phone is little difference. I had to stay with a phone longer than I might because I used to have an unlimited data plan. I just had to give that up when I finally retired. There is an app for Android called FoxFi. You buy it once. Then you can hard or wifi tether at only the expense of the phones data plan.

In much of the western US, even the best cell coverage can be poor. I did run a Starband unit for a while. That was back in the 1X days and it seemed like magic. The program got to be too expensive even when it was deductible. If you need speed and you need dependable, get quotes for satellite. I could get by bursting reports at any time I could get on. Satellite only works when you are standing still and have a clear southern sky.

If you are only doing text stuff, you can get by with a lot less. For a while, I had to work with a data capable satellite phone. It was slow, but it was cost effective for reports and support requests. It worked all the time, but when I tried to pass failure pictures to home office, it was just too slow. I would have to wait to get to where I could crib some wire. (Still carry the Alfa -JIC.)

So, you have to figure out how much you really need and if you can live with outages. Everything is a compromise.

Now, you have a lot of shopping to do. Good Luck

Matt

Verizon MiFi... 2 years now. wife can use it as I am driving down the road. :)

ugh wrote:

2oldman wrote:
Mobile phone hotspot, McDs, Starbucks.. the usual.

Working from a campground. No way I want to spend 8 hours a day at Starbucks or McDonalds. Mobile phone hotspots will not work at campground.

do you have a particular campground in mind? Because if you can get a cell phone signal, then hotspot will more than likely work.

What may hinder you would be data and how much or how fast you will need.

Sprint Mobile Broadband. $65.00/month

Stick a USB plug into your computer and go!

IMHO Doesn't get any easier than that. No tethering to a phone, router, etc etc.

I Full time and had service EVERY where I went. I bought it in 2006 and STILL using it.

Do you need to download/upload files a few times per day or continuous online access? That makes a difference.

Beware on your "unlimited" plan. AT&T would send me nasty grams after 3GB / month on a grandfathered unlmited even though I only went over that a couple times per year. Ditto if I was not on AT&T towers using too much data which happened when I traveled to NV on business. I saved money by dropping unlimited and going to a set family plan plus gained the option of using my iPhone as a hotspot.

another vote for Verizon. Since this is work, and I sometimes play armchair quarterback, you should be looking at their business class offerings and not the (cheap) consumer packages. if you read through the 300 page terms of service, I'm sure they well cover the fact business use of a consumer package is a breach of contract.

things to consider: (a) make your employer pay for it or (b) write it off as an reimbursed employee expense, and the IRS will soon talk to your employer about the lack of reimbursement

You can get a GPS address for whereever you are going to be, then call tech support for your cell provider. Usually they will or can tell you the exact location of the nearest cell tower, and what type of reception you can expect. Get a Jetpack type wifi hotspot from at least two different providers, Verizon and AT&T both, and you should be covered in most locations. Be aware that it will not be all that fast, and its gonna cost you a lot. If your new job requires high-speed service or uses lots of data, best stay where you can get cable.

When I was a kid, we carried our acoustic couplers to the pay phone..... And we liked it ;)

In addition to the good advice already, some places you can get high speed cable for as little as a month at a time.