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Wireless adventures: Cellphones turn laptops into traveling Web connection

By Nancy Gohring
Special to The Seattle Times

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Cellphone customers sometimes discover the service they get doesn't exactly live up to their expectations. Users commonly find coverage isn't as good as they imagined, dropped calls are more frequent than they hoped, and bills come with a few surprises.

The same rings true with the data cards some cellphone operators are beginning to sell. These PC cards allow users to wirelessly access the Internet from their laptops.

Among other things, the companies that market the cards often claim these connections operate at speeds that might be achieved in a lab with just one user, but most such speeds wouldn't be seen by a customer in the wild.

I set out recently to measure the reality behind the performance claims of data cards from AT&T Wireless and Sprint PCS. Each carrier uses different network technology, and the companies have been on opposite sides of an often bitter feud over their underlying wireless technology.

Connecting wirelessly AT&T Wireless / Sony Ericsson GC82 Price: $249.99, but AT&T Wireless currently offers a $249.99 mail-in rebate. Supported operating systems: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP Supported hardware: IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, Sony and Winbook. (Toshiba is listed on the AT&T Wireless Web site, but a spokesman said there's a conflict between Toshiba laptops and the card. The problem is being worked on.) Company estimated speeds: 100 to 130 kbps. Sprint PCS / Novatel Wireless Merlin C201 Price: $179.99. Some customers are eligible for a $30 rebate. Supported operating systems: Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP, Windows CE 2000/2002 Pocket PC devices equipped with Type II PC card slot. Supported hardware: Any laptop with Type II PC card slot. Company estimated speeds: 50 to 70 kbps

AT&T Wireless uses GSM, or global system for mobile communications, while Sprint PCS uses CDMA, or code division multiple access.

AT&T Wireless is touting its EDGE data network, a GSM upgrade it says delivers speeds of 100 d to 130 kilobits per second, with bursts as high as 200 Kbps. I borrowed a Sony Ericsson data card to try out the EDGE network around town.

Sprint has rolled out a nationwide upgrade to its network called CDMA 1X, which it says delivers 50 to 70 Kbps on average with peak access of 144 Kbps. I tried out a PC card made by Novatel. Sprint PCS has an even higher-speed network available in a few cities but not Seattle.

Traveling business people make up the most obvious market for the services, which they can use to access e-mail or the Internet from hotels, airports, cars, cafes or nearly anywhere a cellphone works. For some, that anytime-anywhere connection is better than the alternative of hunting for places or services that offer wired Internet connections.

After using both cards around town, I found Sprint PCS wins hands down on coverage and data rates but fails on setup and installation. Both companies get poor scores for attempts to sell the services because it took me ages to find pricing information on their Web sites.

Strong signal in B.C.

I used the AT&T Wireless card first — on a weekend trip to Vancouver, B.C. I loaded the software required to use the card before I left; setup was a snap. In the heart of downtown Vancouver, I got a terrific signal and surfed away. I was quite pleased to find I even got coverage waiting in a very long line at the Blaine border crossing. What better way to idle away an hour and a half in the car than to read news online and catch up on e-mail (from the passenger seat, of course).

But my pleasantly surprising coverage stopped there. I soon found the card doesn't work in my house, which is located in a popular Seattle neighborhood, even though my contact at AT&T Wireless said the EDGE network is available just about everywhere the AT&T Wireless network is in Seattle.

The card also didn't work in one of my favorite coffee shops on Phinney Ridge nor at the Fauntleroy ferry dock. Smack in the middle of downtown at the Tully's on First and Virginia, my connection was so slow that it took several tries to open any Web page.

I was also surprised to note how slow various online bandwidth meters clocked my connection speed with the AT&T Wireless card.

Online bandwidth meters shouldn't be used as a definitive judge of speed, but the connection software that comes with the card doesn't clock speeds. I used a popular meter offered by Cnet, as well as a handful of others I found via Google. I never clocked more than 32 Kbps, often reporting speeds a low as 17 Kbps.

I even sent the card back to AT&T Wireless. My contact tested the card himself and found it worked properly.

I've read other stories reporting similar speeds to what I experienced. Still, AT&T Wireless spokesman said my experience was unusual.

"While signal strength affects the performance of all wireless technologies, the majority of our customers are experiencing speeds upward of 100 Kbps, including those in Seattle," said Mike DiGioia, an AT&T Wireless spokesman.

Frustrating installation

The Sprint PCS card fared much better in coverage and rated much higher on the bandwidth meters, but none of that might count for customers who give up in the middle of what for me was a buggy installation process.

The problems began almost immediately as I downloaded the software. My computer displayed a message saying the device I was trying to load wasn't approved by Microsoft and there was a good chance my computer would be severely damaged if I continued.

A Sprint PCS help-desk agent assured me the card was approved to work with Windows XP and I should complete the installation. I did, but I'm not sure I would have if the Sprint contact hadn't assured me any potential problems would be corrected.

Once the software installation seemed complete and I tried to connect, I received messages that the program couldn't communicate with the COM port. After more calls to Sprint PCS, I learned I needed to be in range of the network to complete the installation. Once I moved, the installation was finally complete.

The whole process took several days and several calls, but once the software was installed, the service exceeded my expectations. While the trend among cellular carriers is to exaggerate network performance, in this case it appeared Sprint PCS underestimated the card's capability.

Using the bandwidth meters I used to test the AT&T Wireless card, and in many of the same locations, I more often than not clocked the Sprint PCS service at well over 200 Kbps. Once I even got a reading of 478 Kbps.

Only once did I find the service offered a connection that compares to the much slower dial-up speed. At University Village, the Cnet bandwidth meter reported I was connecting at only 30 Kbps. That data rate is in line with other stories I've read about trials of the Sprint PCS card.

The high rates I experienced are possible because of compression technologies Sprint PCS employs from a company called Bytemobile, a Sprint PCS spokesman said. The optimization technology can boost speeds two to five times so that customers may see 100 to 300 Kbps, Sprint PCS said.

The Sprint PCS card also proved useful in more locations than the AT&T Wireless card. In fact, it worked everywhere I tried it, which included two places around Green Lake, my house, Phinney Ridge, University Village and downtown (but did not include Fauntleroy or Vancouver).

In fact, the card once allowed my husband to watch the first Chicago Cubs spring-training baseball game — on a work day — at a friend's house on lower Queen Anne. His friend doesn't have a Wi-Fi network at home; the only way my husband could do some work was to borrow the Sprint PCS card from me so that he could be online responding to e-mail while watching the game.

Aimed at business travelers

Neither service is inexpensive, which suggests the carriers are mainly targeting traveling business users. That strategy, however, could discourage consumers from becoming subscribers.

AT&T Wireless offers slightly more pricing options, plus an $80-per-month unlimited usage plan. On the low end, a $30 subscription offers 10 megabits of data; in the middle, $60 gives users 40 megabits.

Sprint PCS doesn't offer an unlimited plan; its most expensive is $100 for 300 megabits of data. The lowest-cost option is $40, which allows 20 megabits; $60 delivers 40 megabits.

It doesn't seem that either company wants customers to find information about the data-card services online, though. After some looking on the Sprint PCS Web site, I found a tab, "wireless laptop access."

But that only detailed information about Sprint's Wi-Fi offerings. In the business-solutions section, I found a tab titled "data and voice" but, again, only Wi-Fi offerings were listed.

Finally, in the shopping tab, I found the data cards but still no mention of pricing. I ultimately found the information under the site's plans section.

I had a similar experience on the AT&T Wireless site, though it was much easier to find the data cards from a link on the opening page. But I had so much trouble finding information about the pricing plans that I opened an instant-message chat with a customer-service agent.

The agent told me the only way to see the price plans is to place one of the data cards in the shopping cart as if I were about to buy it. Then descriptions of the plans popped up.

When the cards work well, they can be quite useful to traveling business people who could benefit from having access to the Internet around town.

The ideal answer might come if the carriers learn from each other. A solution with AT&T Wireless' easy setup and Sprint PCS' coverage and connection speed would be just perfect.

Nancy Gohring is a freelance writer in Seattle who reports frequently on telecommunications and technology.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company