Let me start by saying that I live in the country. My home office is 5.5 miles from AT&T's Central Office in one local town and 7 miles from another town's CO. I'm extremely limited in my broad band internet options. I can't get DSL. They won't bring Cable down my dirt road. I'll write about digital and land lines some other time.
This week I received a Cellular Data Plan bill for my Sprint Air Card, listing overage charges of $140 over the standard monthly charges. This could have been received from any provider as they all have the same basic plan, I just happen to use Sprint for internet as they have the best
3G coverage in my area. For those of you that just crawled out of a cave, 3G is what the cell providers call their third generation of data and phone technology. There are a couple different technologies, but they're both called 3G. 3G is exceedingly faster than 2G. Believe me. I'm writing this from 2G currently.
I've been working from the home office 98% of the time for just over 2 months. And the first month's bill showed that I had used 4.5 Giga Bytes of the 5GB monthly allowance. By my initial estimates, I figured I might go over the limit, but it shouldn't be by much. I figured an extra $5-10/month wouldn't be that bad, should I exceed the 5GB limit. The November bill listed 8+GB used! They charge more than $46 per GB over the base 5?!! I don't download videos or music, much. I don't use
Hulu often. I don't stream media out to the internet. I surf for research, I up/download low resolution images, HTML files and other documents for my web design business. My son
does periodically play Flash based video games on Nick.com. Occasionally I'll watch a YouTube video or 4, but the home-made video time-suck has made it past it's prime with me. About the only things that I spend more time than most, are Twitter and Facebook. But I consult with companies on Social Media, so I need to be in those realms often. Facebook and Twitter are not image intensive. So it must be that general surfing needs more than 5GB. Who came up with the random number of 5 GB and why is that the standard? Some notification that I was nearing the limit or exceeding the limit would have been nice, but we all know how Cellular companies like to do that.
So I called Sprint to complain and determine if there was a better option that would save some money. I was able to get Sprint to knock off $100 from the last bill, but while on the phone with them, the Customer Service Representative tells me that I'm already into $40 of overages for this month! The billing cycle runs through the 19th, so don't freak that it's just the 11th and I've already hit 6 Gig. She passed me off to sales for alternatives. I asked the sales guy what my options were, to which he replied "an unlimited plan for $80/mo" would work. I agreed. He pawned me off to another CSR to order. She advised me that Sprint no longer had the unlimited plan, but I could purchase a 10GB plan for $250!!! That's an option?! Either that or I could buy another air card and just switch them out 1/2 through the month. $120/mo and I still only get 10GB worth of data transfers per month?! The CSR explained that once their 4G network made it to my area I would have an unlimited option. Of course she couldn't tell me in which decade that would occur. AT&T's 3G network hasn't even made it to my door yet. What would make me think that a 4G from Sprint would be any quicker?
It may be of interest to note here that I am a reseller of T1 lines from a
CLEC out of Detroit. I can get a full T1 to my house for $260 and have unlimited data on a dedicated fat pipe. I could then put up a tower and sell internet to my neighbors to help defray the cost. So over the next month, I'm going to re-research getting a full T1 to the home office. Hopefully some of the setup costs have come down since 2006, when I researched getting a T1 the last time.
Cellular companies don't seem to want to offer good options for the businesses unable to order DSL or Cable internet. If the phone companies could present good options I'd not have to settle for these abysmal cellular practices. Anyway, I'm still going to write every cellular provider. Who of my followers wants in? Does anyone else have the troubles I've seen? Most likely until people start complaining in earnest they're going to keep giving us crappy service.
In the mean time, you'll find me at coffee houses and restaurants with wifi until the 20th.
