Best Cellular Booster System

[Bill1170]

Lloyd:
Have you had experience in the mountains, does cell phone coverage depend on line of sight?
Bill

[lloyd&pamela]

We have never had problems on the highways or secondary roads. The mountains have not been a problem. Though I expect there are some passes that might be outside the 50 miles cellular radius. We have only lost coverage in LA for about 90 miles and in Monument Valley Campground in the bottom of a canyon.

I do not know if it is line of sight I think not since it is not a radio signal but that can be answered by someone more knowledgable than myself.

Pamela can surf the net while we drive and we are able to call whenever needed. My iphone received emails though out the drive time.

When I compare it to my satellite experience we are up on the cellular 95% or more and were online 30-60% on the sat and voip.

We had to select very specific campground and campsites to have the sat work and we now with both ATT and Verizon can camp virtually anywhere and be connected. Hope this helps.

[lloyd&pamela]

Hector
We removed our Datastorm system and now only use the verizon or att in US or rodgers aircards in the Canada.

We have the usb aircards installed in a Cradlepoint MBR 1000 router that makes makes the aircard wireless so that any of our five Macs can access the internet from either inside or outside the bus. The Cradlepoint extends the hotspot to about 50 feet around the bus.

At night we get up to 1.9 MB connection of the aircard.

The important difference is the celluar system has faster upload speeds thatn sat. We get 600-900 k upload speeds and that would cost $400-500 a month to get that upload speed on a sat system and then it would still be wind, cloud, tree and sat dependent. We were on Ethersat with iDirect which is the fasted sat system available for public use we only had 50 user on our sat online the thousands sharing a hughes sat. And still the cellular was mor dependable.

REMEMBER WITH CELULAR YOU HAVE A 5GB LIMIT ON THE "UNLIMITED" PACKAGES. THAT IS WHY WE HAVE TWO VERIZON CARDS AND ONE ATT.

Verizon is more reliable and has better coverage. But there are places where ATT is better. Hope this helps. Sorry I missed your post earlier.

[Bill1170]

Thanks Lloyd, I was just in the mts of north carolina and had a lot of spots that had no coverage. Sounds like this might solve the problem, I might need to talk to the company or maybe hear from others with this equipment.
Bill

[lloyd&pamela]

Bill we have not had problems with the Eastern mountians at all. They are near populated areas and highways and are not as tall as the ones out west. I foresee having more problems in some of the rocky mountain passes and valleys.

We tried one of the smaller amps and it did not work as well the SOHO amp is what really adds the coverage.

Best to you. BrianE will have more experience than us with the western mountains.

We will be heading north through the Rockies in late August and September.

[ajducote]

Lloyd,

I have a very similar setup and have been very happy the results here on the east coast. BUT I have big favor / request to make. I hope to travel out west next summer and I still work 10 hours a day on line. When I travel I use the verizon and sprint air card to get connected. What I really need is first hand reports of nice campgrounds in the Colorado / Utah area that have good Verizion evdo coverage. Since it seems like you guys cover a lot of territory in your travels, could you please post campgrounds that you find that would be worth staying in for 3 or 4 weeks at a time that have good verizon coverage. I really hope it is not to much to ask and I do not mean to put you on the spot. It just that I may never get to see Colorado and Utah unless I know 100% for certain that I can get a good signal and still work. I can also use camp ground wifi IF the camp ground internet connection is DSL or cable connected. If it goes out on satellite then it will not work for me. I must use VPN and that does not work at all or not well enough on a sat. to get work done. So in most cases I have to use the verizon card as my primary connection method
Are you going to be in OKC for the POG Rally?

Safe travels and hope I have not asked to much of you.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

This is written from the perspective of a guy that cannot open XL spreadsheets, or that has a cell phone but no camera phone, no voice mail, no text, and who doesn't know what face book or some new texting thing is (twitter?).

When I first considered taking a computer with me I was told all I needed was a wi-fi thingy, and on three occasions and after a lot of time I was actually able to use that in a campground, especially when the bus was parked next to what I was told was the antenna.

But since that access to the internet sucks I started considering a Verizon air card. The problem I encountered was the guy trying to get me to buy one did not speak English. I am not being bigoted, he was born here and when he wasn't talking about computer stuff I understood him clearly. But when he started to talk about Gigs and Megs and K's he started to lose me. Then he talked about how I would be allowed 5 somethings of usage a month, but he reverted to computer talk when I asked what that meant in a language I could understand.

Luckily I talked to an ATT guy and he spoke in terms I could understand. He said if I did not download music and movies I would not exceed the 5 somethings. That's easily understood by me, who did not know you could actually get a movie from a computer. I always thing of the herky jerky videos I have seen on the computer so I never knew people would actually want to watch a whole movie that was like that.

So I got all excited about being able to insult JDUB while on the road. Then Lloyd goes and blows me out of the water. He posts that I need an external antenna, an internal antenna and some other gadget, which as we all know will have a usefull life of two weeks before something better comes along.

Can I just get one of the Verizon thingies to stick in a computer slot and use a computer on the road or do I need to weigh down the bus with more elctronic stuff that I don't have a clue about? The way everybody is jumping all over Lloyd's recommendations I suspect Verizon cards are one notch above WiFi and way below my Comcast cable TV internet connection in terms of speed and quality.

[JIM CHALOUPKA]

I feel the same as you Jon, but Lloyds way does seem to be the most cost effective way to get internet and cellular coverage at this moment in time.

Tomorrows technology will probably bring something else, but this amplifier system will still be working as it does now unless it becomes broken. The speeds and capability of Lloyds system are certainly good enough for anything I want to do at this time and into the foreseeable future.

JIM

[phorner]

Jon,

I have used a Verizon air card for several years now and, for general use, has worked perfectly 99% of the time.

If you are not working and sending/receiving tremendous amounts of data, you don't need such an elaborate system. Additionally, if you are typically within a reasonable distance of civilization, you will not generally need that extended range of the system described by Lloyd.

I have found that for e-mail, internet banking, googling stuff and staying in touch with POG, my Verizon air card is all I've needed. However, I don't consume a lot of bandwidth with my type of usage, and I'm usually within easy reach of a decent cell signal.

I am by far not an expert in this stuff, but it appears to me that what has been described is kind of a "commercial/industrial grade" installation, which you may or may not need.

Luckily, I haven't found the need........yet

Even with this type of up-grade, you still need the air card, so you have nothing to lose by trying the air card alone to see if it meets your needs. It surely beats dependance on local Wi Fi at campgrounds.

[lloyd&pamela]

Jon the answer is YES. If you have a cell phone for calls and an aircard to plug into your computer you can access the internet and check email and post to POG forum.

If all you do is email and surf the web the 5 GB limit is not a problem.

ALSO you need to be within 3 miles of a cell tower of your provider. Since you only camp in Class A Big Rig sites and stay on the interstate, you are perfectly set.

If you decide to ever get off the interstate or dry camp (god forbid) then you may find yourself more than three miles from a tower and without cellular service.

I found for the cost of a $249 router (only needed for multiple computers to access the internet at same time - Pamela and I both have several computers) and $400 wilson system I was safe 95% of the time. But then we dry camp in the desert for a week or more at a time and prefer two lane roads to the interstates. Hope that clears things up a bit.