XplanaZine

My wife and I have been thinking about taking up a residence in another state and commuting back and forth. Our kids are getting to the independent stage and we hate being locked into a single climate option. As we were discussing some of our options the other day, Vicky asked me about the best way to have Internet access on out future road trips between hometowns.

You see, we’re both writers and tend to be very productive on such trips trips. We throw around ideas, discuss plots, and one of us sits in the passenger seat and writes it all down (usually Vicky). Ideally, we could add Internet access and treat our driving time as alternative work space. I immediately tried to convince her that we both needed next-generation phones or something Nokia’s new N-Gage. Vicky said she didn’t ant to learn how to use anything else. Besides, it would just distract us from work. What she wanted was something that could let us work on our laptop in the car and get connected while we drove.

So I started digging. A colleague of mine uses the Aircard 550 (Sierra) that gives him access to the Sprint PCS network. The device will run you about two-hundred dollars and then you have to choose a Sprint PCS Vision plan for laptops and PDA’s — the cheapest is forty dollars per month. It works pretty well for him. He travels back and forth frequently between two decent-sized cities (as we would be doing) and has great reception using Sprint.

Obviously, the connection speeds are not fantastic, but there’s a lot to be said for consistency and reliability. I could also say good-bye to all those snafus at corporate office buildings, conferences, and hotels when there is a problem with the wireless network or the firewall won’t let me out without proper authentication. There are similar “phone-based” services with other carriers and all of them offer comparable pricing.

Another, faster option, is Ricochet. Ricochet is marketing a proprietary solution that features high-speed wireless access via its own data network in select cities. The modem costs around one hundred dollars and the monthly fee is just over forty dollars. The service is more than twice as fast as a typical phone modem but, unfortunately, Ricochet is only available in two or three cities right now and does not meet my needs. It has no availability on the highways between cities at this juncture.

Also impressive is IPWireless, winner of Best of Show at the most recent CES. Their technology is being partnered with companies like Clearview Technologies to provide wireless high-speed Internet access in select cities with eventual plants to establish a nationwide network. Prices for connectivity and hardware is similar to Ricochet which, in turn, is similar to broadband cable and DSL pricing.

Others are hoping to catch the same, broadband wireless wave but, unless you only need connectivity in a particular city that you don’t get to choose, it is still in the very early stages. For me an Vicky, the data needs don’t require broadband. We’re talking about e-mail and publishing a few Web pages. Nothing Sprint PCS won’t or can’t handle.

The future, however, does hold the existence of nationwide high-speed wireless networks for multiple devices. This, in turn, is an important step in the evolution of Higher Education. As more universities turn to offering Web-based, non-resident courses, the advent of the truly mobile student is arriving quickly. Distance learning is about to take on a whole new meaning.