My New EvDO Cards Arrive Today

For those fortunate enough to live in an area where Sprint has upgraded EvDO to Rev. A, like my fiance (Sacramento) and myself (Del Mar, CA) the promise of really fast mobile broadband is supposed to be here now.

While I've been a user of both Sprint and Verizon's EvDO service since their inception, the services are really back up for me to WiFi hotspots. Sometime I just end up where there isn't any. As a Mac and PC user with varying slots (PCMCIA/Express 34, None) I opted to go with the USB modems as they will provide more utility overall to my growing staff, fiance and myself.

With the new release, and with what Cingular has rolled out with HSPDA, those who are mobile and nomadic may enjoy a $59.99 or $39.99 (carrier and plans vary) plan with these new cards that supposed to give you a real broadband experience (download and upload).

To me the real key will be how they handle:

Voice/VoIP

Streaming Media

P2P applications

The cards arrive today and more on this will follow.

Comments

[Alan A. Reiter]

I've been using a Sprint Rev. A card (Sierra Wireless AirCard) for a couple of weeks in the Chevy Chase, Md./Washington, D.C. area.

I like it a lot.

The speeds vary, but in general I'm getting downloads of 1M bps - 1.5M bps and uploads of 300K - 400K bps.

It makes a difference not only for uploading and downloading regular files, but it also makes a significant difference for streaming video.

I subscribe to CNN Pipeline and Rev. 0 worked okay while watching Pipeline in a browser, but not when watching it in the proprietary Pipeline viewer, that Pipeline says requires around 700K bps.

With Rev. A, the Pipeline viewer works well.

The upload speed I'm getting is about what Sprint says is typical. The download speeds, however, are faster than the 800K bps Sprint says should be typical.

Assuming the speeds I'm getting remain the same in my area and, preferably, elsewhere around the country, Rev. A will be a significant improvement over Rev. 0.