Lemon law
Lifer
Living in a rural area, my only means to access the internet was dial up.
But in late 2009 Verizon activated a cell phone tower with 3G EVDO capacity only 2 miles from my house. The price is a hefty $60.00 a month and the other huge curse is a 5GB a month cap. But at least I save $10.00 a month losing my ISP and another $8.00 a month in losing my internet answering machine.
But I still network in my wife's computer using windows internet connecting sharing. As my one time investment in a 60 foot cross over cable keeps paying dividends. Yes I could buy an EVDO router but those suckers are about 4 times as expensive as equivalent routers for DSL or cable.
And in my location Verizon works quite well, its seldom if ever disconnects, speeds are usually at least 10 X dial up, usually 20X dial up, and sometimes go 30X dial up. And because I bought my own modem I am on a month to month plan with Verizon and can drop them at anytime. Because every month, my wife use almost the whole 5GB and any overages get costly.
Then in late August of 2010, Virgin Mobile announced a $40.00 a month plan with no download cap, also on a month to month basis. I already knew the sprint tower that carries Virgin Mobile was more distant at 3.3 miles and the frequency was 1900 MHZ instead of 850 MHZ, but I decided to try Virgin mobile in the hopes that I could fire Verizon and hire Virgin Mobile. Sadly Virgin Mobile is like the proverbial little girl, when its good its very good, but when its bad its horrible. At best Virgin Mobile delivers 1.2 mBits/sec down, the same as Verizon at best, but those speeds are generally between 2AM to about Noon
on most days. But as soon as my local sprint tower starts to load up with users, speeds start falling and can fall as low as 2x dial up. And worse yet, once the tower loads with users, Virgin mobile will not stay connected and often disconnects in as little as a minute.
Making it totally unusable at times.
After dropping Virgin mobile after one month, I decided to buy another month because I had a hard disk crash, had to reload my whole OS and download the entire set of windows updates, and if I did it on Verizon, I would be way over my 5GB cap. And it would cost me more than $40.00 in overage charges.
That mission now accomplished, and with 22 days left to go on Virgin mobile, I have adopted a hybrid strategy. In the morning, I connect my computer, the host computer on the ICS network to my Virgin Mobile Modem, even though the network is ICS selected to run on the Verizon Modem. Then if my wife wants internet access, she simply borrows my unused Verizon USB modem and gets internet access that way. Later on, when the Virgin Mobile tower loads up and becomes unusable, I remove the Virgin Mobile modem, have to interrupt my wife, have her disconnect from Verizon, get back the Verizon USB modem, connect it to my computer, connect to Verizon, and then both my wife and I internet access again. Meanwhile any time my wife is connected to the Verizon it counts against the Verizon 5GB cap that Virgin Mobile could feed instead during good times.
What I would really prefer is to network ICS such that a Virtual USB connection that can interchangeably use the Virgin Mobile or Verizon Modem, that virtual connection would be the host modem for ICS, and my wife's client computer be network connect to the virtual device.
Is that possible using only ICS?
Because I am thinking if I buy a Virgin Mobile card every other month, I can take all pressure off the Verizon 5GB cap.
But in late 2009 Verizon activated a cell phone tower with 3G EVDO capacity only 2 miles from my house. The price is a hefty $60.00 a month and the other huge curse is a 5GB a month cap. But at least I save $10.00 a month losing my ISP and another $8.00 a month in losing my internet answering machine.
But I still network in my wife's computer using windows internet connecting sharing. As my one time investment in a 60 foot cross over cable keeps paying dividends. Yes I could buy an EVDO router but those suckers are about 4 times as expensive as equivalent routers for DSL or cable.
And in my location Verizon works quite well, its seldom if ever disconnects, speeds are usually at least 10 X dial up, usually 20X dial up, and sometimes go 30X dial up. And because I bought my own modem I am on a month to month plan with Verizon and can drop them at anytime. Because every month, my wife use almost the whole 5GB and any overages get costly.
Then in late August of 2010, Virgin Mobile announced a $40.00 a month plan with no download cap, also on a month to month basis. I already knew the sprint tower that carries Virgin Mobile was more distant at 3.3 miles and the frequency was 1900 MHZ instead of 850 MHZ, but I decided to try Virgin mobile in the hopes that I could fire Verizon and hire Virgin Mobile. Sadly Virgin Mobile is like the proverbial little girl, when its good its very good, but when its bad its horrible. At best Virgin Mobile delivers 1.2 mBits/sec down, the same as Verizon at best, but those speeds are generally between 2AM to about Noon
on most days. But as soon as my local sprint tower starts to load up with users, speeds start falling and can fall as low as 2x dial up. And worse yet, once the tower loads with users, Virgin mobile will not stay connected and often disconnects in as little as a minute.
Making it totally unusable at times.
After dropping Virgin mobile after one month, I decided to buy another month because I had a hard disk crash, had to reload my whole OS and download the entire set of windows updates, and if I did it on Verizon, I would be way over my 5GB cap. And it would cost me more than $40.00 in overage charges.
That mission now accomplished, and with 22 days left to go on Virgin mobile, I have adopted a hybrid strategy. In the morning, I connect my computer, the host computer on the ICS network to my Virgin Mobile Modem, even though the network is ICS selected to run on the Verizon Modem. Then if my wife wants internet access, she simply borrows my unused Verizon USB modem and gets internet access that way. Later on, when the Virgin Mobile tower loads up and becomes unusable, I remove the Virgin Mobile modem, have to interrupt my wife, have her disconnect from Verizon, get back the Verizon USB modem, connect it to my computer, connect to Verizon, and then both my wife and I internet access again. Meanwhile any time my wife is connected to the Verizon it counts against the Verizon 5GB cap that Virgin Mobile could feed instead during good times.
What I would really prefer is to network ICS such that a Virtual USB connection that can interchangeably use the Virgin Mobile or Verizon Modem, that virtual connection would be the host modem for ICS, and my wife's client computer be network connect to the virtual device.
Is that possible using only ICS?
Because I am thinking if I buy a Virgin Mobile card every other month, I can take all pressure off the Verizon 5GB cap.
