Wireless

I'm hoping this wasn't a fluke because I thought the rollouts were complete but a few times tonight, my Q has switched into EVDO mode. As soon as I called my wife over to see, it had switched back to 1xRTT.

It is like they are teasing us with high speed, but I'm hoping it switches to EVDO for good, soon. It'll save on battery life on the Q and it will also make our "series of tubes" to the internet a little bit wider.

Another powertoy collection that will be going on my Q:

Network Analyzer for Windows Mobile runs network utilities, for example ping and ipconfig, on a Windows Mobile powered device. Network Analyzer for Windows Mobile facilitates the troubleshooting of network connectivity issues. You can extend the harness. You can add user-defined tests (DLLs) to the list of tests to be executed. An xml input file defines the list of tests to execute. You can use Network Analyzer to send information about network traffic to a .cap file. You can then view the .cap file with the Network Monitor tool or the Ethereal tool.

Grab it here.

My wife had a doctor's appointment this morning and her Motorola E815 switched into EVDO mode. The next time she goes into Grand Rapids, she is going to try to figure out which tower is the cutoff point for EVDO if it is still active.

There is a Verizon tower near our house and I am really hoping a truck stops by and puts some new panels and electronics on it this month. If by chance anyone at Verizon reads this, you will have a couple new data plans for sure out of that upgrade alone. I know our population density isn't the greatest, but we are by a lake that has some very upscale homes on it that lack any type of broadband access.

We are in the no mans land of being just west of Kent county, just east of Muskegon county, and right in the little "spike" of Ottawa county. Lots of people on Crockery Lake are wanting broadband access. We don't have DSL available. We don't have wireless ISPs available even though we are in Ottawa county which is supposed to be getting wireless internet county wide. We have analog cable through Charter that is just on the border of cable modem access to the east. Anyone I talk to at Charter has no idea when our neighborhood is going to be rebuilt.

I hate to admit but having an IT job in this region isn't much fun when you have to RDP into servers from home and you can watch the screen repaint with 8-bit color depth on 1xRTT. If I am lucky, I can connect into a Citrix box that has 16-color support enabled. Heck, I'd be fine with monochrome support as long as I could get my work done.

So, if any type of broadband wheeler-dealer sees this, you could make a killing in this region. If I had the capital and balls to put a T1 line into my house and run a WISP, I would, but I don't have the funds or the balls to do it.

Heck, I own 2.5 acres of land where my current house is - I'd be willing to rent my land and put up a tower if it brought EVDO to the area. I'd actually be more inclined to put up a WiMax tower but I'm still uncertain how much penetration they are going to get in the market.

I've also heard that Alltel is testing out EVDO 850 in the area on the towers they gained from the AT+T Wireless deal. They are converting the old GSM towers over to CDMA/EVDO. Of course, what I hear and what is really going on could be two different things. All I know is that Alltel has a big presence in northern Kent county and elsewhere.