Verizon Wireless Lets You Get Online and Get Out -- Quickly

[Dr. Richard C. Cassin-2]

washingtonpost.com: Verizon Wireless Lets You Get Online and Get Out --
Quickly washingtonpost.com
Verizon Wireless Lets You Get Online and Get Out -- Quickly


By Rob Pegoraro

Sunday, March 14, 2004; Page F07


For too many people around the Washington area, getting broadband access in
their homes is somewhere between difficult, expensive and impossible. Last
week, though, I had broadband anywhere I took a laptop -- in my living room,
at my desk, in a deli and on a speeding Metro train.

Verizon Wireless's BroadbandAccess is the first wireless data service I've
tried that could actually be mistaken for a cable or digital-subscriber-line
connection. It routinely got me on the Internet in seconds, downloaded
600,000 bits of data each second and stayed online for as long as I wanted.

But at $79.99 a month, it's only a good deal to those who can write it off
as a business expense.

In its favor, BroadbandAccess (Verizon's name for a technology called EvDO,
short for Evolution Data Only) combines the speed of broadband, the
weightless ease of WiFi and the coverage of cellular service. Have laptop,
will surf -- provided you don't stray from the District and its suburbs or
the San Diego area, the only two markets in the United States where Verizon
offers this service.

In its disfavor, BroadbandAccess costs about twice as much as what most
people pay for either their cell phone or their broadband connection but
can't readily replace either: Its Windows-only PC Card modem won't work in
desktop PCs without some tweaking, and it includes neither an e-mail account
nor voice phone service.

What's clear is this: After years of false promises of fast wireless
Internet access in our time, somebody has finally delivered it.

BroadbandAccess is shockingly simple to use. Run a quick installer program
(Win 98 SE or newer required), pop Verizon's PC Card into the laptop's slot,
and click the "connect" button on the screen.

Almost every time, I was online within five seconds of that click. That's
not always-on access, but it's immensely better than dial-up and even many
WiFi connections.

Verizon says BroadbandAccess's downloads should average 3oo to 500 kilobits
per second (kbps) and can hit 2 million bits per second (Mbps) at best.
Although I never saw peak speeds that high, my everyday results comfortably
exceeded those average estimates.

First I ran a lengthy series of speed tests at a widely used benchmarking
site (wdc.speakeasy.net). The worst performance I saw was a 540 kbps
download and a 63 kbps upload, achieved at half signal strength. Most of the
time, I clocked about 650 kbps down and 140 kbps up.

Then I tested the reliability of the connection by tuning into a Web radio
station's 128-kbps music stream; over about four hours, I heard two or three
dropouts. Streaming video wasn't a problem either; a set of large RealVideo
"Daily Show with Jon Stewart" interviews and Windows Media movie trailers
played back stutter-free.

Files downloaded as fast as they would over my DSL connection. I even logged
in to The Washington Post's network and edited a few stories, easily the
most bandwidth-sensitive task I do at home.

I also took the laptop for a ride aboveground on Metro, to see if I'd lose
the connection while moving from one antenna to another at high speeds.
Aside from one fade-out around the Dunn-Loring station, BroadbandAccess
worked the same at 60 mph as it did standing still.

On the way back, I expected to get kicked offline as the train went
underground, but the connection was silently handed off from the
BroadbandAccess signal to the slower, older 1xRTT (1x radio transmission
technology) service in the subway.

All that should be great news to anybody who needs Internet access
throughout the day for their job -- the consultants, salespeople, real
estate agents and other "mobile professionals" to whom Verizon Wireless is
pitching this service.

But couldn't this technology also provide broadband to consumers as well as
tech workers? EvDO should be cheaper to deploy than cable or DSL: Verizon
says expanding its coverage beyond the Washington and San Diego beachheads,
as planned for later this year, won't involve much more work than its
routine system upgrades.

Could Verizon offer a consumer-oriented version of this for closer to $40 a
month?

"Sure," said analyst Jane Zweig, chief executive of the Shosteck Group, a
Wheaton-based research firm. There's only one problem: "Right now, they
don't have to."

Verizon has no competition at this speed and won't for a while. Carriers
using the competing GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) wireless
standard aren't close; for instance, AT&T's new EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates
for Global Evolution) service tops out at 200 kbps.

Nextel is trying out a different wireless-data technology in North Carolina
that offers 1.5 to 3 Mbps downloads and 375 to 750 kbps uploads. But it
hasn't said anything about when this trial might lead to a commercial
service, or what it might cost.

Sprint PCS does use the same wireless standard as Verizon, but it plans to
skip EvDO in favor of a faster successor to it, EvDV (Evolution Data-Voice)
that's probably two years off.

In the meantime, Verizon Wireless can still make plenty of money catering to
tech businesses. Would it want to risk undercutting its corporate parent's
DSL business anyway?

And yet: One of the major wireless carriers in Japan, KDDI Corp., charges
less than $40 a month for unlimited use of its own EvDO service. If fast
wireless Internet access wasn't too much to hope for after all, affordable,
fast wireless Internet access shouldn't be impossible either.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at [hidden email].



? 2004 The Washington Post Company



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