WiFi From the Open Road

One of the things that's unattractive about those cool smart phones is that they usually come with some substantial strings attached—cell phone contracts that can tie you to your provider for a long, long time.  

The same is true of cellular modems, the gadgets that connect laptops to the Internet via cellular wireless networks. These gadgets usually plug into a USB port on your laptop, and provide a connection to the Web that's as fast as many DSL lines. Another type of cellular modem, the MiFi from Novatel, acts as a portable WiFi hotspot—it can connect up to five laptops and other WiFi enabled devices to a single cellular data modem for Internet access.

The upside of these devices is that you don't always have to be on the hunt for a WiFi hotspot.  And that comes in handy in ways you wouldn't expect.

For example, Ford is making it possible for owners of its new cars to use cellular modems to connect their cars to the Internet, turning them into rolling WiFi hotspots and connecting the cars' SYNC system to services like Twitter and Google. 

I recently got an unexpected demonstration of the power of cellular modems, when I got a video "call" from my mother. She was on her laptop as she and my father were on their way back east from a trip to Montana, and "Skyped" me as they were on the road entering Lincoln, Nebraska. (My father was driving.)

There's a downside to cellular modems. They're much more expensive than DSL, and you have to pay for them even when you're not using them. For infrequent travelers, it's often worth the hassle of trying to find a WiFi hotspot or paying for a hotel connection instead—it ends up being less expensive in the long run.

However, there's a new option that changes the economics of using mobile Internet. Virgin Mobile is now offering prepaid unlimited data access for $40 a month, with no contract. Since it's prepaid, you can activate the service whenever you need it, a month at a time.

Virgin Mobile is offering the service with two devices, both from Novatel: the Ovation MC760, a USB plug-in cellular modem, for $80; and the MiFi 2200 mobile hotspot, for $150.  The New York Times' David Pogue tested the MiFi from Virgin, and raved about it:

The Virgin MiFi, like its rivals, is still an amazing gizmo to have on long car rides for the family, on woodsy corporate offsite meetings, at disaster sites, at trade show booths or anywhere you can't get Wi-Fi. If you live alone, the MiFi could even be your regular home Internet service, too — one that you can take with you when you head out the door. And it's still insanely useful when you're stuck on a plane on a runway. 

It's also a lot less expensive than the MiFi options of other cellular providers. At $40, it's even less expensive than many DSL Internet services, so you could use it as your primary connection to the Web. And there's that "no contract" thing, which makes it even more attractive.

Here's another interesting wrinkle. If you wanted to have the capabilities of Apple's iPhone 4, but didn't want to sign your life away to AT&T, you could buy the new iPod Touch instead—which Steve Jobs joked was "the iPhone without a contract". Then, get a Virgin Mobile MiFi, and sign up for a Skype account with an associated phone number. With that combination, you have something that's even better than the iPhone in several ways—you can share the MiFi with your laptop, make unlimited calls. You don't get the GPS capabilities, but you'll save a few hundred dollars over the course of the year. You can use that money to go buy a GPS.