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Alltel Cell Phone Internet Bluetooth Connection

Alltel claims I can have Internet connection through my cell phone with speed as good as or better than high speed DSL through a land line. Alltel reps work with PCs mostly and prefer to connect with a PCMCIA card. ($50 a month. $100 for the card.) but they also connect with data cables from the cell phone to USB, or bluetooth, or infrared. Their claim is that these are all fast connections (like DSL) - and getting faster.

I spent hours (more than you'd believe) at Altell while the rep tried to make a bluetooth cell connection with my Nokia 6255i. Couldn't get connected. Told me my fastest and best connection would be with a new phone that could handle the fastest internet speeds so I decided to keep my Nokia as my speaking phone and add a Motorola E815 to use as a modem. This is because you can't talk on a phone and use it as a modem at the same time. On the up-side, this connection would be so fast I could discontinue my landline DSL. (FYI - $25/mo for internet - $10/mo additional line)

Well - We got the phone connected and up on the internet. It runs about the same speed as aol dial-up. I'm on it now. Either this works much better on PCs or It doesn't work as Alltel claims. I called Apple help, their not interestd in helping on this isue. It's encouraged - but not supported.

This is the beginning of a two week trial, I can totally bail on the new phone, the service, etc. I'd rather make it work. If the soultion requires going with a different phone or cellular provider, I'm interested in that too.

Any Ideas? Comments? Suggestions? Directions?

Thanks...

MacBook Pro 17 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Feb 17, 2007 5:26 AM

Reply
4 replies

Feb 17, 2007 7:56 AM in response to RetLabs

Blue tooth is not the fastest connection around. My printer is hooked up to via blue tooth and if I try to print a photo, oh my gosh, it is the slowest thing on the planet. It prints one line, pauses for more info, prints another line and pauses again. So your bottleneck might not be the connection on your phone, it might be the phone to the computer via bluetooth. Connecting using a phone seems like it would only be a good idea in a crunch.

Feb 18, 2007 8:18 AM in response to RetLabs

Sprint is advertising this as Mobile Broadband. They're giving new customers a free PCMCIA card. Macs can't use this card but surely there's a way to get this service and speed with a Mac. We're supposed to be ahead of the curve. I've tried a data cable from phone to USB port. It's no better than bluetooth.

Mar 8, 2007 7:06 PM in response to RetLabs

With an EVDO connection my signal maxes out about 170 kpbs. I think that's about thee times dial-up. It works great for simple web-pages and e-mail. You can test your internet connection speed at speedtest.net. Smith-Micro sells software to somehow facilitate the connection but I didn't buy it because they didn't respond to my questions. I'm guessing it's smoke & mirrors, graphics acceleration stuff, (that would be a good reason not to respond) but if your interested, here is the site http://www.smithmicro.com/default.tpl?group=product_full&sku=QLMMAKEE.

Both cable and bluetooth connections test at the same speed on my Mac but functionally the cable connection is faster. In the Alltel store I got their rep to do a side by side speed test with me, his PC laptop with a PCMCIA card and my MacBook Pro with a cable connected to my cell phone. His connection was about 470 kpbs, way faster than mine (about 170 kpbs). I wish Apple would pay attention and bring us up to speed.

Alltel Cell Phone Internet Bluetooth Connection

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