Best cell phone/data plan for truckers

i used to once root my phone. NO LONGER. for everything i rooted, there are now apps that DON'T require root. hotspot apps are one of those that don't require root and will allow unlimited data without using sprint native app.

if you root. your also blocked from software updates.

i don't root anymore. AIN'T GOT TIME FOR DAT. and keeping up with all the crap involved with root.

 

I'm on T-MOBILE because I'm cheap. That and Sprint booted me for excessive roaming.

 

There will never be a time where Sprint has a bigger footprint than Verizon. Sprint is a sinking ship that continuously spends money it doesn't have, doesn't use available spectrum they already have licenses for, ignores upgrades, and the FCC has unofficially rejected the joint spectrum bids that they were going to go in halves with T-Mobile. Sprint also relies a lot on roaming in US Cell and VZW areas a lot more than people realize to help fill network gaps. The hide this by masking the ERI banner which is what makes your phone say "Sprint". I'm telling you this as a former Cell Network Technician. Still got plenty of buddies in the field. Nothings changed. All these thing combined are why their currently being floated by a Japanese holding company (Softbank).

 

Here's the history of all my data providers and methods of access:


1994-1999: CompuServe. $9.95/month, landline phone connection, restaurant phone lines at truck stops. Back then every truck stop restaurant had a phone at each table. Most of the time you could dismount the phone from the wall to access the phone jack. With rare exceptions, these phones could only dial 800 numbers. CompuServe charged extra for their 800-number access so I stayed online just long enough to update my email inbox then went back offline (sort of like intermittently turning off the spigot while showering).


Sometimes you couldn't dismount the phone. In this situation I resorted to using something called an "acoustic coupler" that attaches to the phone receiver. It worked most of the time but wasn't nearly as reliable as a direct phone jack connection.


2000-2004: AT&T Worldnet. $10.95/month (?), same as above.


2001-2005: wififreespot.com, a very comprehensive locator site for free wi-fi hotspots. To avoid the catch-22 of looking for a place to go online, by going online, I copied all the locations to my hard drive. wififreespot.com was an essential website pre-smartphones, and is likely still very useful to this day.


2004: T-Mobile Hotspots at all Starbucks and Kinko's (now FedEx Office) locations. $20/month when you purchased a full year in advance. Very reliable broadband wi-fi connection, but still, it wasn't really worth the price so I dropped it after a year. (Panera Bread was one of the pioneering companies to offer free wi-fi at all their locations and I knew it wouldn't be long before Starbucks would have to follow.)


2005-2010: Sprint PC card. $60/month with Sprint cell service ($80/month without). Finally purchased my first cell phone in November 2004 (an ordinary little flip phone) then about six months later could not resist getting the PC card for just $60/month (as compared with $80/month without the cell service).


Before getting the cell phone I tried both Verizon and Sprint PC cards. Ended up returning both within 14 days for full (or almost full) refunds since neither seemed anywhere near worth spending $80/month on. But by May 2005 I felt I was getting my $60/month's worth for the Sprint card, and the coverage continued to get better and better over time.


January 2011-present: Samsung Verizon smartphone. $35/month for unlimited data. Before finally succeeding at rooting the phone in March 2013 (after multiple failed attempts) and forever after being able to use the phone's wi-fi hotspot for free, I used Easy Tether to access the phone's data connection on my laptop (also for free).


2012: Clear (now owned by Sprint) 4G hotspot. $50/month, reliable, fast 4G internet (in metro areas only).

 

Forgot about this one:

2001-2004: Kinko's laptop stations, free broadband ethernet connection. Up until roughly the time I signed up for T-Mobile's hotspot service, every Kinko's location supplied a fast internet connection for your laptop at no charge. Got really used to hanging out in Kinko's all day. One of the reasons I was willing to pay for the T-Mobile hotspots was because it's a lot nicer hanging out in Starbucks, but also, at some point around 2004, Kinko's started charging an expensive hourly rate for that same broadband connection that had previously been free for several years. I never used it again after that.

 

i came ouit on the road in 2002. i remember using my sprint flip phone for dial up internet using the aol software for the dial up. what a PITA. untill sprint came out with the air card. then, aol came out with what was then called, piggy backing on to another service provider. local area connection they called it. high speed internet for the home was really taking off at that time.

i don't remember wifi being around them days. i do however, remember it being a talked about technology on it's way.

if it was available, that list musta been pretty small.

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001BJNSZI...tp://bigrigcentral.com/big-rig-satellite.html

something like this may work for some. There are other systems out there too. Probably the cheapest way to go.

 

From the link below:

"...in July 1999 Apple introduced Wi-Fi as an option on its new iBook computers, under the brand name AirPort. 'And that completely changed the map for wireless networking,' says Greg Raleigh of Airgo, a wireless start-up based in Palo Alto, California. Other computer-makers quickly followed suit. Wi-Fi caught on with consumers just as corporate technology spending dried up in 2001."

http://www.economist.com/node/2724397

 

Looks like this just supplies TV. For me the internet supplies plenty enough TV, but there is still a bunch of TV programming you don't get over the internet, so I can understand why some would put TV first.

 

that's still the early stages of wifi. not many people had apples.

the first phone i bought that came with wifi, was in 2005. sprint sold the first cell phone with windows mobile operating system. it was msfts first taste of the cell phone. i had a palm, with the colored screen, and blackberry before that. they had slimmed down internet, i think it was mainly instant messaging programs like yahoo and what not. but no wifi.

apple set the stage for wireless network. that we know of today.