Wandering WiFi RANT!

I'm stopped at the Pilot on I64 west of Louisville, KY. My Sprint modem has no 3g here, just the slower 1xrtt network. A tad better than dial up.

So...I plunk down the $4.79 for WiFi..





Their router is obviously hooked into the same 1xrtt Sprint network.

For $4.79 I got the same slow speed I had when I pulled in here, the only difference now I get to share it with a half dozen other drivers.
Wandering WiFi....You've had reps posting in this forum before, so hopefully you are reading this..if this is a joke, I don't find it funny. If the connection is this hampered, to the point of being useless to me, then there should be a warning on the page before I spend my non-refundable money.

 

Decided to relocate to Evansville, In to do my 34 hr restart there. Surely in Evansville Wandering WiFi would have faster access there, wouldn't you think?



Wow.

 

My Sprint modem is fine. In fact I'm running Linux and don't use Smartview. The problem is Wandering Wifi, the people who provide the equipment and internet feed to the Pilots, Loves, and TA. I paid my money thinking I was going to get broadband, only to find that they have the same Sprint card hooked up to their router I'm using. You have 10-15 drivers out here trying to use the same 1xrtt (2g) connection. It took FOUR MINUTES to load the Wanderingwifi.com page so I could write a complaint. I'm back to using my Sprint modem now, and I'm $5 lighter in my wallet. It's the same awful speed, but at least I'm not sharing it with everyone in the parking lot. My point is, why would they set it up this way? Why are they selling an unusable service? If they were stuck with mobile broadband, why not use Verizon or AT&T, both of which have 3g in this area? You know you stick your credit card number in, get billed $5 and get dog crap in return. It's enraging.

 

Well, they called me back after I ripped them an email. They told me that they are indeed using a Sprint aircard, because they are unable to find a local provider in the area. I told him that the service is unusable here, and this type of service would turn off customers for good. I also told him that if he was going to use an aircard, why use the only company that doesn't have 3g in the area? It makes no sense. Even pitiful AT&T has 3g in Evansville. Anyhow, he gave me two week's free time on the service, and apologized profusely.

Bottom line: Don't plan on using Pilot's wifi service in southern Indiana.

 

My suggestion is that if you are going to use air cards in these circumstances, why not use one that has 3g service in that area, instead of using Sprint in all of them? Sprint's mobile broadband works fine at most locations, but if you look at their coverage map, in the area I was in, southern Indiana, they have 1xrtt coverage, not EVDO. 1xrtt is a tad faster than dial-up, and having a dozen or more trucks in a parking lot sharing a >100 kbps connection is NOT a workable service. You're wasting your money on labor and equipment, and scaring off potential long-term customers. I was parked at the Haubstadt, IN Pilot, and in the Evansville area, 2 out of the 3 major carriers, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, have 3g coverage in that area. Sprint doesn't, but that's what you had in your routers.

Your tech asked me if I had any suggestions. I do. Google "3gstore." (they get persnickety when I post commercial links.) They are a nation wide dealer that deals with all the major carriers and I'm sure they have the ability to help you pair each location you have to use air cards at with the best 3g service that suits that particular location.

 

To be fair, some of their locations are cable or DSL, but others are not. When the support guy in this thread posted about 6 months ago, I suggested that he unlock a speedtest site and link to it from the log on page so we could at least test it before we buy, since it's hit or miss. Aircards are passable, as long as they are 3g. Yeah they're only a megabit, to 1.5 megabits, but they have several routers located around the parking lot. If your sharing that with one or two other people, it's not too bad. I put $20 down on it last month, I've used it maybe six times, so I guess I got my money's worth. On the other hand, there were also 5 or 6 times I pulled into the Pilot parking lot and expected to use it and it just wan't usable.

It can be done right. There are plenty of Mom and Pop places out there that do it right, the Pilots that are owned by Bosselman's does it right, and they don't charge for it. Sapp brothers does it right, except for the location in PA which rarely works, and they don't charge for it either. Heck, even IdleAire had decent wifi for $5 a night. I think the best company that ever tried it was a few years ago, TruckStop.net. They were putting them up just about everywhere, the number of locations they had was staggering. They put routers up just about everywhere a group of trucks pulled their brakes. (The Waffle Kings in SC pop in my head.) They were ahead of their time, in my opinion, they couldn't get enough customers to pay for all that equipment they put up.