WIFI Review.

lake station, in t/a wifi service is working great. no complaints as i type this message from that location.

 

5 gigs seems to be the standard limit on all cell phone data plans. Guess they didn't think it would become so popular with truckers.

 

i just got a wifi card/mini router from sprint the mifi 2200. this thing works great and even allows me to connect my ps3 for online play. goodbye to the iffy truck stop wifi were my signal gose to crap whenever a truck passes by or i can't get close enough to the main building.

 

I am returning to trucking after some health problems. from 2004 to 2009 I tried various truckstop wifi services. The only one that worked with any consistency was Flying J. Has that service survived the merger with Pilot? I may have gotten a Pilot wifi to work a little bit once.

What works now? Has anyone tried the virgin mobile wifi hub? At forty bucks a month unlimited it looks like a good deal, if it works as advertised.

 

I just got the Virgin Mobile USB stick and have tested it in Virginia up I-81 and in NC along I-77 and it worked pretty well.

I will be testing it more in other areas but so far it has done a good job.
It uses the Sprint towers so along the interstate it usually has a decent signal.

for 40 bucks a month and no contract i figured it was worth a try...

 

verizon now has two plans 5 gig 60 or 10 gig 80 $

 

I used them all.
Flying J has the best consistancy followed by Pilot, then Petro and TA last.
Petro and TA work together and Flying J should be on the Pilot network now. I know Road Ranger is.

The places that are broke, stay broke because management don't care. I usually frequent Pilot's because of fuel. But $20 a month ain't bad. Buying by the day is a waste of money.

You'd be surprised how many get knocked out by a storm and the router/modem needs reset but management is clueless. I bet I taught at least 15 managers the simple unplug and plug back up. Doh!

The ones that come to mind that don't work are the two TA's west of KC on I-70 (poor signals), but the Petro there is free (Kingdom City?). The Pilot in Crawfordsville, KY (no provider) and Bosselman's in Altoona, IA. They had private service that was free but was cut off for all the movie downloads. They take alot of bandwidth.

There's alot of free places out there too. IA rest area's you get 1 free hour. You'd be surprised the ramps you can park on and get free service. I carry a little wifi finder on my keychain.

Check out www.wififreespot.com for a bunch of listings by state.

 

Paid for a monthlong svc at Love's 2 days ago. Now have downtime in Tehachapi, Ca, guess what? NO WIFI!!!! What a rip!

 

That's the problem with wifi (and especially "wifi reviews") ... wifi may work great at 1:30 in the afternoon, but try the same location, 5 hours later. And it's not the "wifi" as much as it it is the type of service the truckstop is contracted with, but almost invariably they have daily data caps, and once the cap is reached, the bandwidth gets throttled WAY down until midnight or 2:00 when the counter is reset. Plus a lot of truckstops now implement a daily device cap ... maybe enough to check email and a few websites, then, after that, your constrained to a dismal 75kb throughput for the duration, if that.

 

gotta love having a mifi card
ya there is a limit of gig, depending on your plan, but I don't sit there all night playing online games or watching videos,, cause that will eat up your monthly gig a byte allowance, in a short time.