T-Mobile Wireless Internet
 

Anyone have any experience with T-mobile's wireless data product, consisting of a Sierra PCMCIA card and unlimited data for 19.95 per month as an existing T-mobile customer? I'm particularly curious about real connection speed, which they say is around 56K. Thanks in advance for your help.

56k is a tad optimistic but not far off, with GPRS it's also often the latency that will get you, the web, email etc... are great but terminal services etc. won't work well. Expect anywhere between 32kb/s and 50kb/s.

The Aircard 750 is currently the fastest class GPRS device out there. Beware though that voice IS NOT supported out of the box and you'll need to nag a lot at Sierrawireless to get the special software to unlock the voice portion (or email me for it http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/wink.gif).

All in all a VERY nice and stable card, great software and pretty decent speed.

Yup, as Scott mentioned latency is poor on GPRS, so anything like remote service or remote PC control type apps will be horrible. General web surfing and email should be OK.

My daughter has TMobile service and I experimented with T Zone which may have nothing to do with their data service. But I couldn't even get a signal on my patio. I live in the Bay Area and not in the boonies.

I am using a Blackberry on TMO and so far I would agree as usual with ScottC -- once a download starts it is a bit slower than 56K dialup, but you do need to wait a while before the download starts. Is is good enough to surf FlyerTalk with only a little bit of patience.

I also have Verizon's Express Network on my other PDA, a Kyocera, and that is faster by perhaps 20%, but of course it is much more costly and doesn't work outside the USA in many places if at all.

If money were not an issue, and I wasn't concerned about traveling outside the USA, I would go with Verizon. I have used it all around the USA and although it doesn't work everywhere, it does work in almost every city I've visited.

My GPRS coverage has always been pretty decent to excellent. Don't forget that the Aircard has a 2" antenna, reception is always excellent on it.

Thanks for the help, everyone. Sounds like it will do what I need it to do.