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Speedy Online Access on the RV Road

By Chuck Woodbury

In 1994, my daughter and then-wife spent four months on the road in a Class C motorhome touring the United States, pausing in major cities to talk to newspaper and television reporters about how great it is to travel by RV with a child. My daughter, now 15, was 2 1/2. Our trip was sponsored by the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association, which arranged the media interviews and paid us for our trouble. They also reimbursed us for our cell phone calls.

We carried a thick directory that advised us of a phone number we needed to log into each time we entered a new cellular market. In most cases, simply by logging in we were charged a few dollars. After that, we paid by the minute. Our phone bill was about $2,500 for the four months, and we didn't talk much.

At the time, I had an early Macintosh laptop computer and an account with AOL. At RV parks, I would beg owners for a phone line to "get my email." I might as well have been speaking Polish. "Email" was a largely unknown term.

When I was able to connect, I did so at 2.4 kilobits per second -- about 20 times slower than a dial-up connection in today's world -- or a couple of hundred times slower than a typical DSL or cable modem connection. Thankfully, back in those days, emails were only text, and typically brief.

Last month, my daughter and I spent a week traveling by car from Seattle to Yellowstone and back. We brought along my new Macintosh MacBook laptop computer. When used with my cell phone we were able to connect to the Internet at speeds of two to three times that of dial-up. In Seattle and 200 other large cities, the connection is at super-fast broadband speed. PC users don't even need the phone to connect: they simply plug in a special card into the side of their computers.

The setup I use to get online is called VZAccess from Verizon Wireless -- $60 a month for unlimited service. This is IN ADDITION TO my cell phone plan. If you pull out your map, you will see that it's mostly wide-open spaces between Seattle and Yellowstone. On this trip, Emily and I drove the Interstate most of the way. About 90 percent of the time we were able to connect to the Internet.

On the long drive back, I let Emily give the new system a serious test drive. We drove straight through from Wyoming to Seattle our last day, about 750 miles (whew!). The choice was to keep driving or stay in yet another motel and toss away another $100. And so beginning in Missoula, Mont., Emily surfed the Web as I drove west. And for most of the next few hours, the Internet connection was stable, connecting at twice dial-up speed or faster. Only along a few very remote stretches did it drop. Basically, wherever there was Verizon service, we could go online: in the Extended Network area, we could not.

Because my own RV travels are typically for both pleasure and business, Internet connectivity is important. My last cell phone plan, Verizon's Mobile Office, enabled me to connect to the Internet. But it was so slow (14.4 baud) that it was worthless for anything but checking email. And I had to limit my minutes because they counted the same as talk time.

For RVers who need Internet access as they travel, VZAcess (and I assume similar plans of other companies) is a huge step forward. It seems to me that using this service, plus WiFi where available, and dial-up in a bind, getting online should be fairly routine. This new setup certainly makes it easier for me to get away. While $60 a month is too much for most RVers who only need occasional personal access, for business travelers like me, it's a small price to pay and a giant leap forward in mobile communication.

Article from RVtravel.com