Not everyone wants or needs to connect with the Internet through a home connection – be it an old fashioned straight modem, or a wireless router connected to a cable. For people who move around a lot, working online can be cheaper, quicker and easier using a mobile package.
The laptop, after all, was designed to be moved around. That’s the point of something small, which folds up into a tough case and can be carried lightly. Your home internet connection isn’t going to cut it when you’re on a train 200 miles away from your house!
There are plenty of mobile broadband options to choose from. I use AT&T internet but they’re not the only provider – all the major mobile phone companies deliver similar packages, so it’s as much about finding someone who has the right coverage in your area as it is about remaining loyal to a particular brand.
Coverage is all important for the speed of your mobile Internet device. I work in a variety of locations in my local area, which is unhelpfully surrounded by hills and is around 90 miles from the nearest population centre (idyllic, but annoying for internet speeds!). My At&T internet connection is useful (as a mobile device that is) because the AT&T coverage in the area is strong enough to pick up a good speed. There are some communications providers whose transmitters hardly reach my village at all, so buying ne of their mobile internet devices would have been a very good way to spend useless money on a piece of plastic that doesn’t do anything.
The mobile internet device works in exactly the same way as your home devices – just using mobile signals instead of the landline signal that is piped into your modem. Even wireless home internet uses a modem – the wireless router is plugged into the landline infrastructure by way of a cable modem. The mobile device plugs into your chosen mobile network using a SIM card – exactly the same kind as the one in your ‘phone, only this one is specifically registered to give you Internet access.
Like all connectivity packages, whether you use AT&T internet or the provider whose signal is best in your area, what you pay equals what you get in terms of monthly downloads and uploads. The more you pay, the more data you can deal with on a daily basis.
Choosing the mobile connector that is right for you, then, is about finding the right deal as well as the right supplier. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area with good coverage from all the mobile networks, you’ll be able to shop around to find the best deal for your budget. You should be able to specify a 4G device if you are buying a new contract right now – certainly the latest AT&T internet mobile device is set up to receive at 4G speeds where available already.
The way in which you consume the Internet ultimately dictates whether or not you actually need a mobile device. If you don’t work on the go, you don’t really need one – your phone probably does all the surfing you need when you’re out and about. Unless you have a yen to download movies wherever you end up of course!
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