I have my Verizon card going again. It turns out that there’s a quirk in the way Verizon deals with people who have been cut off. You can walk into a Verizon store the next day and simply sign up again as if you’ve never owned a card before. The thing I don’t like about it is that you have to sign a new contract, which is a two year commitment.
I ended up buying the Express Card version of the EVDO card so that I’ll have the right card once I upgrade to a MacBook Pro (but I activated the old card for now since I don’t have one of those new-fangled express card slots just yet). That way I could take advantage of the hardware discount you get when signing a new contract instead of having to pay full-boat price when it was time to upgrade.
Oh, Verizon is only EVDO? I can probably beat your deal, hands down. You see, Sprint PCS has tried (unsuccessfully) to discourage their palmphone users from using them as Internet access for their laptops. The result: unlimited (for real) Internet access for the price of a PCS Vision account-enabled cellphone.
I’ve recently upgraded to a Treo 700p, with EVDO service. Now Sprint tries to charge you an extra $20 a month over the PCS PowerVision monthly charge to enable the dialout provision on the phone, but there is a $20 program available on the Internet called USBWeb, that does the job quite nicely, for a onetime charge.
I get about 2.4 MBit/sec connects with *no* airtime and *no* data charges. Plus, I can use the same handset as a cell phone, when it’s not actively handling the data connection.
Anyplace that Sprint has PCS Vision coverage (including the older 1xRTT 160kbps service) is now fair game. I’ve used the setup in the past to stay continuously connected from Chicago to North Dakota, on Amtrak, which follows I-90/94, where the cell towers are.