What is Wire­less Internet?

Wire­less inter­net refers to any inter­net con­nec­tion that is not depen­dent on a wired land­line to access the web. There are three types of wire­less inter­net connections.

Wi-Fi

Wi-fi hotspots are becom­ing more com­mon­place around the coun­try. No mat­ter where you are you can almost always find a wi-fi sig­nal at a local library, cof­fee shop or hotel. In big cities like San Fran­cisco its almost impos­si­ble to be in town and not have access to this type of wire­less broad­band sig­nal. Wi-fi con­nects to your wire­less net­work adapter in your com­puter, phone, or wire­less inter­net device and will only work within a few hun­dred feet of the wire­less inter­net base sta­tion or hub. Since wi-fi still relies on hav­ing a wired land­line con­nec­tion to the local hub it is not a truly wire­less set-up and is lim­ited to loca­tions that have free wi-fi setup for pub­lic use.

Mobile Broad­band

If you want a more portable wire­less inter­net sig­nal so that you can get online when you are on the go or in places where there is no wi-fi con­nec­tion then you need a mobile broad­band plan. Orig­i­nally mobile broad­band was just for smart­phones but now you can also use it with tablets, net­books, and even lap­tops and desk­tops with a USB modem or a PC card modem. Use the com­par­i­son chart above to find the best mobile broad­band provider for your needs. You may also want to com­pare only pre­paid wire­less inter­net plans.

Satel­lite Internet

The third type of wire­less inter­net is satel­lite inter­net. This is a pop­u­lar wire­less broad­band con­nec­tion that can be used at home for peo­ple who live in rural areas that don’t have access to wired broad­band sig­nals through the local cable or phone com­pa­nies. The costs are sim­i­lar to mobile broad­band and depend­ing on which provider and plan you choose, satel­lite inter­net may offer more data trans­fer. The two largest satel­lite inter­net providers are Hugh­es­Net and Wild­Blue. Since this con­nec­tion relies on a sta­tion­ary satel­lite installed at the users home or office it is not a solu­tion for those who wish to take their wire­less inter­net con­nec­tion with them.

What are the Ben­e­fits of Wire­less Inter­net Service?

Hav­ing a mobile inter­net con­nec­tion means you can get work done from any location—on the bus, from a train, at the park, in a book­store, at a remote loca­tion, or even at the beach. If you are trav­el­ling you can use a mobile broad­band sig­nal to get online at a hotel with­out hav­ing to pay for wi-fi access.

For those that live in rural areas with­out tra­di­tional broad­band access, a high-speed wire­less inter­net con­nec­tion is worlds above archaic dial-up access. At 30 to 200 times the speed of dial-up, a 3g or 4g mobile broad­band con­nec­tion allows rural users to surf more effi­ciently and get more done online than was ever pos­si­ble before. From watch­ing videos to just being able to quickly catch up with friends and view pho­tos on Face­book, hav­ing a broad­band con­nec­tion makes all the difference.

Is My Data Secure with Wire­less Internet?

Depend­ing on the type of wire­less inter­net con­nec­tion you are using it may be a good idea to be con­cerned about the secu­rity of your infor­ma­tion. Pub­lic wi-fi hotspots are not secure and in fact there have been sev­eral well-publicized cases of hack­ing tak­ing place on these net­works. Mobile broad­band on the other hand uses the same high-level of inter­net encryp­tion that banks and gov­ern­ment agen­cies use and is much more secure than pub­lic wi-fi. Since you can’t say that about the con­nec­tion at Star­bucks, if pro­tect­ing your infor­ma­tion is a con­cern of yours, you should look for a mobile broad­band con­nec­tion that will keep your infor­ma­tion safe.

What to Look for When Com­par­ing Wire­less Inter­net Providers

There are five key ele­ments to look for when com­par­ing wire­less inter­net providers. Choos­ing the best provider is as sim­ple as find­ing a plan that matches your bud­get and data trans­fer needs, and then check­ing to see if their ser­vice cov­ers the area you need. Let’s take a quick look at the 5 points you should keep in mind.

Price

The most impor­tant point of com­par­i­son for most is the monthly cost of the plan. With monthly plans rang­ing from $30 to $90 a month, there is a plan for every bud­get. Besides the monthly price don’t for­get to fac­tor in other costs like acti­va­tion fees, cost of equip­ment to get started and wether or not there are addi­tional fees for going over your data allotment.

Down­load Allowance

When eval­u­at­ing the price of the plan be sure to com­pare how much data you are allowed to trans­fer on each. If you intend to only casu­ally access the inter­net (like check­ing email and light web surf­ing) then you should be good to go with a smaller plan around 3 GB per month. How­ever if you are a heavy inter­net user or if you plan on using your mobile broad­band con­nec­tion as your pri­mary inter­net con­nec­tion then you’ll want to con­sider a plan that offers closer to 10 GB of trans­fer a month. Remem­ber to login to your account and keep an eye on your usage reg­u­larly so that you don’t get sur­prised with a hefty bill full of over­age fees at the end of the month.

Speed

When com­par­ing the the data trans­fer you’ll notice that some wire­less inter­net providers break up the data dif­fer­ently for their 3G and 4G net­works. 3G typ­i­cally deliv­ers a con­nec­tion with speeds rang­ing from 1.4 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps. Many peo­ple find the speed to be on the lower end of this range. While this is fast enough for many uses, it can make some appli­ca­tions like video con­fer­enc­ing dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble. 4G net­works are much faster and more robust than 3G, but as the tech­nol­ogy is still new, the cov­er­age areas for 4G is rather small and cur­rently lim­ited to spe­cific, major met­ro­pol­i­tan areas. Most 4G devices will auto­mat­i­cally switch to the 3G net­work if 4G is not avail­able but that switch may not be instan­ta­neous. If you plan on using the 4G net­work exclu­sively be sure to get all of the facts on 3G vs 4G.

Wire­less Inter­net Coverage

Once you find a plan that gives you the data trans­fer at a speed and price that match your needs, the last thing you must do is check to see if there is ade­quate data cov­er­age in the areas you intend to use the ser­vice. All of the mobile broad­band providers are actively expand­ing their net­works that already cover an impres­sive foot­print within the US. Still, each net­works data cov­er­age varies quite a bit and you may find that one provider offers bet­ter cov­er­age in your area. Since the speed of your con­nec­tion is directly depen­dent on the sig­nal strength, it’s crit­i­cal that you care­fully eval­u­ate your options.

Cus­tomer Service

The last point you may want to con­sider is the cus­tomer ser­vice rep­u­ta­tion of the provider. Is there a 800 num­ber you can call to talk to some­one? What’s the wait time? How about online chat or email sup­port? Most providers have all three options avail­able, but it’s still some­thing to con­sider when eval­u­a­tion wire­less inter­net providers.

Which Com­pa­nies Offer Wire­less Inter­net Service?

The major mobile broad­band providers are Ver­i­zon, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, Clear, All­tel, Vir­gin, US Cel­lu­lar, CricKet, Data­Jack, Mil­leni­com, Time Warner, and Cox. And the two pri­mary satel­lite inter­net providers are Hugh­es­Net and Wild­Blue. Use the com­par­i­son chart at the top of this page to find the best wire­less inter­net provider for you.