The Mobile Internet Dilemma

So we’d like a means of accessing the internet on the road. And an iPhone isn’t quite what we have in mind.

We need a high-bandwidth solution which we can use while traveling, which allows us to actually maintain websites in a relatively secure environment. Can’t do that with cell, it fails on two points:

1. Inadequate bandwidth. Most cell plans have a pitiful amount, and it drops to no more than a smidgen of that if you are out of area.

2. Inadequate security. Cell signals are too insecure to use for website work where passwords are transmitted over the net.

We have Satellite internet here at home, as our backup internet provider. So we know the limits of it, and we feel it would be adequate for travel. But we will never use Hughesnet again, and they are about the only consumer provider of mobile satellite.

We finally found a commercial provider which offers consumer priced options – the plans have unlimited bandwidth, so one of our primary problems is solved, and the connection is private, so it is much more secure than cell. The drawback is that the dish has to be mounted on an RV (we don’t have one yet), and the cost is around $7500 for the dish and install.

We have determined that it would be worth it though. Combined with a used RV, we would have the ability to travel as we wished. Traveling is currently a problem for us because hotel connections are often insecure, which limits the kind of work we can do on the road, and because time in hotels is limited. We have dietary issues with hotels too – we have to pack all our food since we cannot eat out, and we have to rent hotel rooms with a fridge and microwave – this puts us in the higher cost bracket. An RV would solve both of those problems.

So we are now planning and budgeting for an RV and the mobile dish. It won’t solve all the problems, but it will give us some very useful business capabilities.