[Techtalk] dialup while traveling

[James]

On Wed, 19 Jun 2002, Judith Elaine Bush wrote:

> We're going on a 10 day trip with our two laptops and would like to be
> able to dial-up the net periodically while we're gone. Most of the
> places we're staying is with family, and my ideal would be to find a
> 1800 dial-up pool we can access at some reasonable rate. 
> 
> Our current DSL provider also supports roaming dial-up with a handful
> of POPs: Roaming Charges: $2.40 per hour/$0.04 cents per
> minute. However, we're traveling constantly, so we'd have to create a
> configuration almost every night. 
> 
> I may just look at billing the long distance and calling our local
> dialup, just to stay sane.
> 
> However, if anyone has experience with a good nationwide (particularly
> in the southeast) service that is reasonable for (very) infrequent
> use, I'd love to hear about it.

AOL should be good in this respect (huge number of POPs, nice easy 
configuration, and a 1800 number to fall back on). Of course, there is the 
AOL software to contend with...

In a similar vein, AT&T Worldnet has a national service; the 1800 number 
is billed at 10 cents/minute, but they do have an enormous number of local 
POPs (as you'd expect from AT&T, I suppose!) - OK, you'll have to change 
dialup number every time you move to another local area, but you can be 
pretty condfident of getting local access AFAICS.

The other option is the calling card route. nobelcom.com has a good 
selection, with options from half a cent per minute (but 89c connection!) 
to 3.5c/minute, no connection charge. If you can get your dialup script to 
access the calling card's 1800 number, then dial your ISP's POP long 
distance, you'll have access nationally.

One point to watch out for though is compression: some companies route LD 
calls over less than clear connections, which may kill your connection 
speed. On the other hand, if you're just checking email each day, this may 
not be a big issue.


James.