Verizon Wireless Cards

[sdc]

Just signed up for a 2 year contract for a verizon wireless card...

Havent made up my mind whether I like it or not wanted to get your opinions....

2 yr deal
$60 per month
$130 to activate and buy card

Couple things I have noticed so far
You can keep a constant signal driving down highway...
This is huge, I spend alot of time on the road and can now play while traveling (when others drive of course)

Speed seems fine for poker however...

Surfing the net it sucks, for example it takes forever to open up espn's website

It may be worth keeping just to play while traveling and in airports...just have not decided yet

I have a 15 day trial period to decide

Anyone else use these things?

Have any opinions?

How soon till this technology improves?

Am I better waiting?

[awr000]

Define "forever"

I'm on my verizon card right now and it took approx 8 seconds to load up espn.com's front page

I've had my card for 9+ months now and am very satified with it.

[sdc]

forgot to mention

i was also running 2 tables at the same time i tried to open espn's page

the guy at the store told me it would be comparible to a dsl or cable connection, and i just dont feel that is the case

as far as poker goes i am satisfied

however, when i am at home surfing the net is seems pretty slow

like i mentioned i havent decided 1 way or another yet

thanks for input

[StacysMom]

I just got one and absolutely love it. It is a bit slow for web surfing, but the freedom I get for playing poker is rediculous. Just the other day I was grinding on a picninc table next to a river. For as much as I play, I need a change of scenery to keep my sanity. It keeps a reliable connection and that is the most important part of the connection once it has the minimum threshold speed for multitabling.

[JRussell]

It is only comparable to DSL when you're in a city that offers Verizon Broadband Access coverage. Once you lose the Broadband Access signal it changes to cellular and is more comparable to dial-up.

[Mendacious]

I love it. It is rock solid for poker. Not so great for internet, but it depends somewhat on the cache you have for reloading pages, and the internet varies a lot from day to day & place to place. It is not compable to DSL or Broadband. I would not be happy if I got rid of my broadband at home and replaced it. But it is so handy and is serviceable for the internet, and ROCKS for poker...which pays for the card easily.

My contract is $80 and I signed up in July. Do you have your voice plan with Verizon as well. Or have the cut the rate across the board?

[sdc]

Is is a special they are running...

I was anticipating $80, so when they said $60 I had to jump on it.....

If you want to start term over I am sure they would adjust your bill....

My conract is 80/month also. Web is so-so. Poker is awesome.

Look at it like this:

# of hrs played per month on verizon card * hourly poker rate

Compare it to your monthly verizon bill.

Is it positive EV for you to have this?
If poker $$ is less than the bill, is the differce worth the surfing value?

[JRussell]

Mine is $60/month and it was purchased about 2 months ago. I do not have voice service with Verizon. I also got a mail-in rebate for the card so it only cost about $50.

Remember, if you decide you don't like/want it after a few months you can always change it over to a regular voice plan. This way you're not really stuck with the internet service for 2 full years.

[MicroBob]

I just got mine.

The guy said that it's $80/mth unless I also have or get a Verizon voice-plan at which point it is $60/mth. I may change over to a Verizon voice-plan just to save a few bucks on this.


I've had some problems with it though although it is working fine right now.
But i had a stretch in there where it wasn't connecting AT ALL....then it would connect fine several times in a row...then it would completely fail to connect again for hours on end.
Perhaps I was in an area of my home where it was less likely to work (although I was getting 3 bars ouf of 4 for signal much of the time).


If you have suggestions...you can probably just save them. I spent over 2 hours on the phone with support trying to fix the damn thing.


However, after tinkering around with some settings I think it's pretty good for web-surfing...whereas at first it was WAY slower than regular dial-up for surfing.


I'm going to play on it A LOT over the next few days because if I'm going to dump it before the 15-day trial-period ends I need to figure out NOW what I think of it.

If I get one more situation where it's refusing to connect then I'm calling back the support guy at Verizon (who I feel I know pretty well now after 2+ hours on the phone with him) who has already suggested that the problem might be in the card itself and that I can send it back and they'll send me a new one (since none of the other ideas seemed to work at the time...but again, it's mysteriously working fine now).