Midwest storms last week

[Rick Denney]

Well, there is one good outcome. After removing the deceased all-in-one laser machine, which had always been troublesome anyway, I was researching new all-in-ones, because I really need to be able to make copies and fax things if I am to be allowed to work at home a couple days a week. The Internet connection was just terrible--which it always is for me, anyway, because the only solution available to me Verizon Mobile Broadband. My modem kept losing 3G and switching to 1X, which is dial-up speed, but when it did the modem would hang and require rebooting.

While my 3G coverage has always been weak, which limits speed, it has not come and gone quite so frustratingly. So, I looked on Verizon's web site to see if I could find who to call to determine when they would be fixing what must have been storm damage to one of their towers. I happened across their current coverage map.

Hey, what's that dark red? I'm used to bright red, which denotes 3G coverage. Hey! Dark red is LTE--4G!

So, I reconfigured my modem and my Cradlepoint router to attempt a 4G connection, and lo and behold! I'm now getting 10 to 12 megabits per second coming down and about 400K going up. And it's reliable (sort-of--I only had to re-establish my VPN connection to the office three or four times during the day).

My wife and I could actually both work at home and log into our work networks at the same time! Who knew?

Rick "who might never have checked if Verizon's 3G antenna hadn't been damaged" Denney