Its A Sad Thing...

... but all good things must come to an end. Today I cancelled my 3G mobile wireless plan.

I signed up for it in January of 2008, when a well-known wireless phone company launched an advertising campaign with the theme of the Internet can't hide anymore. It was a good deal, back then. Unlimited access, pretty much anywhere in the country, for a flat fee of $69.99. To me, that meant I could ditch Comcast, who supposedly provided my Internet access via cable modem. I won't go into detail here about why I felt they weren't giving me value for my money, but that was the bottom line.

In January of this year, however, my problems began. My "Aircard" 3G modem blew up. Literally, the battery in the thing actually swelled up to the point that one couldn't close the outer case of the modem. I looked for a replacement battery, but it turned out that the only place I could get it was Sierra Wireless - which would have cost me about 30% of the cost of a new modem, and taken 3 weeks - and I needed access restored right away, for reasons I don't feel compelled to go into now. The obvious solution was to get a new modem from my provider.

It was close enough to contract expiration that I could get an upgrade to a new modem, but there were a couple of obstacles:

1. the upgrade would have obligated me for another two year contract, and
2. the provisions of the contract were different from my original service contract. 

It seems that in the interim period, my provider had adopted a new and innovative definition for the term "unlimited service." "Unlimited" no longer means "without limitations," instead, it means that a customer is entitled to use the service for up to 5 GB of data transfer without additional charges.

I really like the old Webster definition a lot better, and when I reviewed my data usage history, I found that I couldn't live within that limitation. As a result, I couldn't accept an upgrade, and had to pay full price for my new device in order to keep my old service level.

So okay. I paid up and went merrily about my business. Then a few weeks ago, the iPhone was finally released. I didn't realize it but the iPhone, and a whole host of other new devices are designed to work solely on the 3G network. Suddenly, I was losing my connection every few minutes, because other devices wanted my bandwidth! Calls to Customer Service resulted in fine connections to very nice, enthusiastic people, who wanted very badly to help, but couldn't. That night I was unable to connect for 12 straight hours, and that led me to investigate alternatives.

I remembered a recent promotion for low-cost DSL service, and when I found the advertisment, I arranged to try it out. Service was available in my area, and I had cancellation rights for 30 days - if it didn't work
out for me. Happily, it seems to be working just fine, and so today I cancelled my 3G internet service. If I'm going to throw money away, I'd rather do it in a boat.

Mariner.