A Look Back At Mobile Broadband
I remember getting my very first mobile broadband device. It was a USB modem stick. I needed reliable Internet for my laptop while on-the-go and after careful consideration, a mobile broadband device seemed like the way to go. I don’t recall the cost of the device, but I think it was either at no cost or at a discounted cost with a two-year wireless agreement.
The data plans weren’t cheap (still aren’t) and the data service back then wasn’t great (it has significantly improved with 4G LTE) but it was still decent if you needed reliable Internet on-the-go. I even recall numerous occasions when I had to rely on it as a backup when my home Internet went out and I needed to get time-sensitive work done.
When 4G LTE became available, I upgraded to a 4G LTE USB modem stick which offered a significant improvement in speed, performance, and reliability. While the 4G LTE USB modem stick certainly did the job, a major disadvantage and limitation with the USB modem sticks was that they would only work on a single computer at a time (though some routers would eventually have built-in support for certain USB modem sticks to allow for sharing of Internet access). The major advantage was that USB modem sticks were more affordable than their mobile broadband hotspot counterparts (especially, if you decided to buy it outright instead of locking into a one or two-year wireless agreement for a device discount).
As the cost of mobile broadband hotspots eventually declined, I did upgrade to a mobile broadband hotspot. Initially, the hotspots supported up to five devices. Nowadays, they support up to ten or fifteen devices. Speed, performance and reliability have continued to improve though individual results may vary due to a variety of factors. On a good day, I’ve seen download speeds over 100Mbps and upload speeds between 10-20Mbps or above.
Keep in mind that these mobile broadband devices were geared more towards businesses than the average consumer. They were meant to enable people to work remotely while on-the-road or traveling for business.
You might say, what about smartphones? Well, at the time, I think I had a Blackberry and being able to make/receive phone calls, send/receive text messages and e-mails were pretty much the feature set of the Blackberry … trying to use GPS/maps and surfing the web was pretty bad. A lot of what I can do now on the iPhone (or generally, on modern smartphones) didn’t exist or were in their infancy at the time. The mobile broadband device allowed me to do the things I needed to do on a laptop which I couldn’t ordinarily do on-the-go without a laptop and reliable Internet access. That said, mobile broadband has evolved and today, it’s just as important to consumers as it is to businesses.
Fortunately, you don’t need a separate mobile broadband device nowadays though there are circumstances where it can be beneficial based on your specific use case. Good smartphones with good data plans offer 4G LTE service or better giving you mobile broadband at your fingertips virtually all the time. You can accomplish many of the Internet-based tasks on your smartphone (via browsers and apps) that you might have only been able to do on a computer with Internet access in the past. In addition, if you do need mobile broadband on your laptop, many of those compatible smartphones with eligible data plans support Personal Hotspots which allow you to use your smartphone to act as a mobile broadband hotspot to share your Internet access with other devices, like your laptop, so you can get on the Internet while you’re on-the-go and do those things that can only be done on a computer. Many tablets can be configured with LTE as an option and offer the same Personal Hotspot support available on smartphones and many computer manufacturers allow you to customize laptops with LTE/mobile broadband support.
Times have changed. Technology has evolved. Mobile broadband has come a long way. Hard to imagine going back to a time without it!