Nevertheless, last December a few days after the LTE network in Northern Virginia went live I went to my local Verizon Wireless store and bought a PanTech UML290 device outright. As an early adopter I realized that it potentially could be a bumpy road of sorts. Little did I know though that it would be a bumpy road of continual disconnects and frustration.

In January 2011 I called the Verizon Wireless help desk (note I’d called them in December as well) to discuss the issue I was seeing to ascertain as to whether it was just my modem sporadically having issues, or if it was more an enterprise issue.  While the technician did not admit to it being an enterprise wide issue, he did say that it seemed that a node I was connecting to at the nearby cell tower which was providing service was having a problem. Therefore, whenever I attempted to use the modem and it selected said node, an “at cause” event would occur.

This event would not disconnect the modem, but rather would cause it to essentially have the traffic shaped to it become negligible. In other words, I could ping other sites using ICMP, or I could perform DNS lookups, but anything that required communicating and retrieving web based resources where data packets were transferred was effectively zero. Pretty cool technology right?

So I was told that a ticket would be opened and that I would receive a ticket number that was associated with this incident. Once the ticket was opened the network engineers that work on Verizon’s network would investigate the node, physically checking the tower and replacing the component that was broken.

I have yet to receive that ticket number over a month later. Further, this issue is not isolated to just the tower near my residence but seems to be prevalent throughout the Northern Virginia area.

I’m not quite certain what Verizon is doing to correct these issues, whether it’s a software issue with the VZAccess Manager or an actual networking issues, but three months later and it’s still not allowing for connectivity greater than ten minutes (there have been some sessions that have actually lasted longer, but they’re few and far between).

Perhaps someone from Verizon Wireless will actually read this, perhaps it is just words entered on the Internet that will be disregarded.

If you’re thinking of using Verizon Wireless for it’s LTE network with lightning fast speeds, be wary that you may also be in for a bumpy road. While it’s incredible fast, it is unstable.

Maybe Verizon Wireless was lacking the funds to complete the network and figured that suckers like me would be their “investment funding” in the sense that we could get on the network but would be disconnected shortly there after and using our service fees they can use it as a cost recovery of sorts as well as a stabilization fund to fix the problems.  Seems unacceptable to me.

Oddly enough though I would run an NSLookup and get a valid response. I would try to ping Google.com and it would ping. So I was left scratching my head wondering why I wasn’t able to transmit and receive anything other than just a DNS record or an ICMP. So what did I do? I called Verizon’s tech support.

So I disconnected and then reconnected and all was back to normal with super fast network connectivity that scared me (yes, scared me thinking to myself that just a few years ago these speeds in a wired environment were usually only in corporate data networks or academic environments).  Then about ten to fifteen minutes later, boom, disconnect.  Third times a charm I figured, and gave it another reconnect request, this time the session was flawless and had no issues, lasted 45 minutes long and then I disconnected manually and left for dinner with a few friends.  When I got back, I opened a ticket with Verizon support – they called back pretty quickly and left a message since I wasn’t available.  Rather than shy away from the issue I went ahead and gave them a call to further discuss.

After talking with a gent about what was going on, it was confirmed from my network traffic that there were “at cause” issues where the modem would attempt to talk to a specific node of the LTE cell and be disconnected from transmitting at that level and cease data traffic altogether. Because it’s the network side an official ticket was opened and network engineering team will investigate the network hardware and routing to correct the issue.

So first thoughts, LTE is blazing fast.  LTE is expensive in that Verizon wireless is capping at 5 GB for $50, 10 GB for $80.  I’d like to see VZW man up and do what MetroPCS is doing with unlimited usage for $60

Nevertheless, according to VZW, they should have the issue resolved in 5 to 7 business days, I’m interested to see it get fixed and will report back then.

Nevertheless, with the capability ceasing and with smartphones a flurry, there are still ways to do voice searches on your phone without having to even make a phone call – though you will incur data charges should they apply… Checkout Google’s offerings yonder at http://www.google.com/goog411/index.html for more information.  I loaded the Google Mobile App on my iPhone last night and have to say that it’s come a long way since version 1.0. If only it was as easy as just voice dialing a phone number though so as to not be distracted…

It’s available in the App store, more information available at:
http://www.dragonmobileapps.com

For those of you that like to graph everything, if you’re in the SharePoint or asp.net world, I’d recommend Dundas Chart. If you’re into utilizing web based APIs, Google Charts is pretty cool.

Please note that the “Point” that our friendly XKCD author is speaking of is not the use of SharePoint, though I’m sure that SharePoint has also had it’s mix of throwing monkey wrenches in relationships

No honey, we’re not going to use the BCD to solve this problem, I’ll write the data connection manually using custom code that doesn’t match any other schema we have…

So, the one thing that I can definitely say that I found out was that it’s amazing how hard it is to control an 18-wheeler at 200 km/h.  Yes, that’s right, you have four different automobile options to choose from

Check it out

http://geoquake.jp/en/webgame/DrivingSimulatorGM/

What to do… Thoughts? Recommendations?  I know, go read a forum and make my own decision, but those are coming from folks that I don’t know

Now Playing – Charlie Haden – Land of the Sun – Sueno Solo Con Tu Amor (I Only Dream of Your Love)

Now Playing – Oakenfold – Bunkka – Ready, Steady, Go