Road Warrior ISP

Yes, dial-up is a pain. Yes, the sounds of a modem squeal are something you don’t want to hear anymore. Yes, “instant-on” high-speedy, broadbandy, DSL-ie, cable modeming is fantastic. Yes, anyone who has it at home or office dreads the thought of having to go back to the seemingly “ancient” days of the dreaded dial-up 56K modems.

There is one problem, though. How do you connect when you’re not at home? You can’t very well bring your high-speed in your carry-on bag. Thus, you have to resort to a dial-up modem for e-mailing, stock-checking, and eBaying on the road.

How about “wireless”, you might ask? Well, the 802.11b or “Wi-Fi” flavor of wireless (which gives you the high-speed stuff for the road) has the unfortunate drawback of providing access only if you are fairly close to the access point. Airports and hotels are beginning to provide this service, but a large percentage still doesn’t. Thus, it’s a nice service but nothing you can rely on 100%. Another method is to use a “cellular modem card” which you slap into the side of your laptop. This provides you with Internet access anywhere you have cell modem signal. That’s nice but to use this you have to pay a hefty monthly fee, whether you use it or not. It also has the wonderful feature of requiring you to sign a 1-year contract, where you have to give up your first-born if you cancel during that period. Yikes…

Upset by all of these options? Well, there is a solution which involves the dreaded “d” word (dial-up). BAMnet (www.bamnet.com) offers nationwide dial-up through a single 800-number. Yes, I did write about them before, but their current service is a bit different. To reiterate, their service is prepaid Internet and the fee is between 4.5 cents and 6.5 cents per-minute. Now, you can take that single 800-number and use it anywhere in the 48 states. There’s no software to download and they’ve not only got directions for Windows but for any handheld or notebook computer that can dial-up to the Internet. I got it going on both my laptop and my Pocket PC and it’s a great option for when I’m away from my beloved cable modem. Finally, your prepaid minutes don’t have an expiration date so you can carry an account for years without your minutes pulling a Houdini.

Maybe you have a bunch of traveling employees who could use this service? BAMnet’s got you covered there too – they offer a Corporate/Group Account. This allows multiple users to be billed to a single credit card. And since there’s no monthly fee, it’s terrific if your employees only travel a few months out of the year. The minimum prepaid amount is a mere $50, regardless of how many accounts you need.

BAMnet doesn’t provide an e-mail address – but who doesn’t have one these days? To assist you with e-mail, they do provide you with an SMTP server, which I needed so I could send e-mail from my cable modem e-mail account.

Overall, the service is rock-solid in terms of compatibility and I never had a busy signal (which their web site also promises). All in all, it’s a great addition to your repertoire of ISPs. At least, until that wonderful day in the future when a high-speed plug-in is as easy to find as a strip mall in New Jersey.