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scojohnson71

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Posts posted by scojohnson71

  2. Posted · Report reply

    On 3/28/2018 at 7:17 PM, dianahc said:

    So, a few months ago, I told my tale of problems getting signed up with the new Verizon/FMCA $49/mo plan with free Jetpack (I had earlier gotten a small tablet as a hotspot, which I was promised could be swapped for the FMCA deal when it finally got put together, and it turned into a nightmare to switch). Having reliable and unlimited internet is very important to me because I am still working part time as an attorney, and I have to work while we're on the road.

    I have now been on three RV trips in our new-to-us RV (YAY! We're now proud owners of a 2007 Holiday Rambler Ambassador 40PDQ, and we upgraded our Jeep toad to a 2007 too!). We moved our WeBoost 4G-X to the new coach too. I have had the following experience with the Jetpack and Verizon:

    • It did NOT work in the RV park in Apache Junction AZ where I took it on the first trip, but I didn't mess with it much - we were only there for two nights taking driving lessons on the new rig, and I didn't have to do any work.
    • It works fine while we're on the road. While driving the 700 miles from the Phoenix area to south of Gilroy CA, I only really lost the signal in the Tehachapi mountains for about 5-10 minutes.
    • HOWEVER, on our next trip, which was nearly a month long, when we got to Betabel RV Park about 7 miles south of Gilroy (the south end of Silicon Valley) and right off of US101, the damned thing didn't work worth CRAP. I couldn't stay connected; could barely open Facebook, never mind opening and staying connected to my secure work VPN or streaming a video from Netflix. I was there for 2-1/2 weeks, with a big opinion to write, and I ended up having to drive up to my daughter's house to use her internet to get most of it done. 
    • HOURS were spent on the phone with Verizon, and all I got was lame excuses about "poor line of sight" access to the cell tower, "terrain, and congestion," and similar excuses. However, the connection DID work occasionally - sorta - the first three days, and it was a little more stable at after midnight or so. First clue.
    • When we left Gilroy/San Juan Bautista, we went to Las Vegas for a few days, staying at a BIG RV resort (Oasis) near the airport and right next to I-5, with no mountains or even hills around us - and had the same damned problem - the Jetpack was essentially WORTHLESS in the park.
    • When I got home, I complained bitterly to Verizon, and after repeatedly denying it could be the Jetback, they finally agreed to swap it out for a new one. Don't even ask how horrible that transaction turned out to be and how many more hours were wasted on the phone with them, as well as having to drive to the Verizon store where they didn't know anything about my being supposed to swap out the Jetpack.
    • Note - the Jetpack doesn't work worth crap in my home in Goodyear AZ either - in the middle of a large community. Varies between 1-2 bars, and drops my VPN connection constantly, when I have tested it at home. I use my home internet when home, of course.
    • Two weeks ago, we went on a 1 week trip to Distant Drums RV Resort in Camp Verde AZ - right next to I-17. The Verizon internet connection was WORTHLESS.
    • I complained again, and this time they sent me a new SIM card. I replaced it today, and still only got one bar at home.
    • I called Verizon again, and again spent a long time on the phone with tech support.
    • Basically, their conclusion is that there are too many Verizon users in the RV parks competing for the same bandwidth.

    So there you go - they are selling us equipment and "access" to a fixed amount of bandwidth. The more RVers who use Verizon in your RV park (or neighbors at home), the worse (i.e., essentially USELESS) your signal will be.

    I'm livid, and disappointed, and feel cheated.

    And I'm copying this post and emailing it to the senior people at Verizon and FMCA that I worked with at the beginning of this miserable odyssey.

    Your problem isn't the device, or the carrier, it is how 4G/LTE works.   As the network becomes more congested, you have more contention for the data.  When you are sitting in a large RV park, where every rig has a few devices in it (and many on Verizon), plus the surrounding population, your network performance will degrade if there isn't enough carrier antennas in the area.    When on the highway, you don't have the problem, even though the antennas are further apart it is also sparsely populated. 

    The 3G technology worked a little differently, and was not as subject to this issue.  You will also notice with 4G that your "bars" on your phone will go down (with network contention), even if you are standing in a parking lot and can see one of the camouflaged cell towers a few hundred yards from you.   The "bars" are a combination of signal strength, plus available capacity. 

  3. Posted · Report reply

    I have had mixed-experience with Sprint.   The Franklin R910 is a piece of garbage in my opinion.   We use our RV about 3 months out of the year, we live in Northern California, so we do not necessarily have to escape the weather, it's just for a change of scenery.   We are also in a rural area, and California is probably the worst for rural Internet service in the US.   We do have a "barely functional" DSL, with speeds that have not improved since we bought our house 25 years ago. 

    After receiving the R910 from FMCA, I thought I would be a little creative and put the Sprint SIM in a MOFI-4500 I had from a brief trial of service from UbiFi.com. UbiFi was good, just quite expensive (about $90 / month) and they only offer AT&T - which was very slow in our home base area, if you are interested, it is here - https://www.ubifi.net and would be pretty much universal service, just slowish at about 10 mbps.    I do have Internet service at the house when we are here, it's also not very good and I'll usually work in my home office using whatever cellular device I have. The DSL is basically just for the home automation stuff, and the TVs work somewhat reasonably well on it (one at a time). 

    Anyway, for about 6 months during our winter "home" span of the year, the MOFI 4500 worked fabulously with the Sprint SIM in it, literally, it never went off - never a reboot, dropped connection, etc.   I do have an external antenna for it mounted on the roof of the house, and another one on the RV.   When using either, I just plug it into the coax going to the roof and it always has perfect service/coverage.    The MOFI is not as fast as the Franklin device, it's a little older and doesn't aggregate antennas like the Franklin does, but it is also commercial-grade and very reliable. The MOFI also works with any carrier / any technology. 

    About a week ago, Sprint seems to have noticed, and the MOFI will only stay connected for about a minute before losing service.   Nothing I did would work to get around it, the logs just show it being booted from the network.   I put the SIM back in the R910 and it works fine.   Unfortunately.. we went from about 60 mbps of service from the Sprint/MOFI solution to back to around 6 on landline DSL (for the house).   I still run my business and I teach MBA / graduate classes for a major univeristy via video conferencing, so that's an issue... I'll probably end up doing a satellite service for the house or some other weird solution.  The limited data plans on the others would get eaten up pretty quickly with all the video conferencing that I do.

    The R910 experience is truly awful - it seems to overheat at about 12-14 hours if I leave it on, (which then breaks the alarm and automation on the RV), I popped the battery out of it thinking it would avoid an overheat, but works even less then - only staying on for about 20 minutes before rebooting.   The total hours of usage on the R910 that I have shows about 30.. so it's not like it is "worn out" by any means. 

    The Sprint service itself is fairly decent - when in range of a tower, I hit 70-80 mbps with the device, which is actually slower than my iPad Pro with it's Sprint service - I routinely reach over 150 mbps with that (on cellular!).   Coverage in the Nevada Great Basin (which we travel across frequently to escape California's communist leanings) has been very spotty on Sprint - many places we stop, we get zero service, on our Sprint phones or the hotspot.   When it works, it's great, but there are a lot of "off" places.

    Verizon coverage is generally better, but I think the network is a little slower.     AT&T does seem to have the best coverage, but it is very slow..  I originally had an AT&T SIM in the MOFI from Unlimitedville and I never got above 8 mpbs.. it wasn't worth the enormous cost increase versus the regular old telephone company DSL for the house, but it did seem to work pretty much anywhere. 

    My two cents - I would recommend FMCA offer an upgrade-plan with better hardware like Unlimitedville or UbiFi does - offer both the easy-to-use little made-in-China Franklin things, but also the Sierra Wireless MOFI 4500 devices or similar for an extra setup cost, although they are a little complex to use - just ship them pre-configured.   People will be MUCH happier with them.   "Unlimited service" really isn't unlimited if the thing crashes every 6-8 hours. 

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