Mobile broadband and phones

I have a Blackberry which, as well as providing its own built-in mobile phone and email service, also doubles as a modem for my PC notebook which then provides full internet access.

Works in any CDMA area which is far more extensive than wireless broadband (in fact, I am on the internet now in my BT at Glen Innes).

Will provide a fruther post in a few days on costs and other details, but for me - it's great!

Just returned from a 3 month trip from Victoria to WA and back. Used a Sierra AirCard supplied by Telstra. It's a CDMA device which plugged into my PC and depending on coverage gives you either Broadband or a high speed connection (about 115kbps).

Worked in a lot of locations where I just didn't expect to get a signal. Not sure of price but Telstra have the details.

Also you might like to look at Wireless Access. For instance, McDonalds have wireless hot spots. If you have a Teltra Mobile Phone account, you can pull up in the street and your PC will detect the network. You get a web page where you supply your mobile phone number and then a one time password is sent to your mobile phone via SMS - instantly.

You can then sign in and use the wireless broadband connection and the rates seem pretty good for short term access - collecting emails etc.

Also most Intenet cafes now allow you to connect your own PC.

Plenty of options

We have the telstra wireless broadband card in our laptop, which I think is around $50 per month for a 200mb limit. It works where ther is CDMA coverage and is very reliable except where you are in the outer limits of a CDMA coverage.
We have been using it for 5 months.

For our regular mobile we use a CDMA with in car kit and external area that gives optimum cover.

However, if you are going out of CDMA coverage which is a large part of the bush, then you need to consider either HF radio or satellite phone. You can get a satphone programme ffrom Telstra which is a minumum of $30 per month but includes $10 worth of calls. We bought ours for emergency use, as cheap insurance.

We unfortunately rolled our Bushtracker last Thursday about 170 km from the nearest tow truck and were out of CDMA coverage so the satellite cover was a godsend as no other vehicle came by for over an hour. We had no personal injuries but if we had the satellite phone would have been the lifesaver.

Also think about a UHF radio as many properties have a set and monitor it. The local station was the first vehcle to come after the accident and they helped us by getting us telephone numbers when they got back to the property, that we could call.

Our lesson was that you can never have too much communications, as different technologies work in different places.

Michael and Margaret