Jepstone.net

Since the
delightful surprise I received the other day when I fired up my EV-DO
card, I’ve learned a bit more about the support for EV-DO in Rhode Island.
Somewhere over the past couple of days, I got the impression that I was
getting a signal that was bleeding over from a tower to the north of me.
After spending some time on the phone with Verizon data support, I learned
that the towers down here are indeed EV-DO capable.

I was running into trouble getting online at my home, and was flipping
between 1xRTT and 1xEV-DO mode. So, the data support folks sent me out an
FRU for my PC5220 (P8 model) that brought me up to P8a. However, I
couldn’t activate the card, and ended up driving out to the Kingston train
station parking lot to get as close to the tower as possible. I spent about
40 minutes on the phone, and they even had me get into the Engineering Menu
(in Mobile Connection Manager, select Help/About, right-click twice, then
type ##DEBUG into the box and click submit. But if you change anything in
there, kiss your warranty goodbye). While I was on hold, I poked around the
menu, and noticed that Test Mode was inexplicably enabled. Ever cautious, I
held on the line and waited for the level 3 tech to come back on. I
explained the situation, he told me how to reset it, and bingo! I was
getting a signal and activated OK.

Next, I decided to go for a drive, and ran some tests (downloading a 384k
file) in a few key spots around South County (not bad–the only place I hit
1xRTT speeds was on Saugatucket).

Boston.com
is reporting on the 1xEV-DO rollout in Providence, Boston, and Hartford.

It’s not quite the end
of 2004 as some folks were told, but close enough. According to Verizon Wireless Info,
Providence is now live with 1xEV-DO. And holy crap… it’s working here
in Kingston (I was told it would only go as far south as Division
Street, so this is a delightful surprise!). The signal is weak here,
and my external antenna is busted, so I’ll wait until I’m up in Warwick
today to do some serious speed tests.

Update: At TF Green Airport (PVD), I’m getting 382 kilobits/sec on DSL Reports Mobile Speed
Test and 38.6 kilobytes/sec downloading a 384k gzip
file via wget.