We’ve entered the final 12 hours of our ‘The Mobile Internet Handbook’ re-write funding campaign. We’re completely blown away with the generous support we’ve received, and could not be more thankful.
As part of the campaign, we’re also rolling out our new ‘Premium Membership’ program that we’ve begun calling Mobile Internet Aficionados.
The new book will provide a lot of great resources and help most folks out.
The new group takes this a step or two beyond – intended for those who depend on mobile internet to enable their nomadic lifestyle. This stuff changes often, almost daily sometimes. When we launched the book last year, we had a vision of providing a venue for interacting with our readers, answering their questions and keeping them up to date by providing analysis of how industry developments affects us mobile folks.
We’re absolutely thrilled that as of this morning over 80 people have seen the value in this new service and have joined up during the campaign. And we’re honored that mobile tech guru Jack Mayer pro-actively contacted us offering to help us moderate the group. Additionally, all members of the group will be getting a FREE new eBook by him.
It’s been so successful, that we’ve already given our web developers the go ahead to start developing a new site just for hosting the group so we can offer things like forums, a library of articles & resources and private membership only interactive chats. (In the meantime, it’s a private Facebook group, newsletter and exclusive video chats.)
Since the beginning of May, we have already distributed four exclusive newsletters to our members covering industry news. We keep our eye on the news venues, forums, Twitter and other places so that you don’t have to – and then break it down to the stuff that affects us mobile folks.
Today we wanted to share with you a sneak peak of the type of content we’ll be providing behind the membership wall. This group will get the news first, and we will occasionally re-write the ‘big stuff’ for sharing here on the main blog.
Mobile Internet Aficionados
Newsletter Snippets
Millenicom End of Month Throttling Reported
Towards the end of May, we started hearing reports of some Millenicom customers experiencing very slow speeds as they approached their 20GB cap. (If you’re not familiar with Millenicom – they resell Verizon data for $89.99/month. Click for our full guide to this plan.)
We found a discussion thread on DSLReports where others also reported this problem. Apparently, Verizon put a ‘programming limit’ on some accounts with no rhyme or reason. Users report that notifying Millenicom of the problem lead to having Verizon remove the limit, and speeds restored. All users we’ve talked with who reported throttling had speeds return at the beginning of June (the new billing month).
Keep an eye on this towards the end of June – and definitely let us know if you experience it too. We’ll get in touch with our contact there to get the scoop.
And as a side note, Millenicom still has not implemented their new data usage reporting. It’s still only updated 3 times a week on their website. And they are not yet automatically cutting you off then you reach 20GB, but they are notifying you that ‘the upstream carrier may suspend your account’. Earlier in May, Millenicom told us that they were ‘a month or more away’ from implementing their new systems. Let’s hope it’s coming soon!
Voice over LTE (aka VoLTE) is coming! But what is it?
VoLTE has been in the news this week – AT&T announced that as of May 23rd it will have VoLTE service in four states, supported by just a single phone – the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini.
Not to let AT&T seem too far ahead, Verizon on May 20th re-announced their own plans to move to VoLTE – with support coming nationwide on a range of new (and a few existing but unnamed) phones by the end of the year.
But what on earth is VoLTE – and why should you care?
Right now – to make a voice phone call, cell phones switch their radios back to the old voice network to make the call. This is why most Verizon phones can’t surf the web or get email while a call is underway, and AT&T phones drop back to 3G data speeds until the call is completed.
Voice over LTE changes things up – sending your voice call as data over the 4G/LTE data network. This keeps your data connection running full speed, and allows for “HD Voice” that will let your voice calls to other VoLTE phones come through sounding more CD-quality than AM radio.
VoLTE also should make it possible to seamlessly switch between voice and video calls, since it is all just data flowing now — there is no separate “call” mode unique to old-school voice calls.
VoLTE has a lot of advantages – and it opens the doors to the carriers eventually being able to fully retire their legacy voice networks someday down the road – freeing up a lot more space for fast data.
Verizon in 2010 said they expected to roll out VoLTE by late 2012, so it has been slow in coming. But with all the major carriers and phone makers ramping up support VoLTE – it looks as if 2014 will at last be the year VoLTE starts to go mainstream.
Verizon Announces XLTE – Faster Data in 44 States
Verizon yesterday gave a name to it’s new enhanced LTE service – they are calling it “XLTE”, and it is live in 44 states now.
If you have a compatible device (most recent flagship phones are), you will now see as much as a doubling of speed in certain areas. And even if you do not have a compatible phone, you may see speeds increase as the newer phones start using the new frequency bands, freeing up space in the older bands.
The important thing to be aware of is to NOT buy a new Verizon phone that is not XLTE compatible – you always want to maximize your future capabilities.
For a list of the compatible devices and cities where XLTE was just turned on, you can check out this link:
http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/19/verizon-lights-up-improved-xlte-service-in-44-states/
And yes, the Pantech MSH291 shipped by Millenicom since the beginning of the year is XLTE compatible.
Tip of the Week: Escaping iMessage
iMessage is Apple’s awesome free messaging service that works beautifully for sending text, picture, and video messages (even group chats!) – not just between phones, but also to Macs and iPads too. Our favorite feature is being able to continue a chat thread on our laptop that we start on our phone – something that regular SMS does not allow.
When it first came out, many people were still paying for each SMS text messages, so iMessage was initially an awesome money saver too. (Now most plans include unlimited txt messaging…)
But a major bug has been making news lately — if you have been using iMessage on your iPhone, and you then switch away from iOS to another smartphone platform without turning off iMessages first – other iOS users will no longer be able to send you text messages anymore. These messages have been getting sucked into an iMessage black-hole, and thanks to a server glitch even Apple tech support for a while was unable to fix the issue for users who suddenly found themselves unreachable.
Fortunately – the server glitch has been fixed, and further improvements are coming. So if you are a former iMessage user and have been having trouble with lost incoming messages, check in with Apple now for help getting things back on track.
And if you want to avoid the problem in the first place – deactivate iMessages BEFORE you switch to a new non-iOS phone!
More info: http://recode.net/2014/05/22/apples-imessage-issue-goes-from-bad-to-worse-with-server-glitch/
There’s been lots more shared in our newsletters and on our private group with the members – but this should give you an idea if the type of content we’re providing is the type of content you’d appreciate. We’re also starting to receive test equipment for review, such as the brand new Wilson Mobile 4G booster – we’ll be sharing our thoughts first in the group.
If you’re interesting in joining this new Premium Membership group
this is your LAST CALL to join early.
Once the campaign ends at midnight tonight, we will not be accepting new members until we officially launch it later this summer when the new book is ready. However, the early members will continue to get updates, previews of the book content, testing results as we start to review new products and will help us shape what this group becomes.
Early members are getting bonus months added to their annual membership!
Want to join early? Select any ‘perk’ package that includes the Membership.
As of clicking the ‘Publish’ button on this post, there are only about 12 hours left on the Indiegogo Campaign. We are beyond thrilled with the success of it, in fact we consider the campaign to be in ‘pie in the sky’ dream phase of how far we thought it would get funded. Five new chapters have been funded – and we’re closing in on the sixth. We have a lot of work cut out for us!
The pre-purchases of the book and memberships go a long way to help pay for the expenses of writing and self-publishing a book – from paying an editor, graphic designer, layout assistance and distribution costs. And of course, there’s purchasing of equipment to test & review that we’re not able to get free from manufacturers.
And of course, it helps give us the confidence that the content we’re preparing for the book is desired so that we can super focus on it without worrying about generating income elsewhere while we research & write. It’s like a traditional author getting an advance from a publisher – except, the publisher in this case is the very people who desire the end result.
We love the balance and spirit of that – it feels more personal, and motivates us to over deliver to those who have entrusted their hard earned dollars with us.
We can’t wait to deliver our supporter’s books that they pre-purchased, and then make it available to everyone else via the traditional sales model in online bookstores!
Thank you again for your support.. we know many of you are looking forward to us no longer talking about this. We appreciate your patience over the past month.
I have followed your sites for the past several months and I’m impressed with your knowledge and research on the mobile lifestyle while RVing. I planning to make the transition from retired living in Fort Myers Fl and becoming a full-time RVer.
I follow the Huggings, Nicks’s sites and your all provide great insight into the full-time lifestyle.
I have one question, and it has to do with Apple TV. I will be taking possession of a iMac today, rounding out my personal Apple family of i5-phone, iPad-2nd generation, and Apple TV.
I love my my Apple TV and will be taking with me, I want to know have you, any other fans, listeners or you your selves have any experience using the Apple TV as full-timers RVers?
What ever information you can provide please let me know.
Continue your great work in providing knowledgeable and insightfull information into the world of Fll-Time RVing.
Take care and always remain safe and I hope to visit with you two sometime within the year.
M Leake
Hi Marty.. and thanks for stopping by.
We do have an Apple TV on board, but honestly don’t use it too much. It’s useful as a full timer if you have a TV on board that you want to do things like AirPlay from your iDevices on (such as sharing photos and such). But for most of the features, which are geared around streaming video content – it’s not all that useful. Bandwidth on the road is a limited resource, unless you happen upon a truly unlimited source – streaming is just not feasible for most of us.
Thus, our Apple TV just sits in our tech cabinet not doing much.
But, if you use it for things other than streaming, then you might find it’s useful. What the heck.. it’s small 🙂