Review: Virgin Mobile Hotspot in Atlanta

Recently I purchased the mobile hotspot service from Virgin Mobile. Their newest offering — $35/mo for "Unlimited" 4G and 2GB of 3G mobile connectivity — is risk-free considering there is no long-term contract. I had nothing to lose but the $150 for the cost of the wireless hotspot modem.

The results are mixed, as you can see from the screengrabs from above.

From my house in the Atlanta 30319 zipcode (my home), the data transfer speeds were barely better than a 33.6Kbps modem — 1996 data transfer speeds! However, from the Atlanta 30306 zipcode (the Sherpa! office in Tucker Mott's Floataway community), the data transfer was a relatively decent 8.7Mbps download and 1.7Mbps upload.

To compare, my AT&T mobile data connection barely works in my office with a .16Mbps down and .01Mbps up. My office spoils me with a 29Mbps down/up transfer rate, so I'm always on the office Wi-Fi when there. At home my AT&T mobile data connection still crawls at about 1.2Mbps down and .45Mbps up.

To be fair, Virgin Mobile's 4G network isn't truly 4G technology. Rather, Virgin licenses Sprint's WiMax network, which is more akin to a type of "3.5G" wireless technology. Sprint Nextel has begun using Mobile WiMAX, as of September 29, 2008 branded as a "4G" network even though the current version does not fulfil the IMT Advanced requirements on 4G systems. Sprint's WiMax (IEEE 802.16e) theoretically can expect 30-40 Mbps downlink, but I have never experienced such speeds. Instead, you should reduce your expectations of Virgin Mobile's 4G data transfer to 3Mbps down/1.5Mbps up (reportedly capped), even though Virgin states their 4G downlink is 3-6Mbps.

Based on my reading reviews and actual experience, if you have a need for speed, consider Verizon's true 4G-LTE network. 4G-LTE can expect up to 100 Mbps downlink and 50 Mbps uplink. Also, most of the cell networks are moving towards LTE, with even Sprint — the nation's largest WiMax network — releasing LTE networks in 6 US cities this 2012.

The future of mobile hotspots is clearly LTE.