ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions

Chicago is such a fun place to live and work.  ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions was founded in downstate Peoria, IL but moved to Chicago about three years ago — and we’ve never looked back since!

Working in the office when you’re located in such an upbeat and vibrant city can be difficult.  That’s why you’ll frequently find me sipping coffee and typing away at my favorite coffeehouse, which is located about three or so blocks away from our office.  I love working while also being able to look out the big storefront window, watching cars, buses, and people pass me by.

I take security seriously — and connecting to the Internet via the City of Chicago’s public wifi or even the local coffeehouse’s wifi connection is something that I just won’t do.  You just never know how secure these connections are!  That’s one of the main reasons why I signed up for a mobile broadband card.

Not wanting to get locked into a contract with one of the major cell carriers, I turned to Ebay and bought a USB modem second hand and signed up for a month-to-month account with Verizon Wireless that went for about $50/mo.  Adding broadband to my Verizon account was easy and customer service had me up and running in minutes…or so I had thought.

As it turns out, the modem I bought on eBay was damaged and would only function if I was sitting outdoors.   After about a month of trying to get the thing to work, I canceled the service.

Enter Cricket Wireless

Cricket entered the Chicago market with CMDA broadband about a year ago, promising fantastic service at a low price.  I stopped by a Cricket retail store near the office and chatted with a sales agent for about 15 to 20 minutes and decided to give it a try.  They were offering a free hardware rebate (and still are, I believe), which made the decision all the more easier!

Let’s break down the charges:

* Cricket A600 Modem — $119.00
* Activation Charge — $25.00
* First Month of Service — $40
—————————————————-
Total: $184.00
- Minus a $69.00 instant rebate
- Minus a $50 mail-in rebate
- Minus a $40 instant rebate on the first month of service
—————————————————-
INITIAL INVESTMENT:  $25.00
Recurring Monthly Fee:  $40 (plus tax)

Cricket requires no contracts, early termination fees, or deposits.  The fine print even reads that they’ll give your money back (minus the activation fee) within the first 30 days if you’re not satisfied.  The plan that I elected is an “Unlimited Plan” (contract reads 5GB), at a rate of $40/mo.

I really wish I would have gone this route in the first place, seeing as it only cost me $25 to get started.    I’m using the A600 with my Macbook Pro, but have also tried it with my Win XP laptop and it worked just fine.

Next month’s bill just arrived via a text message and the amount is as promised:  $42.93.  Yes, $2.93 in taxes.  Yuck.

Is Cricket Broadband any good?

Surprisingly, yes!   While sitting right near a window at the coffeehouse, I received the following ping times:

Pinging readywire.com [80.251.16.142] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 80.251.16.142: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=49
Reply from 80.251.16.142: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=49
Reply from 80.251.16.142: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=49
Reply from 80.251.16.142: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=49

A day or so later, I took a seat in the back of a downtown Corner Bakery.  Because the restaurant didn’t have many windows, I didn’t expect to get good coverage, but I did:

PING readywire.com (80.251.16.142): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=0 ttl=54 time=49.784 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=57.569 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=84.529 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=67.656 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=4 ttl=54 time=67.378 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=5 ttl=54 time=57.301 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=6 ttl=54 time=55.413 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=7 ttl=54 time=90.172 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=8 ttl=54 time=89.029 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=9 ttl=54 time=86.732 ms

— readywire.com ping statistics —
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 49.784/70.556/90.172/14.855 ms

traceroute to readywire.com (80.251.16.142), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1  172.30.162.9 (172.30.162.9)  59.167 ms  50.577 ms  47.919 ms
2  172.30.162.2 (172.30.162.2)  50.031 ms  49.662 ms  91.970 ms
3  172.30.175.36 (172.30.175.36)  51.718 ms  52.449 ms  46.945 ms
4  172.16.8.18 (172.16.8.18)  59.933 ms  91.470 ms  46.651 ms
5  LEAP-WIRELE.car4.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.71.102.130)  65.815 ms  61.491 ms  60.025 ms
6  ge-7-17.car4.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.71.102.129)  57.575 ms  177.676 ms  53.829 ms
7  ae-13-53.car3.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.68.101.71)  167.831 ms  149.352 ms  222.871 ms
8  xe-0-3-0.cr2.ord1.us.nlayer.net (4.71.101.14)  110.127 ms  52.331 ms  50.115 ms
9  po2-30g.ar1.ord1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.111.138)  79.541 ms  58.401 ms  54.125 ms
10  as32475.te8-2-1101.ar1.ord1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.111.94)  59.859 ms  60.010 ms  55.212 ms
11  dr6506b.ord02.singlehop.net (99.198.126.246)  52.887 ms  61.542 ms  59.964 ms
12  corp.readywire.net (65.60.19.74)  63.799 ms  55.608 ms  72.000 ms
13  readywire.com (80.251.16.142)  61.867 ms  69.459 ms  57.010 ms

Not bad for a $40 cell phone based broadband service!

As a systems administrator, it’s important for me to be able to access the Internet without any sort of firewall restrictions, which is why I was hesitant in the first place.  At such a low cost point, I assumed that Cricket’s broadband service would have all sorts of filtering restrictions.  That does not seem to be the case.

So far, I have been able to access just about everything:  cPanel/WHM, HyperVM, SSH, and even our VPN!  I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t connect your BitTorrent, but just about everything that a systems administrator needs access to is available via Cricket Broadband.

Overall Review

For $40 a month, I have no hesitation recommending this service to anyone!  Just make sure you get your rebate form filled out and postmarked in time.