Verizon Data Options

[Rick Wilson]

Rick ... please continue your discussion in this thread. My questions have been answered. I have changed the thread title to broaden the scope of the thread. -Walker
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OK, well, here goes.

The software provided by Verizon "VZAccess" is only required to activate the card on their network. Once that done you can use Windows native DUN to make the connection. I am a firm believer of conserving system resources by not running unnecessary services or software. VZAccess will create DUN entries automagically and you can simply create a desktop shortcut. To manually create a connection use the following settings:

Username: [email protected]
Password : vzw
Dialup Number: #777

This can be handy if you already have an activated card and want to switch laptops.

More importantly, you will want to disable the "Venturi Web Accelerator" that's enabled by default. Briefly, web accelerators work by degrading images to make them smaller thereby allowing faster downloads. That may be fine for normal web surfing but for weather imagery it is not acceptable. Examples of this can be found here.

Finally, if you are a ham and use AGWPE for packet radio you will find that your APRS software is mysteriously broken. I found this out as I was rolling out last night on a TOR warned storm in Denton County, Texas. With the help of a cool freeware utility called "Active Ports" (Google for it if interested), I found that a process "VentC.exe" was running and had several ports open. One of them happened to be port 8000 that's used by AGWPE. Venturi had been invoked even though I was using DUN and not VZAccess!

Rather than trying to find uninstall instructions, I searched my laptop for instances of VentC.exe and found two. Renaming the files to prevent execution worked fine and the EVDO connection works just as well without it.

NOTE - Some versions of Symantec Antivirus (possibly others) will incorrectly flag Active Ports as a "Hacking Tool" which it is not. It simply maps any open ports to the process that's using them. It will also allow the user to terminate the process if needed. Quite handy in my book. I did need to tell SAV to exclude the Active Ports folder from the scans to prevent it from being quarantined.

My next project is to try and find a pigtail so I can use my Wilson (no relation to me) amp and external antenna to get some extra range. Although I have only had EVDO for a day, there's no turning back. I'm hooked.

 

[Rick Wilson]

What are the other plans? All I've ever seen is the $59.99 a month (Plus your normal phone rate).
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A one year contract for 79.99 per month if you don't have a "qualifying voice plan". I guess that they mean non-Verizon customers.

The sales rep that I first spoke with told me that since I had my own card, the two year contract was not available. When I canceled the account, another sales rep said that was not the case. At any rate I gave them the first (dishonest or simply untrained) rep's name and phone extension number.

Although tech support was decent, sales and customer support was abysmal. Nevertheless, they failed to solve the duplicated ESN issue.

What's really amazing to me is that the place that I ended up doing business with had me online in under 24 hours.