A JitterWorks client in Florida is opening a new business. One of our responsibilities was to find them the best Internet Service Provider in the area. There are a few providers offering cable and DSL options, but fiber is not available. If you keep up with our blogs, you know how high we are on fiber.

After researching the available options, the cable and DSL providers that service the area didn’t really fill our needs for this client. So we kept looking. Unfortunately, there are still many areas of the country where providers are limited or not available at all. We’ve covered this in a couple of blogs about satellite Internet services. 

Now, we’ll preface the following by saying that, yes, we have spent plenty of blog space preaching about how much more efficient it is to “Plug It In.” That is, physically connecting your devices using a network cable instead of WiFi. However, we also point out that there are times when that just is not possible.

For our client, we determined that their best choice for a fast, reliable Internet connection was, wait for it, a 5G cellular service. Our first concern was bandwidth and, of course, latency. We encourage you to read a great blog explaining the importance of low latency. 

Another concern was data limits. Anyone with a cell phone has probably run into a data limit problem at some point. Maxing out data on an Internet connection can bring a business to its knees and would not be acceptable.

We elected to go with T-Mobile for a number of reasons. The upload and download speeds exceed our needs and they are touting latency numbers that are also in an acceptable range. (We are by no means endorsing T-Mobile and we are not connected to or compensated by them. It is simply the company we chose for this client.)

We found other features that made this cellular option more attractive. Back to data limits. There are none. Unlimited data at a reasonable price. Early tests have determined that T-Mobile’s numbers are accurate. We found latency to be around 35ms with 160Mbps download and 10Mbps upload. Very good numbers, especially when you consider the signal is coming from a cell tower about a half mile away.

Not sold? Consider this. There really is no risk. There are no installation charges because there is no installation. They mail you a cellular WiFi router (with no monthly rental fee). You plug it in and it searches for a signal. And you’re up and running. One thing we recommend is to try it in different places in your home or business to determine where the strongest signal is.

If you’re not satisfied, there is no penalty for early contract termination because there is no long term contract.

It’s not the ideal Internet solution. But if your home or business is in an area that does not offer satisfactory Internet solutions, it may be something you want to consider.