Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/58400
article title shared among attorneys, paralegals and management. This reserving and sharing of devices initially worked well as the broadband cards were not much faster than dial-up connections and were seen as a last-resort option. As the technology progressed and we upgraded the broadband cards to 3G-compatible models, the usage mentality switched from "a last resort" to "the primary method" (unless free Wi-Fi was available). Usage of the loaner pool increased, reservations were made for longer periods of time, and loaned broadband cards were not being proactively returned (we had to keep tracking them down). As a result, our CIO proposed internal broadband cards for our next laptop hardware refresh. When the time came, we sought a solution that would allow us to provide a mobile broadband card in every laptop so no hardware swapping would be necessary and all laptops would be interchangeable. However, knowing that only 25 percent of the laptop broadband cards would need to be active at a given time, a more budget-friendly solution would be needed — one that wouldn't require the activation of all broadband cards in our 400 laptops. If possible, we were also looking for the ability to activate broadband cards "on the fly" to assist anyone who encountered issues with network availability or forgot to reserve a broadband card. We were thrilled to find a solution that met our needs: dual-band network Gobi broadband cards with 3G CDMA network capabilities for domestic use and GSM network capabilities for international use. One of the main factors in our choice was that the 3G CDMA network uses device identification numbers (ESN, MEID or IMEI) to activate and associate devices on a carrier's line of service, as opposed to SIM cards (aka smart chips) used by the GSM network. We discovered that, although SIM cards are independent from devices and can easily be swapped, they presented a problem for an "on the fly" activation scenario. The SIM cards could not be reprogrammed with different numbers and therefore would have required ILTA White Paper 23