Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/58400
www.iltanet.org a physical component that needed to be swapped or replaced during laptop reactivations. Eliminating SIM cards gave us the ability to activate broadband cards on the fly. So, for our needs, the 3G CDMA network has made broadband card activations as convenient as sending an email message, calling the service desk or making a reservation on our intranet. Our 4G Test In undertaking a project to implement 4G broadband cards, the stakes were pretty high: usability, cost and activation time needed to remain the same or improve. We were, of course, intrigued by the faster speeds the 4G network promised. Our test laptop supported the LTE 4G network technology and, since there was only a single carrier that supported LTE at the time, our testing was only based on one network. We chose not to test HSPA+ or WiMax because HSPA+ would eventually be replaced by LTE, and WiMax was not as widely supported by domestic carriers and had limited availability internationally. Similar to GSM networks, the LTE network uses SIM cards (smart chips) — not good news for us. We experienced a 20- to 30-minute delay in the time it took a SIM card to authenticate with the network for the first time (although, we were testing on a 4G network that had only been available for a week). Subsequent authentications (reusing SIM cards that had been activated) were similar to the device ID activation time that we were accustomed to with the 3G CDMA network. To be fair, it is worth reiterating that SIM cards have advantages and disadvantages. The big advantage to using SIM cards is that they can be swapped between devices, as opposed to going through a carrier's activation process. This is a great option for those who want to easily swap a line of service among multiple devices. The disadvantages include that most SIM cards can not be reprogrammed and need to be replaced if changing phone numbers, and that stolen devices using SIM cards are harder to recover and track since the SIM card acts as a middleman between the device and the wireless account. 24 ILTA White Paper In our test, the speed was just as good — if not better — than promised. Our speed test results were 10-12 Mbps on average, with peaks of 15 Mbps (compared to a 700Kbps-1Mbps average, 2Mbps peak on 3G). The latency, however, was not as good as expected: 93ms on average for Internet pings and 105ms on average for internal server pings over VPN (compared to 120ms and 135ms on 3G). The latency was much improved over 3G, by as much as 30ms, but not quite as good as the 50-70ms total latency promised by the carrier. We were still more impressed than disappointed. Decision Time: Was 4G Right for Us? Relating the testing back to our firm's needs and wants is where we ran into problems, primarily due to the SIM card's technology limitations. Despite the ability to swap SIM cards on our carrier's Web portal, and our optimism that SIM card technology had advanced, we disappointingly discovered that SIM cards could still only be activated and programmed once (although there is talk of reprogrammable SIM card technology). We found ourselves reviewing almost the same options we were presented with before: Either swap SIM cards between laptops, provide spare SIM cards to each laptop user (as our carrier suggested) or activate each broadband card in every laptop. Swapping SIM cards would reintroduce the hassle of physically swapping equipment which, in turn, would limit our ability to remotely activate broadband cards — a feature that many had grown to rely on. Providing extra SIM cards with every laptop would allow remote activations, but changing the cards would require more end-user assistance and would increase activation time — not to mention, we would go through a lot of SIM cards at an undetermined cost. The best option from our perspective was to determine if it would be feasible to have all laptop broadband cards active all the time. We proposed a negotiation with our carrier — a data-pooling plan or set of data plans that would allow us to keep all the devices active with a