Better Connections for Road Warriors

Novatel's MiFi and Lenovo's Constant Connect could make life a lot easier for some business travelers

By Stephen H. Wildstrom

In one of my first efforts after starting this column 15 years ago this month, I wrote that travelers looking for an information superhighway often found a "data dirt road instead." Things have gotten a lot better since then—to the point where, if you have the right tools, you can expect reasonable data connections in any city or town in the world. Now a variety of wireless innovations are being packaged for business travelers with fairly specialized requirements.

I have been testing two such products. One is a tiny device—a wireless router smaller than a deck of cards—that connects to high-speed 3G networks from Verizon Wireless or Sprint and creates an instant Wi-Fi hotspot. The other, a product from Lenovo, will let a ThinkPad that isn't connected to any network slurp up and display e-mail from a BlackBerry.

MiFi Can Link Up Five at Once

The first of these, Novatel's MiFi 2200, is available from Verizon ($100 after $50 rebate, with a two-year contract) and is coming soon from Sprint Nextel (S). It's an alternative to a 3G PC Card or a USB modem of the sort many travelers use for Internet connections on the road. But instead of just allowing a laptop to connect to the Web, it will let up to five devices share a secure link.

One likely use: providing connectivity to a small business meeting held either in a place where no Internet link is available or at a hotel that charges exorbitant prices for miserable connections. The moderate download speed you're likely to get with the Novatel (NVTL) MiFi, about 1.5 megabits per second, means users will have to be careful not to hog the bandwidth, but their experience may still be better than what many hotels offer. Or you could use the MiFi to provide a 3G connection to cameras and other devices that either have built-in Wi-Fi capability or are able to get on the Net using something called an Eye-Fi memory card.

I am impressed with how easy MiFi is to set up and use. Turn it on­—the unit can run on a battery for about five hours of active use—and it automatically connects to the 3G network, then creates a Wi-Fi hotspot, which you or your fellow travelers can access using a password printed on the back of the MiFi. The MiFi also acts as a regular 3G modem when connected to your computer with a USB cable.

The MiFi uses a 3G modem data plan: $60 a month for up to 5 gigabytes. (There's a 200-megabyte alternative for $40, but if you're only going to use 200 MB a month, you probably don't need MiFi.) Sprint will have similar plans, plus a $150 offering that combines unlimited voice and data on a phone.

Convenient E-Mail After Your Flight

Constant Connect, a $150 PC Express Card that plugs into a ThinkPad, is a good idea that needs work. It draws e-mail from your BlackBerry over Bluetooth and instantly transfers messages to Outlook when your computer starts up. Turn your BlackBerry on when your plane lands, and your new mail, attachments and all, will be loaded on your laptop by the time you get to the gate—without connecting to a network or navigating your virtual private network (VPN) setup to get to your corporate e-mail server.

The problem is that it works only on certain ThinkPads and only with mail systems that use the latest version of Microsoft (MSFT) Exchange. In theory, it can be used with regular Internet mail accounts, but the setup may require tech support. Lenovo plans a simpler version that will work with a broader selection of hardware and software.

Connectivity for the mobile professional is still more trouble than it should be. But innovative products such as MiFi and Constant Connect can help ease the pain.

Wildstrom is Technology & You columnist for BusinessWeek. You can contact him at techandyou@businessweek.com or follow his posts on Twitter @swildstrom.

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