These days, you can usually find WiFi whereever the road takes you.  But every once in a while, I would find myself in a dead zone, with a need to get online.  The time had come for a mobile hotspot.  The mobile data plans for the major carriers were not attractive, but the offer that FreedomPop made certainly was.

It’s pretty simple, you put buy a hotspot device (either a puck or a usb-stick) and it’s immediately shipped to you with 500 megs of free data each month.  You pay for additional bandwidth monthly or on demand.  It’s a great deal for light to moderate users.  Over the past 3 months, it’s been a lifesaver for me and it hasn’t cost a cent.

WiMax service is currently provided by Clearwire/Sprint, and theres been one time where I could not get a signal, and that was in a pretty rural area.  I don’t endorse a lot of products, but the company and the hotspot have been very reliable.

As an update, they have also added free phone/data service with a mid-level android smartphone.