[schalliol]

My company has several employees that travel every now and then and may need a modem connection in a hotel that lacks broadband. We've kept an AOL account because of all of the access numbers that could be used if needed. This is expensive though, at $25/mo., and is also not easy to use with NAT. What I'd love to find is an ISP with many local numbers that could be used on an infrequent basis or just cost the least amount possible. I'd be happy to pay by the minute if that were necessary and it was cheap, as broadband availability increases. Thoughts?

[SirCastor]

Do the employees of your company carry cell phones? My provider (tmobile) offers internet for $20, that's not just on the phone, it includes connecting the phone to a laptop as a modem.

So if you don't need broadband, it's a good solution.

edit: Oh. I misread your post. You're looking for something cheaper.

[schalliol]

Thanks. Yeah, I use GPRS on my Sony Ericsson T637 and actually a couple other of the 4 guys also use that. I've once used my Mac to distribute the connection over WiFi. I've found that it's not as reliable and sometimes not as quick though. I guess that's my only possibility since the MBP doesn't have a modem and I don't want to buy one. I don't think I've ever used my Ti's Modem... It'd be nice for the times we don't have good signal to have a standard cheap ISP.

[SirCastor]

Y'know, If they're flying stateside, and you can get an adapter, using a couple of minutes over a cell phone just calling back to the local number at the company might work. I don't know if you could actually do that, plug the phone cord into your cell somehow... but it has potential... Maybe... in sort of a not-real-far-off-future.