I recently wrote about Man Camps, the changing landscape of the RV world.  RVers now share RV parks with the crews of oil well drilling, natural gas drilling and construction of new buildings.   These crews consist mainly of men.  Hence, the name Man Camps. We also share our parks with people in transition and a younger generation who now work from their RVs while traveling.

I heard back from a reader who said that she hoped the RV parks that were now at 100% capacity would use that extra profit to improve their parks.

That got me to thinking of a wish list.  One particular area we’d like to see improved is the ability to stay connected to the outside world.  We have experienced our share of faulty Wi-Fi connections.  Some parks are fine and some just don’t have any connections at all.  And, heaven forbid that someone in the park is downloading movies.  Then, most times, you’re dead in the water.

It’s imperative to us to be connected to the Internet since we run a business while on the road.  We’ve invested in different pieces of equipment in an effort to keep ourselves connected to the outside world.

^[1]Our RV came equipped with a Data Storm satellite dish and we used Hughes Net as an internet provider. It was a very slow system and was very expensive.

^[2]Our next purchase was a MiFi card and small antenna from Verizon.  It worked better than our AT&T connection but we still had problems with it when we were recently in New Mexico.  No connection whatsoever.  Even the Wi-Fi in the park was spotty at best.

^[3]

We went to a local internet communications company and explained our problem.  They recommended their Choice Wireless card that was specifically for that area.  They told us that even though Verizon has towers almost everywhere, there weren’t that many in the mountainous areas of New Mexico.

Side Note:  Ironically, when we connected the new local Choice Wireless card the readout on our wireless connection network read, “Verizon” from the chip ID.  We bought the local MiFi card and had Verizon put our account on hold until we returned home.  We plan on coming back to New Mexico and will resume the local service while we’re there.

^[4]We then purchased a Wilson system that that allows us to have both voice and data amplification for cell phone frequencies.  This system seems to help in most places…mountains excluded!

^[5]

Our latest purchase is from Radio Labs.  We bought an Omni Directional Antenna, with cable and amplifier that is supposed to pick up Wi-Fi signals and amplify them.  We are in the process of putting this up.  We’ll let you know how it works.

Our hope is that RV parks will find a way to include Wi-Fi with their cable service.  We’d be willing to pay for that service while parked.  Currently, our Verizon MiFi bill seems to run over the monthly limit making our bill quite high at times.  We feel there has to be a better way.  After all…this is the shape of the future.

If Starbucks and McDonald’s can provide free service, surely there’s a way that same type of service can extend to parks.

Last 5 posts by Vickie Medley

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• Do You Know Why You RV? ^[13] - January 2nd, 2013
• Tex-Mex New Year's Eve Food ^[14] - December 16th, 2012
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