I can work on practically any computer and of course, I prefer some browsers, operating environments and applications over others. However the ability to work nearly anywhere thanks to today’s 3G wireless broadband is as much of an enabler today as it was for me in 2004. Along the way these past five years, I’ve learned a few things that might be useful to you.

1.  Location, location, location! Before you decide to take the 3G plunge, do your homework with the carrier’s coverage maps. AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile are the big four players, although I’d call them the big three-and-a-half since T-Mobile only just began their 3G roll-out. You’ll want to check the coverage maps for your home office area as well nearby work locations, not to mention places in between.

I failed to do this once before when I switched from Verizon Wireless to AT&T and I paid the price. A $175 Early Termination Fee, to be exact, and that was only three months into finding out that AT&T didn’t have nearly the coverage I needed at the time.

2. Once you sign up, give the service a good test. Had I followed my own advice here, I would have saved the $175 ETF, but I didn’t. Most carriers have a return period between 14 and 30 days for your service. Once you get service, use the heck out of it in various locations and make sure it’s going to work for you where you need it most.

You may have to pay a small restocking fee for any hardware plus a month’s service, but that’s far less than $175 out of pocket and possibly useless hardware. You’ll also want to bookmark a site that can help you test your uploads, downloads and network latency; there are several out there, but I recommend SpeedTest.net.

1. Consider the form factor of the hardware. Back in the day, PC Cards were the standard adapter of choice for 3G modems. Today, you can find them in ExpressCards, USB and integrated right into a laptop. Since I work with multiple devices, I opted for USB and I’ve never regretted that decision. Just about any computer I use or borrow to review can take advantage of my 3G USB adapter. If you’re set on using one device and it has an ExpressCard slot, maybe that’s the best for you. I still lean towards USB because I not only consider the devices I use today, but the ones I might use tomorrow. They don’t all come with ExpressCard slots, but you can bank on USB for a few years to come. Integrated 3G is very nice to have since there’s nothing sticking out from your computer, but it’s limited to the one device due to the integration.

Some adapters even have useful secondary features: my USB727 on Verizon’s network offers a miniSD slot, making for a card reader. And the AT&T Quicksilver card I’m testing right now includes the drivers and software on-board, negating the need for any downloads or optical drive to get going.

1. Can your phone be a modem too? For a good year back in 2005, I opted to use my handset as a 3G modem. I had an XV6700 handset on the Verizon Wireless network for which I was already paying $30 monthly for 3G service. At that point, paying $60 for another 3G adapter of some type wasn’t appealing. Most carriers offer a low-cost add-on option so that you can “tether” your 3G handset for modem use. You can physically connect the handset to your computer through USB or if both support Bluetooth, you can use a wireless connection to get broadband to your computer.

Some third party companies offer software to get around the carrier charge of tethering, so dig around if that option sounds appealing. I used to use an application called PDANet for this purpose and it worked great, but supports Windows only. Some phones have Internet Sharing software built in and it’s actually pretty easy to make the connection. To get a feel for how simple the concept is over Bluetooth, check our video tutorials for using a Windows Mobile device for either a Mac or a PC. Yes… you can actually use a Windows Mobile phone as a modem for a Mac!

5. Share that connection with a small team. If you’re a team of two or three web workers, you don’t all need to shell out $60 a month or more for 3G service. Both Windows and Mac OS X allow for sharing an Internet connection. Most people think that means a network or WiFi connection, but it applies to 3G as well.

You can also go with a hardware solution to share the connection. Cradlepoint makes a number of 3G routers that take the signal from a 3G adapter and share them over a WiFi connection. Dave Winer is the most recent Cradlepoint convert I know of, so you can follow along with impressions as he puts it through the grind. Likewise, Novatel Wireless offers an all-in-one solution called the MiFi that provides both the 3G signal and WiFi hotspot for sharing; no adapter is needed.

6. Optimize your network settings. A few months ago, I noticed that the same 3G card was offering different speeds on different devices, even though my location was constant. A little research indicated that one device was better optimized for broadband than the other, but that was easily resolved on the slower device. A small Windows utility called TCP Optimizer gave the slower device a boost, making the two on par with each other. In fact, I saw a 15% increase in download speeds and double that improvement in uploads using this utility.

Only the FON-ely...FON-liness Of The Long Distance Runner. Yes, I had a whole bank of puns to title this post. They’ll all aptly tragic in telling the tale of a promising piece of web worker infrastructure that has in essence become a network of very lonely and isolated hotspots…

I first came across FON at O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony 2006 conference, as then company evangelist Ejovi Nuwere outlined a vision of a global wifi network built from the grassroots, owned and operated by its users. Ejovi explained that users installing a FON hotspot would be able to earn revenue from its use or, if they agreed to charge no access fee, use every other FON hotspot at no cost when travelling away from home.

A few months later I recieved a complimentary La Fonera router, becoming the 4089th ‘Fonero’ (currently there are 671′363 users). A few days ago, I switched off my La Fonera, packaging it for an eBay bidder that paid just $17. Now the thing is, none of those 671′362 other Fonero’s hotspots were in places I where I needed connectivity…

FON showed great promise, attacking the fragmented wifi hotspot market and placing pressure on 3G broadband providers by harnessing the energy of the very people that would benefit from its service. The promise of a disruptive user-owned global wifi network was a large part of the company’s marketing, playing on the iconography and language of revolution. With $22m in funding from Google, Skype and venture capitalists, the company seemed poised for success…so what went wrong?

• Mobile broadband providers have wised up with 3G plans and hardware available for as little as $20/month here in the UK. Also users have a plethora of reasonable HSDPA and Wifi options. Though, incidentally, O2 won’t be letting UK iPhone 3G users use their phones as modems to the 3G network!

• FON-liness! FON is not where you need it despite their partnerships with telcos and municipalities, I’ve yet to find a FON location when I needed one. Airports, railway stations, gas stations are well served by national wifi providers. These are the location owners FON needed to align with. I’m not going to need broadband parked up outside some guys house, but I’ll need it waiting for a train to London.

• Crazy ass distractions at FON labs with the development of Gmail uploaders, URL squeezers and Facebook status tools are an unneccessary waste of resources. 20% time is only valuable when the other 80% is making a real difference to the business. It also indicates to investors that the founders are bored with the core business of the company.

• Basic hardware has been a constant frustration for Foneros, with the inexpensive La Fonera lacking many features common to Linksys, Belkin and other cheap routers (like more than one port!). Indeed, FON missed a strategic blunder in failing to convince those very manufacturers to add FON-like capabilities to their products out of the box. It can be argued the FON’s firmware is its core asset and proliferating that – agnostic of hardware – was a keystone strategy.

In 2006, I argued that my employers, Orange UK, could partner with FON to create the world’s largest hotzone. My superiors convinced me that if Orange wanted to do that, they could simply upgrade the firmware of all their domestic hotspots – without FON. FON’s potential role as a organisation that could enable roaming between multiple wifi networks was sadly unexplored.

So sadly the promise of FON’s $5 wireless router and it’s community-grown network is almost irrelevant. However, Web workers have many more options available to them. Take my advice and eBay that La Fonera…I’ll be putting that $17 towards an Airport Extreme :)