That works, of course, if you’re lucky enough to be in a vehicle that breaks down near the restaurant district. But let’s say your bus or car gives up the ghost on the way to Eilat – far from any wifi connections – and your replacement transportation is hours away. Meanwhile, you’re stuck on the side of the road, and you’ve got reports to file, virtual meetings to attend, or work on the server you’ve got to get done. Whaddaya gonna do now?

It’s especially galling – and frustrating – to be in a situation where you actually have time to get stuff done uninterrupted, but no way to get that work done, because you can’t connect to the internet. But to the rescue come the cell phone service providers, who will allow you to use their cellular network for your internet needs – for a price.

If you’ve recently acquired a new phone from an Israeli cell phone service provider and/or signed up for a new talk/SMS package, chances are you were offered an opportunity to receive a cellular modem for your laptop, which you can use to connect to the internet using the cell company’s 3G internet connection. If your job really requires you to connect to the internet at the drop of a hat, anytime and anywhere, a cell modem could be just what you need in the way of “internet insurance.”

If this sounds like something you could use, the service reps at your local friendly cell phone service provider will be happy to hook you up (unless you’re with Orange, where, based on the three phone calls I had to make in order to get answers, information on cell modem surfing packages is a well-kept secret).

In order to surf the net, you need two things – a modem (or other communication method, as will be described below) and an internet package. Most 3G phones come with such packages – the basic one at Orange is 21 shekels a month, for example – and when you sign up for the package, you’ll hear something like “you get 3GB of connection a month” (measured in data transfer). It sounds like a lot, and it is – but the catch is that the 3GB must be used only within the Orange network, ie on the sites they offer via their portal (“My Orange,” “Orange Time, “Orange News,” etc.). Once you leave the portal, though – to read, say, the New York Times online – you’re not connecting via your 3 GB of portal internet data allocation, but through the much more limited “external connection” allocation, which in the basic package, comes out to 30 MB of data transfer.

That’s not going to get you very far in the data world – it might be good for a couple of hours, but not much more. But for insurance purposes, 30 MB might be sufficient.

But then there’s the issue of the modem itself – and the cost. Orange offers three cell modems, one of which is priced way out of my league. The other two can be had for NIS 14 and 19 per month respectively, paid over a period of 36 months (total NIS 504 or 684). You get that money refunded, though, if you sign up for one of Orange’s “expanded” data plans – 5 GB of data connection for NIS 81 a month, or 20 GB for NIS 117. In addition, you have to commit to the plan for at least 18 months. And, if you stick with the basic package (or the medium one, which gives you 150 MB of data connection for NIS 40 a month) you have to pay for the modem – or supply one yourself.

Sounds expensive! There are ways to cut costs, though; there are many web sites that will tell you how to turn your Bluetooth-equipped cellphone into a modem – the advantage being that you can connect your laptop without a modem. But having used several phones in this manner, I can tell you that it’s often a complicated process, really not for the average phone user who just wants a little insurance against worst-case scenarios.

There is another way, though; for 15 euros (about 75 shekels), you can download and install a great program called JoikuSpot Premium, a piece of software that acts as a “soft” modem and lets you easily use your phone to connect a laptop to the internet. In fact, you can connect two or three laptops to the internet using JoikuSpot, which lets you provide insurance not just for your laptop, but for the laptops of friends and colleagues who had the bad luck to get stuck in the car with you!

The reason JoikuSpot is easier – on your computer, and on you, because it’s easier to set up – is because it translates your phone’s 3G internet connection into plain old wifi, making connecting a laptop to the phone modem a matter of choosing a wifi connection from the list your laptop usually presents you with. You can create a secure (password) connection with JoikuSpot, or even open a VPN pipe to a corporate server. You can change the name of the network, choose any (or no) landing page, and automatically drop down to a 2G connection if and when your 3G network runs out of gas (of course, the connection will be much slower). As an insurance policy, it’s a lot cheaper (and more versatile) than buying a modem, and you don’t have to commit to 18 months of 5 or 20 GB internet in order to get a free modem. So, the next time Ol’ Betsy starts smoking, don’t panic – pull over to the side of the road, called your service company for a tow, and make the most of your time doing some productive work – thanks to JoikuSpot!

You might think that I, sophisticated and worldly Newzgeek who always seems to be on top of things, would be able to count himself among the digitally privileged. But oh, how wrong you would be. Some computer folk, it is true, find their paths open and laid out before them, with no obstacles in their way. Not me; I have to work like a dog for every advance, for every innovation.

Not one to rely on glamorous press releases, I try out ideas that developers and Web sites claim are cool. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t – but either way, I have an experience I can share with readers to clue them in to a great idea, or warn them away from one that doesn’t work.

To wit: In my never-ending quest to cheap out and avoid buying an iPhone (it’s just a matter of time, I assure you), I’ve been busily upgrading my Sony Ericsson w710i, still a great phone for the money. It’s advantage over run- of-the-mill 3G cellphones, of course, is the built-in jogging and running software; when you run the program, the phone records the number of steps you take (walking or running), speed, distance covered, calories burnt, etc. Can the iPhone do that? Probably, but my phone is cheaper, and I have it already.

I also installed an improved video player, so the phone can also play back MP4 video format files (along with a bunch of others), just like the iPhone. As a Sony legacy product, my phone is all about being a Walkman too, and has music software that can handle playlists, searches, song identification, etc. And I upgraded the storage card (memory stick, in Sony’s world) to handle 2 GB of stuff. True, that’s half the amount of the least of the iPhones, but all that means is I have to connect my phone to a computer twice as much as an iPhone owner. Big deal.

And there’s one thing my Sony phone has over an iPhone – FM radio. Maybe it’s an internal response to the existential of modern life, but I much prefer recorded music played by a live person on the other side of a microphone to recorded music on a memory card. The iPhone doesn’t have built-in local FM radio; you have to spend an extra $50 for an add-on to get that. What you can listen to on the iPhone, however, is Internet radio, via a number of applications and Web sites that have special streams for the Apple devices.

As it happens, you can listen to Internet radio on a Sony Java phone too – at least theoretically. (This is about where the press releases and glowing statements began to diverge from the reality of things.) Unfortunately, listening to Internet radio on a Java phone isn’t easy, and it’s probably not free.

You may be wondering why I need Internet radio if I’ve got regular radio to keep me busy. Why not just listen to MP3s when I’m in the mood, and Reshet whatever when I want a live voice?

Because I want to be free. Untethered. Able to lift my head, run and jump as I please, without worrying about getting tangled up in something I might not be able to get out of so easily. And, because if an iPhone can do it, I can do it too.

For you see, the one drawback to my local cellphone radio setup is that I have to be tethered to the phone. The radio needs an antenna, and the antenna connects physically to the phone via the recharging (data) port. The connector has a microphone, a connection for a pair of earbuds or earphones, and of course the antenna. Usually I don’t mind it that much, but there are times when it’s annoying to have the wires running around the front of my body.

Avoiding wires is why people buy Bluetooth headpieces and microphones, but in this case, Bluetooth won’t allow streaming of FM radio. But I could use a Bluetooth headset to listen to streaming Internet radio. All I had to do was find a streaming Internet radio program for Java phones that would allow me to enter the URLs for my favorite stations (and upgrade my plan to allow for unlimited data connections, of course) and I was set!

So, doing my due diligence duty, I came up with no fewer than four different solutions for Java cellphone Internet radio: MFRadio (http://mfradio.sourceforge.net/), Radiobee (http:// www.radiobee.com/), Mplayer (http://tinyurl.com/32fdz8) and La Velle Mobile Radio (http://www.lavellamobile.com/). With four to choose from, I figured at least one of them would work out and I would be listening to my favorite local radio via their Internet streams, without encumbering wires. Untethered.

As you have probably figured out by now, it wasn’t that simple. I started with Mplayer (Sourceforge is always good, isn’t it?), but – nothing. The highly praised Radiobee also turned out to be useless; unable to stream a sound. The only program that worked at all, in fact, was the La Velle application.

Why did La Velle work but not the others? Apparently my SIM is somehow “locked” for the purposes of streaming Internet radio. (I couldn’t figure out exactly why, but it may be a security thing.) La Velle had a workaround for this, which allowed me to stream their stations, but the workaround didn’t fix things for the other programs.

But one program is all I need, right? Maybe, but La Velle is not going to allow me to stream the sites that I want, from what I could tell. The site has more than 130 stations streaming via their server (and you have to use their “rebroadcasting server” if you have a locked SIM card, unless you set one up yourself. I have the instructions, if you’re really interested). Plus, it’s not free; although they are running a special where you can get lifetime membership for a mere $19.97. (In this day of the puny dollar and the super-shekel, it works out to not a bad price.)

I was very tempted, but my experience with the several free stations they offered as a sample was not very encouraging; stations would drop out after a few seconds and reconnect randomly. Tweaking the buffering settings and such, as suggested by the program’s site, had no effect. After an hour or so of sincere trying, I gave it up. Still tethered after all these years, it seems.

It’s possible the La Velle program would work fine in other places; maybe we just have an anemic GPRS connection around here. (I may keep the program around for awhile to experiment with connections in different parts of the country.)

The iPhone has Wi-fi, along with GPRS, so you would be assured of a strong stream if you were within range of a Wi-fi network. (You may have a problem if the connection tries to roll over to GPRS when you get out of Wi-fi range.)

But it still doesn’t have local radio, although Apple is said to be getting read to roll out an FM-equipped iPhone. Until then, though, the standoff continues – and I must continue to plod along, tethered. Life’s tough.