About the Mobile Internet Resource Center

Our goal is to provide a central resource center about mobile internet options for US based travelers - RVers, boaters, truckers and nomads of all sorts.

We have made this our focus so you can save time & money and get out there exploring what drives you!

We Are Honored to be Community Funded We stive to be an unbiased resource center

We are not sponsored by any manufacturer, vendor or service.

We do not display 3rd Party ads.

We are not resellers of any plans, equipment or products.

By receiving most our funding from our premium memberships, we can remain focused on creating quality indepth educational content.

Ways to support the Mobile Internet Resource Center

What We Offer

This website is our repository of knowledge on this niche topic and news stories analyzed just for travelers.

We've been building this since 2013, and there's a lot of content (currently over 1000 unique pages!).

News Center

We analyze industry news for how it impacts RVers, cruisers and nomads keeping connected. Stay up to date with the latest plans, products and trends in our News Center.

Gear Center

In our Gear Center we track products specific to mobile internet and overview the options on our radar. We try to get hands on time with a representative sampling, and share our more in-depth reviews & tutorials with our members.

Guide Library

Our Guides are in-depth and written to teach you about the various topics that play a role in a mobile internet setup. They're updated constantly as technology shifts. Our members also have access to our Classroom, walking them through the guides.

Video Content

We produce our news stories and mini-guides as videos on YouTube Channel - and that content is also sprinkled into our relevant content site wide for visual learners. Our members also can tune in a couple times a month for our interactive Q&A webinars.

Meet Our Team

It takes a team to pull off what we do here. With the support of our membership keeping us funded, our core team is paid staff - so that we can truly make this mission a focus.

Our team is made up of fellow nomads & travelers. All of us know this topic because we depend on mobile internet ourselves. We are fully distributed, working remotely.. and we all truly love what we do.

Cherie Ve Ard

Host & Co-Founder

Cherie has been self-employed and location independent since the early 90s as a software developer, project manager, author, niche tech magazine publisher, instructor, strategy consultant and product launch specialist.

Cherie strives to keep our content accessible and explainable. She keeps an eye on the industry, coordinates our team, manages the content & website and orchestrates social media.

With a lifelong thirst for wanderlust, she and Chris met in 2006 and have traveled together full time in both RVs and boats since then - continuing to work remotely.

Chris Dunphy

Host & Co-Founder

Chris was the Director of Competitive Analysis (aka 'spy') for Palm & PalmSource (remember the Palm Pilot?) where it was his job to constantly stay on top of every aspect of the mobile industry. Before that, he was the founding technical editor of boot magazine.

In 2006, Chris gave up his downtown San Francisco apartment and hit the road full time in a tiny RV, and soon after he met and partnered with Cherie.

Chris is our uber expert on things high tech. He tracks the industry, analyzes options, continues to predict the future and authors in-depth and high-geek content.

Chris & Cherie are also known as Technomadia and share their travel lives by boat, bus and van via their blog and YouTube channel. They're also co-hosts of Season 1 of The RVers TV Show (Discovery, Apple TV, Amazon, PBS, etc).

View Chris & Cherie's Personal Mobile Internet Setup

Andrew McNabb

Contributor

An avid outdoorsman, father, explorer, veteran, super geek and gamer. Andrew and his family went full-time after too many years in the rat race. The family now has a home base in Colorado, but gets out RVing for extended excursions.

Andy retired from his IT career, but still wanted to keep his feet in the industry.

He joined our team in 2017 and introduced new wizard-like powers to the team.

Jen Nealy

Contributor

Jen and her husband Deas have been RVers since 2013, traveling with their pack of pups.

They were full time, but are presently homebased in Asheville, NC - but still take extended RV trips.

Jen doesn't have a technical background, which we consider a plus.

She joined our team in 2019 to help out with our content, research and customer service.

Dennis & Jeanette Vierra

Web Master & Designer

Nomads since 2010 the Upthentic Creative team keeps this place looking great and cranking along.

Dennis is our behind the scenes web master and Jeanette is our amazing style wizard.

Liz Chafik

Contributor

Liz is a lover of long distance running, balloons & candy. She has been a full-time RVer since 2015, exploring the U.S. with her husband Jake and their cat Lucy.

Liz doesn't have a high-tech background (which is a plus), and joined our team in 2016 to help out - and has grown her role to be so much more as a full scale contributor.

But most importantly, she keeps us all joyfully inspired with her rainbow colored personality.

Andy Hull

Contributor

Andy grew up in Wisconsin hunting, fishing, camping, and enjoying the outdoors. He has a keen interest in how things work and as a child felt compelled to take all things mechanical and electrical apart.

These passions and skills have served him well later in life in a career as an engineer and going full-time RVing with his wife when his daughter left for college.

Andy joined our team in 2020 and has become our antenna guru, after being an active MIA member since 2014.

Our Mission: Supporting Our Nomadic Community

Member funding makes this resource center possible, including the free content & support we're able to provide to our RVing and boating communities. We also donate towards organizations that protect our lands & waters, encourage inclusion & diversity in our community and provide resources that contribute towards our content.

Here are some of the organizations we contribute towards throughout the year:

Leave No Trace

Escapees CARE

Home on Wheels Alliance

Calyx Institute

National Park Foundation

Nature Conservancy

RV Care-a-Vanners

Climate Reality Project

EFF

Wikipedia

Dark Sky

Team Seas

Frequently Asked Questions

How Did the Mobile Internet Resource Center Start?

The Story of the Mobile Internet Resource Center

technomadia mobile internet — The Mobile Internet Resource Center is brought to you by Two Steps Beyond LLC, the business run by Chris Dunphy & Cherie Ve Ard of Technomadia.com.

Chris hit the road in 2006 and Cherie joined him soon after. We weren't retired early or taking a gap year - we took our tech careers on the road while we embraced our wanderlust.

We've primarily traveled by RV since then, mixing in other side adventures. We now split our time between RV and boat throughout the year.

We both continued to work remotely as software developers, app developers, authors and strategy consultants. We are honored to have been catalysts for projects like RVillage and Xscapers (a new division if the Escapees RV Club aimed at the 'working aged' RVer) - helping shape them behind the scenes before launch.

Our posts on our personal travel blog, Technomadia, about how we kept online to continue working remotely became some of our most popular.

In 2013, after yet another e-mailed question about the topic - we decided on a whim to compile all of our blog posts on mobile internet into one place for easier access.

The first edition of The Mobile Internet Handbook - published in 2013.

And thus the first edition of The Mobile Internet Handbook was published in under 3 weeks and we went back to our 'day jobs'.

We launched the RV Mobile Internet Resource Center in 2014 after the book was a success and realized it would take a lot of attention to keep this topic updated.

We had to make a decision between continuing to treat covering this topic as a side hobby that was taking up more and more of our time - or jump fully in by giving up our other successful pursuits to focus on this topic. A IndieGoGo funding campaign in 2014 showed us there was massive support for a member supported resource like this.

Originally we focused on RV-specific solutions, but now we are now simply the Mobile Internet Resource Center for all US based nomads.

We would have never imaged it possible - we get to do the things we truly love: play with technology, live mobile and help people pursue their dreams.

And we're honored that we are funded by the very folks we're serving - our fellow nomadic community. And we're thrilled that we've been able to build a team of awesome folks who help us keep on top of this growing resource.

Do you offer private advising or consultations?

We used to offer one-on-one private mobile internet advising as an additional service when we first started out - and conducted nearly 150 sessions.

We discontinued those in 2017 when the demand far exceeded our ability to keep up. We also found many advising clients didn't understand their setup, and were not well prepared to adapt their setups as the industry rapidly advances. This was because many skipped building a foundation of knowledge and just relied on whatever solution we recommended.

After years of running this resource center and now having assisted thousands find their right solution - we firmly believe in our approach.

Which is each of us has to take the time to assess our needs, understand the challenges and research our own setup.

We feel this best prepares you for managing your setup when you're out there because you better understand it and the trade-offs. And as new gear & plans become available, you're better able to evaluate if it's time to switch out components.

So we focus on creating tools & resources to aid in your education and research - including keeping them all constantly updated as the options change.

And our staff is available for helping interactively guide our members in our forums, private group and webinars.

And besides - with all the work we do here to keep this resource center updated, staying on top of this rapidly evolving industry, producing videos, hosting our free Internet for RVers & Cruises group and the growing premium membership we're serving today - there just aren't enough spare hours or brain cells left to also dedicate the time & energy to private sessions to advise.

We'd rather use those resources to help the many.

Do you offer an affiliate program so I can promote MIRC?

We decided a while ago to not pursue offering affiliates kickbacks for our membership program - all the rage that they are.

The reasons are multi-fold.

For one, we are a community funded resource center. We prefer to keep our membership fees as low as possible for all and not need to build in allowance for affiliate or marketing efforts.
Our marketing plan is pretty simple - we focus on creating quality content worthy of sharing and referencing folks to. We give away a lot of free content & resources that hopefully is valuable to our nomadic communities.
We strive for authentic recommendations and word of mouth referrals to our content & resources that are not incentivized by financial compensation. As we ourselves are not dependent on selling gear or plans to fund this site, we don't want our content/membership to be marketed in this way either. Share it because you WANT to, not because you NEED to.

We do try to take notice however based on where folks say their referrals are from and acknowledge that as best we can.

As far as our book and apps, they're offered on Amazon, iBooks and the app stores. You're of course welcome to use your affiliate links when sharing about them.

Are you hiring? Can I join the MIRC team?

When we have a particular role to fill, we tend to first look from within our premium membership to hire from. We feel those who are called to join & support this site have the best understanding of our content and mission.

However, we are always on the look out for contributors to the resource center who can help fill in areas we don't have fully covered yet. If you have a particular experience that you'd like to contribute - be in touch at info@mobileinternetinfo.com.