Welcome to 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. From tracking the news, how-to guides and helping field questions.
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 a community funded resource, allowing us to provide a bunch of free content to the public.
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. We strive to research the options, test out gear, create in-depth content and share real world experiences without bias.
By receiving most our funding from our premium memberships, our incentive is not to sell you gear or plans you might not need.
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 900 unique pages!).
Here are the main areas of the website:
- News - We track the mobile internet industry to keep an eye out for news releases about products & services. We then analyze those stories for how it impacts travelers keeping connected.
- Guides - 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.
- Gear Center - We track gear 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.
- Video Center - A lot of our content also has a video component to complement it - from our news stories, guides to tutorials. Our members also can tune in a couple times a month for our interactive Q&A webinars.
- Forums - Our premium members have access to our Q&A forums where we are pleased to assist them in their research. We also host the free & public Internet for RVers & Cruiser Facebook group, where our staff helps field basic questions.
We try to provide a lot of content on this website for free - to the public. We're only able to do so in thanks to the support we get from our premium members. In return, they get a lot of extra perks.
About Our Team
Our team is made up of fellow nomads all working remotely while pursing our own travels. All of us know this topic because we depend on mobile internet ourselves. We are a fully distributed team, and some of us have worked together for years having never managed to meet in person (yet!)... and we've become friends building this together.
Cherie Ve Ard, Host & Co-Founder
Cherie has been a geek since before she could walk, and started learning computers in the mid-70s when she was a toddler. She then skipped college and became a location independent software entrepreneur in the early 90s in the medical & government fields. She's also been a technical writer, tech magazine publisher and instructor - teaching high tech topics to a wide audience.
Cherie strives to keep our content accessible and explainable. She keeps an eye on the industry, coordinates our team on breaking stories, manages the content & website and orchestrates social media. She's also usually first on the scene in our member forums.
She and Chris have actually met - in fact, they kinda like each other and have traveled together full time in both RVs and boats since 2006. You can follow her and Chris' personal adventures at Technomadia.com.
Chris Dunphy, Host & Co-Founder
In a former life, 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 and plot the future. Before that, he was the founding technical editor of boot magazine (which in now still found on newsstands as Maximum PC).
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. They have been perpetual nomads ever since.
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.
View Chris & Cherie's Personal Mobile Internet Setup
We're also honored to be instructors of the 'Staying Connected on the Road' course - part of the Escapees RV Club RVOU (RVers Online University).
Liz Pfleghardt, Candy Expert
Lover of long distance running, balloons, & candy. Full-time RVer exploring the U.S. indefinitely with her partner Jake. Our world was rocked the day Jake joined the MIA to get information to continue working remotely in his high tech career and suggested Liz might be able to assist us.
Liz doesn't have a high-tech background and has helped us keep it real here since 2016. She sleuths out details, assists in our Internet for RVers & Cruisers public group, breaks stories in our News Center, proofreads our content, keeps guides updated and assists with helping our members. But most importantly, she keeps us all joyfully inspired with her rainbow colored personality.
She's also the big rig driver & dump station specialist - and you can follow their personal adventures at lifewithdyna.com.
View her & Jake's Mobile Internet Setup.
Andrew McNabb, Wizard
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 is now taking a stationary break, exploring RVing for extended excursions.
He keeps on top of breaking news stories, assists in our Internet for RVer & Cruisers public group, super sleuths geeky details, breaks stories in our News Center, writes & expands our in-depth guides and assists with helping our members. He's dynamite at confirming details and standardizing our content. He joined our team in 2017 and introduced new wizard-like powers to the team.
Follow Andy's family's adventures at thefreefive.wordpress.com.
Joe Maliszewski, Field Testing Technician
Jack Mayer, Advisor
He and his wife have been RVing since the early 2000s, and Jack has a high-tech background. He's a highly respected tech guru on RVing forums. You can follow his adventures at JackDanMayer.com.
He was a supporting force to establishing the Mobile Internet Resource Center, including being an initial contributing author to the book and providing some of our first in-depth reviews and guides. We appreciate him continuing to be on call for our team and chiming in when he has open time.
Dennis & Jeanette Vieira, Web Master & Designer
Nomads since 2010, the Upthentic team splits there time between coasts, and sometimes from an RV. Dennis is our behind the scenes web master, keeping our site updated and cranking along. He also works with us to implement new features and constantly improving our website.
Jeanette is our amazing style wizard - helping us keep a consistent look and feel in our graphics, fonts, colors and presentation. From book to website.
The Story of the Mobile Internet Resource Center
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.
Since we launched this site in 2013, we have conducted over 125 private advising sessions. As much as we love getting to assist our members in this format, finding the time to continue offering them as our membership and content we provide expands became too difficult.
As our primary mission is creating resources that can help the many so have discontinued private advising.
We are considering some alternatives - such as a virtual study group to less structured & shorter sessions.
In the meantime, if you're embarking on your research - please consider utilizing many of the resources we offer. We offer a classroom, book, videos, member forums and regular Q&A webinars. We are always delighted to assist our members in these spaces.
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.
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.