Verizon wireless blocks all incoming ports

Ok, so this may be a little techie, but I need to rant. I’ve had Verizon’s wireless laptop card/ (now transitioned to my Blackberry) for almost 3 years now and its VERY fast. I love being able to just plug in anywhere and get on the internet at up to 1000kbps. They are still very fast, that’s not what I ‘m ranting about…

What happened, less than a month ago, is they started to BLOCK all incoming ports. Which means I can no longer have someone remote into my computer when I’m out on a job site, or connect directly in any way through VNC or any web server protocol. It’s very annoying and did not use to be like that.

Why I’m really pissed is that I have a trade show this next week where we are showing off our remote lighting controls for recreational ball fields, and I need people to be able to log directly into my laptop at the show to control the lights from their blackberries/iphones/web enabled phones. It will be great fun but Verizon is trying to kill it.

I talked with Verizon tech support and the first lady told me they don’t block ANY ports and it was on my end. I told her I don’t think so. It works just fine with any other connection. I finally got to upper tech support and he read me my TOS, and said those ports should have been blocked forever and I was lucky to get them through until now.

Long story short, I now have to VPN into my home network, then I can do everything I want. It will work for the show, so HA.

Stupid Verizon. You are on notice.