Best location. Cell phone in antenna?...or controller?

If I had a decent budget for hardware, I would go with both devices being capable of connecting to a network. It will give you more configuration options. I do believe some of the network integrated receivers have better cell modems than what you will find in a collector. For instance my gobi modem in my Carlson Supervisor is pretty garbage and gets much weaker reception than my cell phone radio. A bunch of sites require me to turn my phone into a hotspot to get a connection.

Never put the card in the antenna- i do occasionally find myself shooting ASCII files and photos to my cad monkey from the collector, though it's brutally slow relative to a laptop or iPhone. But saves having to download, or make a run to the office.

I totally agree with Gavin... we use MiFi and it works great, with the added benefit that you can connect multiple devices. The only drawback is battery life, but many of them have extended batteries available. Our Liberates also have the option of choosing short range, which obviously reduces power consumption.

I tried one internal modem in a Trimble R8; it was a real POS, we ended up changing to a cell phone using Bluetooth.

I agree with Gavin and Lee....

WiFi hotspots are the most versatile...I have had some be rather quirky to connect and remain connected, but over all they are good. And very useful for hooking up other devices.

Modem in the Receiver or controller? I would choose controller any day.

I have seen a number of issues with modems in the receivers that get way more than "quirky".

The newest TSC3's from Trimble have an internal modem that works with both GSM and CDMA.

Tom I didn't know that Trimble now supported CDMA on the TSC3 - about d****d time!!