Can a wireless printer work with a 3G Dongle?

[TheMagicPirate]

Apologies if this is not the correct forum but I think this is a Wireless Networking question.

The wife and I are expecting our first child soon and we want to be able to inundate friends and family with pictures every time the baby blinks or pulls a funny 'I'm pooping face'.

However, we have one family member who has no need (or desire) for modern technology. Even their SMS only mobile is only turned on for the express purpose of sending the odd, single text.

My plan is to buy them a Wireless printer (that supports Air/Web Print) and a 3G WiFi dongle and link the two together. I can then take a photo on my phone, and send it to the printer for the family member to treasure for ever and ever and so on....

My question is, will this work?
More importantly, can i set it up to be low maintenance? The printer/dongle will be about 350 miles away with an elderly relative.

Thanks for any feedback

 

[bill001g]

Not likely. The printer would need device drivers for the 3g modem and its not like a computer you can load things to. You could I suppose find a inexpensive router that supports 3g modems and printers. You have a number of issue. Most mobile broadband carrier do not give you actually routable IP addresses so you can not get remote access to device. This is the port forwarding issue on most routers but in this case you have no access to the carrier router. Next a printer is very stupid exposing it directly to the internet is never a good idea. Last this will be rather expensive even if you only use only once in a while. The monthly fees for these services is quite high and many have low bandwidth caps.

It would likely be cheaper to use one of the many picture printing services on the internet and have them mail the photos. When you look at the cost of the printer and ink and the costs of a mobile broadband subscription it likely is cheaper and I suspect it will only take a couple days to deliver the photos.