Even though I have been disappointed with my v710's crippling by Verizon, it should still make an acceptable internet connection platform. Verizon has a 1xRTT network with coverage in most interesting places. A bit of searching turned up these instructions on using the v710 as a Bluetooth Modem with Mac OS X. They work pretty much as advertised, with the only caveat being that the connection can be dropped occasionally. I initially thought this was due to some limiting by Verizon, but it doesn't seem to be dependent on the amount of data transferred or frequency of access.

My experiences, performance-wise, seem to mirror everybody else's - faster than a 56K modem, but with worse latency. As an example of the latter, compare these two ping statistics (to www.google.com):

v710 via Verizon 1xRTT:
  round-trip min/avg/max = 344.774/457.334/589.046 ms
TimeWarner Cable:
  round-trip min/avg/max = 11.13/16.128/32.77 ms

Speed seemed to vary based on signal intensity. A speed test reported 62 kbps down and 46 kbps up, but I could get the sustained transfer rate to vary between 144 kbps and 40 kpbs depending on where I placed my phone. Burstiness was also an issue, even when holding the phone still. In general this is better than my experiences with T-Mobile's GPRS network, though we'll have to see how much this ends up costing me.