HSDPA with 3 launched?

Sponge Bob

Commander Vimes wrote:

knowing three there'll probably be some hidden, extremely retarded term that makes it all but useless

Quite. And their fabulous customer service department will be fully trained on every subtle nuance.

Sam Vimes

Sponge Bob wrote:

Quite. And their fabulous customer service department will be fully trained on every subtle nuance.

like the other day when i phoned them up to ask about it and the guy had never heard of it

Sponge Bob

Their CS probably thinks that HSDPA is a really nasty social disease.

On the plus side, Three have improved their rural coverage a lot in the past 6 months. The map on the website and in the shops is way out of date (maybe 4-6 months) for the west of Ireland but their CS has not been told anything much about these new coverage areas. therefore the best way to find out is to scan witha 3g phone in your area and see if IRL-05 shows up indoors or outdoors. If coverage is found outdoors only the signal is probably too crappy for data so don't bother with them .

I think a lot of people would be surprised at where they may be found nowadays , many of whom have no other BB options at all .

On the minus side its three . I will wait 6 months to see how things setttle down first. There is no point finding out the bad news and sneaky condition some 2 months into a 12 month contract.

joerules

Hey,

So I got the card but I'm at work and can't use it yet. What's in the Box?: the Card in a nice plastic container which has the build quality of a Video or DVD coverbox (very sturdy) and a "3 Monthly" guide package (if you have 3 you know what I mean) which contains the SIM. Am really curious but I'm snowed under with work. Will report back later.

joerules

An Update:

I got the card installed. Big warnings about installing the software first before inserting the card. No restart was needed. When I plugged it in, the drivers got installed. It logged into the network and said connected at 3.6Mbits. Very nice. Felt fast while I surfed the web (well only to yahoo.ie). Did a quick speedtest (i think it was speedtest.net or something). Here are the result:
Server: in Derby, UK
ping: 234ms
Download: 809Kbits
Upload: 58Kbits.

From what I remember from American websites, the HSDPA download results here are typical (i don't know about the upload). I'll let you know how things progress.

flodis79

joerules wrote:

An Update:

I got the card installed. Big warnings about installing the software first before inserting the card. No restart was needed. When I plugged it in, the drivers got installed. It logged into the network and said connected at 3.6Mbits. Very nice. Felt fast while I surfed the web (well only to yahoo.ie). Did a quick speedtest (i think it was speedtest.net or something). Here are the result:
Server: in Derby, UK
ping: 234ms
Download: 809Kbits
Upload: 58Kbits.

From what I remember from American websites, the HSDPA download results here are typical (i don't know about the upload). I'll let you know how things progress.

Nice! Can you please check if you can use the sim card in a normal 3g phone or even 2g phone? Will it work? Is there a telephone number on the sim or only data-sim?

1huge1

^^ ya would also like to know
but when i asked the guy at customer care if i could use my current sim in a data card he said no and id need to set up a new subscription

are they different somehow or one is set up for data cards and one for mobiles

joerules

Hi,

So I put the SIM into my 3 phone and I could ring my flat. I also got a message saying I should register for my email address (I got the same when I signed up for 3). So it seems like there is nothing special about the SIM. It must be set up differently on their billing system.

flodis79

joerules wrote:

Hi,

So I put the SIM into my 3 phone and I could ring my flat. I also got a message saying I should register for my email address (I got the same when I signed up for 3). So it seems like there is nothing special about the SIM. It must be set up differently on their billing system.

Could you use it for data connection on the phone?

Urban Weigl

flodis79 wrote:

Could you use it for data connection on the phone?

Yes. You'll want a phone that supports HSDPA, though. At the moment, the only phone that supports HSDPA available in Ireland, or at least from 3, is the Motorola V3xx.

1huge1

^^ whats the differences between that and the V3X im guessing only the HSPDA ya?
also it isnt on 3 ireland website yet so are they selling it in carphone warehouse or what?

Urban Weigl

It's on http://store.3ireland.ie/ -- top most phone on that page. It's basically an improved version of the V3x, plus 3.6 Mbps HSDPA support. It doesn't really interest me so much because I don't like Motorola phones, so I didn't check all of the specs, better visit Motorola's web site for that.

cormie

So what's stopping us from going to Austria and paying half what it would cost here and using it here?

It's very good for 20 a month, not so sure about 40 though.

I'd be very interested in this if you could use VOIP, totally replace the landline:)

Does anyone know if you need a contract with these, or could I use say, a 3G sim card from an o2 Sony Erickson K610im?

So what does a 3GB cap get you these days anyway? Regular net use but no downloading or big youtube use?:) Seems fair enough.

cold_filter

flodis79 wrote:

This is very interesting! Could someone who has tried this tell me if I can pop the SIM card into a usual 2g or 3g phone and use the APN to connect from the phone? And can I buy only a data sim card and use the bundles with it? I will only use this offer in a phone, not in a laptop.

You wont be able to get HSDPA speeds as you will need a HSDPA device i.e. datacard in order to access the network.
both Vodafone,3 & o2 shoul dhave HSDPA enable phones out in the first quarter of next year.

flodis79

cold_filter wrote:

You wont be able to get HSDPA speeds as you will need a HSDPA device i.e. datacard in order to access the network.
both Vodafone,3 & o2 shoul dhave HSDPA enable phones out in the first quarter of next year.

Yes as aforementioned in the thread, the only phone with HSDPA out in Ireland is the razr v3xx. i was just wondering if it would be possible to connect at all by putting the sim in a phone or if the APN is secret and hardcoded in the datacard.

1huge1

i suppose if 3 release a new nokia smartphone that has HSPDA i would consider getting it
since ive got a upgrand to use thats gonna be €0 less i believe
i already have a v3x so getting a v3xx would be fairly pointless

joerules

Hey,

Just playing around with it. So the APN is 3ireland.ie. I think that's the same as the one in my regular 3 phone (i could easily be wrong though). If that's the case then there's nothing special about the SIM. The difference is on the billing side. I sometimes used bluetooth on my Powerbook to browse the (limited) web on my 3 phone. It was quicker than the phone too. Just got my first bill and it's under a "Mobile Broadband" section. It lists the data transfered but the cost was 0. A sign of things to come?

Urban Weigl

IMHO what 3 ought to do is allow this to be added to HSDPA-capable phones at a discount, if you get both voice and data with them. That would certainly "motivate" a lot of people to move to 3. Because right now, while I'll consider getting a data card from them once my contract with Vodafone expires, IF their product has better coverage than Vodafone at that point and if the price is competitive, I will probably keep my voice with my existing provider.

If on the other hand they allowed the 3000 MB package to be added on to an existing pay monthly plan, for let's say an extra €25 (assuming you have a HSDPA-capable handset), I'd move both, and spend more money with them than I would otherwise. Make sense?

pyramuid man

I honestly expected o2 to come out with hsdpa first as they took so long to open up their 3g network and they were using the umts for VPN's mainly and other applications rather than the mobile network. Just a thought

Urban Weigl

pyramuid man wrote:

I honestly expected o2 to come out with hsdpa first as they took so long to open up their 3g network and they were using the umts for VPN's mainly and other applications rather than the mobile network. Just a thought

Considering I'm already using HSDPA with Vodafone, and 3 have HSDPA live in Dublin now and will have the rest of the country soon, I doubt O2 can still be first. Now third, that's likely, considering that Meteor will take some time to build their 3G network.

pyramuid man

I nevere said they were the first. I said I expected them to be the first but they are not.

joerules

Another Update:

I was on the train back home (in the midlands) and had a great connection all the way as far as Enfield (over 30 mins). It was great browsing the web while traveling at 75mph (once you get past Maynooth). When it dropped out of 3G coverage, it just disconnected. You have to connect again in 2G coverage. It works but it really is much slower.

For those of you who have a Mac I've got great news for you. The card is an e630 card but the e620 driver works perfectly. Here's the link to the page where you can download both the PowerPC and Intel binaries. http://www.myglobe.com.ph/myglobe/featdetails.aspx?title=features&contentid=1789

quintron

Urban Weigl wrote:

IMHO what 3 ought to do is allow this to be added to HSDPA-capable phones at a discount, if you get both voice and data with them. That would certainly "motivate" a lot of people to move to 3. Because right now, while I'll consider getting a data card from them once my contract with Vodafone expires, IF their product has better coverage than Vodafone at that point and if the price is competitive, I will probably keep my voice with my existing provider.

If on the other hand they allowed the 3000 MB package to be added on to an existing pay monthly plan, for let's say an extra €25 (assuming you have a HSDPA-capable handset), I'd move both, and spend more money with them than I would otherwise. Make sense?

Yes it does.. Unfortunately.. Now they'll never do it!

joerules

Hey,

So I was coming back from Longford today by car. I was being driven so that left me plenty of opportunity to test out the card. Had flawless coverage until about 5 minutes outside of Edgeworthstown (on the Dublin side). After about 2 minutes I got 3G coverage again which lasted for 21minutes. During this time we listened to the Arsenal match streamed via the BBC (the IP address seems to be UK based). Lost coverage again for about a minute then reconnected and we had perfect coverage all the way to Central Dublin. For nearly the whole trip Realplayer was connected to a 40kbit stream and every once in a while it dropped to 6kbit or so. We were all shocked how well it was working considering we were travelling at 80kph along the N4 till we got on the M4 and drove at 120kph The card can hold onto a signal much better than my W850. My mother even commented on how amazing "technology has become".

richieg

Does anyone know what phones are expectedd to come out on which networks and when?

1huge1

^^ why go 100km on the N4 its 100km no oh the madness