3G comparisons

mohananv

Long time lurker, first time poster!
Just wanted to ask what you guy's opinion was on the 3g speeds as provided by O2, Meteor, Vodafone and 3. My Nexus One is arriving tomorrow, and I want to get into one of the data plans. I'm on O2 at the moment, and I've been so for the 8 years but I'm wiling to switch. My mate has an iPhone, and I've used it a couple of time for checking mail and stuff and it seems to perform well over 3G. I don't have any experience with the other networks though. I'm more interested in 3 tbh, as they have a very good data plan of 10 euros for a gig for the month.

Any thought?

Mimikyu

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mohananv

I'm on PAYG with O2. Usually topup by 20euros a month which lasts me a good while.

Mimikyu

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mohananv

I'm not using data atm. Just texting mostly and phone calls.
3 network have a good offer where for 20 euros you get 300 texts to any network and 200 weekend minutes http://www.three.ie/priceplans/3pay.htm. ONto this there is an option to add a data plan for a tenner for a gig.

Mimikyu

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mohananv

Captain Morgan wrote: »

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Oh nice! I just wanted to compare 3G speeds and coverage. Like I said, I've only experience with O2. Know of any speed/coverage comparison sites for ireland?

dublin geek

mohananv wrote: »

Long time lurker, first time poster!
Just wanted to ask what you guy's opinion was on the 3g speeds as provided by O2, Meteor, Vodafone and 3.

Speedtest.net collects data from users and calculates average speeds, but they don't make it easy to do comparisons. There is a way of getting the average comparison data, as follows.

When you do a speedtest, in addition to showing your individual result, it also shows a bar indicating your "ISP average". It's just a graphic - not a number, but by comparing the length of this bar with your individual measurement, you can get a reasonable estimate of your ISP. You Tube has reasonably recent videos of speedtests done on Vodafone, O2 and 3, so I was able to get the averages for each of these ISPs without having to buy all the dongles. I decided to try a Meteor dongle as I couldn't find a speedtest video of it. Below is a full set of ISP averages for all the mobile networks.

Based on this methodology, the ranking for the average download speeds is as follows,

1. Meteor - 3.3Mbps
2. O2 - 2.2Mbps
3. Vodafone - 1.7Mbps
4. 3 - 1.5Mbps

As you can see - Meteor is the fastest, by a significant margin.

It is important to note that mobile broadband varies widely from one area to another, so a good average does not guarantee performance at your specific location. These tests are a few months old, so if anyone has updates, please post.

By the way, I wouldnt touch 3 - have a look at the Megathread under Broadband-Midband. They also don't have an EDGE network. I find the EDGE network on Meteor very useful when out in remote areas where there is no 3G. Only Meteor & O2 have a EDGE networks.

For reference, the Speedtests on YouTube are as follows,
Vodafone - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzIJxbxBp_8
3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQopVYwjjv8
O2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vX_JU_IFxE