Vodafone 3G Stats

Cryos

Hey All,

Well some of you might have seen my posts on the Vodafone 3g Mobile Connect, here is just some stats that i get from the unit.

http://www.rallycrossireland.com/mobileconnect.jpg

Impressive concidering im alwasy only aroud 2/5 signal bar. Just incase you all think its shopped see below.

My connection speed avarages around 35-45k/sec.

I have the 1GB (99€) tarriff, i cant get broadband in my area and this is working out cheaper than Vsat and much faster.

C:\Documents and Settings\mobius.MOBTRIX0>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : cryos12
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : mobtrix0.com
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Mixed
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : Yes
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : mobtrix0.com

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethe
rnet NIC
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0F-B0-41-BA-A9
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

PPP adapter 3G Only Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-53-45-00-00-00
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 213.233.140.161
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.255
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 213.233.140.161
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 213.233.128.1
213.233.128.19
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

C:\Documents and Settings\mobius.MOBTRIX0>ping boards.ie

Pinging boards.ie [82.195.136.36] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=200ms TTL=54
Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=181ms TTL=54
Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=172ms TTL=54
Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=181ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 82.195.136.36:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 172ms, Maximum = 200ms, Average = 183ms

C:\Documents and Settings\mobius.MOBTRIX0>

damien

That isn't bad at all.

Cryos

I know

As i said in other posts the service is getting better all the time and its only a matter of time before tarriffs and speeds increase as the network is expanded

zuma

What happens if you download over the 1GB allocated???

That connections isnt much slower than 512k eircom bitstream and for general surfing your upload is fine.

All things considering...pretty nice.

How does this service compare to the British/German Vodafone equiv. in terms of price/speed/data transfer?

Urban Weigl

Have you tested VoIP or Skype over it?

The only place VSAT might be useful is the north pole, and I hear that satellite doesn't quite reach there...

Sponge Bob

zuma wrote:

What happens if you download over the 1GB allocated???

Vodafone will poop in your wallet, doggy fashion.

That connections isnt much slower than 512k eircom bitstream and for general surfing your upload is fine.

All things considering...pretty nice.

Limited pretty much to the 10 largest towns and a smidge of hinterland , Realistically, Clearwire will have the same coverage and an equally transportable product as Vodafone 3G data by the end of 2005 in both population and geographical terms and do a better package for €40 a month in each and every respect . Ripwave is a joke of course .

How does this service compare to the British/German Vodafone equiv. in terms of price/speed/data transfer?

same speed and spec everywhere, price in Germany is €52 and in England its €60 or so. In Ripoff Ireland we are being mugged for €99

eth0_

You do realise 3G connect pads your data packets (I don't think there's any legit reason for this, they're just ripping us off).

I've been amazed when, looking at three pages of skynews, 3G connect said I used 1 meg of data.

I would use a gig in a week if I was forced to use this heap of crap. I have to use it for work and it's painful to vpn with it, it disconnects a LOT and I have 4-5 bars most of the time.

cgarvey

Criticisms accepted (and 100 quid is definately a rediculous price to charge), but you've got to realise that some people just don't have the choice. VSAT still fails miserably (price/QoS wise) against that. Though the pings/latency are a bit high, I'm fairly sure you'll be able to Skype without much of a problem.

.cg

ednwireland

eth0_ wrote:

You do realise 3G connect pads your data packets (I don't think there's any legit reason for this, they're just ripping us off).

I've been amazed when, looking at three pages of skynews, 3G connect said I used 1 meg of data.

I would use a gig in a week if I was forced to use this heap of crap. I have to use it for work and it's painful to vpn with it, it disconnects a LOT and I have 4-5 bars most of the time.

try http://www.accessmylan.com or pass it to your techies i dont know if they have their vodafone node up yet (they are up on o2) but they claim much better performance than standard vpns over mobile connections. costs though but worth a trial if your suffering (and if they have their vodafone link up otherwise you won't see an improvement)

Blaster99

That looks like an SSL VPN. You may as well use OpenVPN which is free and not terribly difficult to setup. I've never used it over mobile stuff, but it does work just fine in normal circumstances and can also use a HTTP Proxy if you're in an environment where most outbound ports are blocked.

machalla

This is probably a silly question but is there any obligation under the 3G license for Vodafone to offer 100% (or near 100% 3g coverage)?

Its just that I was at a seminar last week and someone senior from Vodafone mentioned to the audience there would never be full coverage here.

Sponge Bob

machalla wrote:

This is probably a silly question but is there any obligation under the 3G license for Vodafone to offer 100% (or near 100% 3g coverage)?

12% Geographic and 54% population by end 2007 is their only coverage obligation . Given how sh1te the 3G technology is compared to 2G then I can hardly accuse Voda of lying about the coverage .

What is t aissue is that Voda will bang the drum for spectrum next year but they should not be given extra spectrum without a reasonable geographic coverage target by end 2008 , about 50% geographic would be appropriate if they want the spectrum .

Same principle applies to O2 who have launched nothing yet .

You will generally never see this product or its successor from next year , HSDPA , in Rural areas .

Urban Weigl

I'm sorry if this is off topic, but do you know something about EDGE coverage? I upgraded to a Nokia 6230i phone, which supports EDGE (or GSM Evolution, whatever they call it now), and supposedly can handle data rates of ~200kbps or so.

jesus_thats_gre

The main reason 3G coverage is unrealiable at the moment is down to 2 main reasons:

- Base Stations need to be deployed more densely.. If you remember, GSM was quite unreliable 5 or 6 years ago when GSM Base Stations were quite sparce. Now that we have a GSM Base Station in every other field, coverage and reliablity has improved drastically. As it is early days and the cost of 3G Base Stations are anything up to 100 grand, it is going to take another few months to notice improvements.

- The auto re-sizing of UMTS cells due to congestion/increased traffic. As you know, UMTS cells automatically reduce in size and the number of users decrease.. As it increases and decreases, someone of the fringe of the coverage area, will revert to GSM quite regularly.. As Base Stations are relatively sparesely deployed, there is not a neighbouring Cell to take to expand into the now shrunken neighbouring cell. Obviously, as Base Stations are rolled out more and more, this should become less of an issue..

Sponge Bob

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

The auto re-sizing of UMTS cells due to congestion/increased traffic. As you know, UMTS cells automatically reduce in size and the number of users decrease.. As it increases and decreases, someone of the fringe of the coverage area, will revert to GSM quite regularly.. As Base Stations are relatively sparesely deployed, there is not a neighbouring Cell to take to expand into the now shrunken neighbouring cell. Obviously, as Base Stations are rolled out more and more, this should become less of an issue..

Th 'breathing' issue will simply result in more base stations being inserted into areas that are already covered , new base stations that is . The existing urban masts have already been populated . Relatively few base stations will be deployed in new areas ..........not even on Voda masts of which there are plenty as Voda has by far the best national tower network.

In order to ensure that 3G is available on a reasonably wide basis it will be necessary to play hardball with 3G expansion spectrum ....currently the chunk between 2.5 and 2.6Ghz to ensure that we can have continual 3g coverage between ....say ...Dublin and Galway by 2010 .

I would not be inclined to release the spectum to any carrier that was not going to ensure 70-80 % geographic coverage for pure 3G in this decade.

The demand for the spectrum will be in Dublin but there is no point giving spectrum to Voda covering 100% of the territory when they have no plans to cover 80% of that territory with it.

Alternatively split the spectrum and auction it for the most rural 80% and maybe let Voda have it for the other more urban 20% where they will provide a signal...eventually .

Sponge Bob

The US 3g standard is different to ours, arguably technically better. The data only subset of US 3G is called EV-DO or 1xEV-DO

Verizon in the US is doing its data connect bundle at $50 a month (€50) unlike Voda here at twice the price.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/20/verizon_embeds_3g/

Verizon is courting PC notebook OEMs and cutting prices. Today it announced deals to embed CDMA EV-DO chips with the top three US PC manufacturers, Dell, Lenovo and HP, in their notebook PCs. Verizon's monthly tariff falls to $60 - half what European business users pay for their 3G data.

the interesting bit is that this is now being built into laptops in the US , not on a PCMCIA card like over here , even more interesting is that

Verizon offers speeds of 400 kbits/s to 700 kbits/s

We cant have this stuff though

jesus_thats_gre

The 1x and 3x EV-DO standards are the natural upgrade patch for the various cdmaOne operators in the States and Europe.. Where GSM/GPRS is in operation, UMTS will nearly always be used as the 3G standard..

Regarding access speeds of between 400kb/s and 700kb/s. Is this the theorethical maximum that these services can offer? UMTS can theorethically offer 2mbps but you know...

Regarding the licensing of spectrum.. bah.. I don't have an idea..

Cryos

Sponge Bob wrote:

The US 3g standard is different to ours, arguably technically better. The data only subset of US 3G is called EV-DO or 1xEV-DO

Verizon in the US is doing its data connect bundle at $50 a month (€50) unlike Voda here at twice the price.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/20/verizon_embeds_3g/



the interesting bit is that this is now being built into laptops in the US , not on a PCMCIA card like over here , even more interesting is that



We cant have this stuff though

While i do see where your comming from you do forget that the US is a FAR bigger country and therefore it is an easyer market to get customers which is why the data tarrifs are so low in price.

I am happy with my data connect card, i need it for off site work i do with hp and i can use it at home to download large files, the tarrifs will increase and the price will drop; it is woth also pointing to stop futher rantings that Vodafone Detuschland PLC have a vastly superior 3G uptake than us which is why they have a better tarrif range and pricing.

Thats my two cents, and i dont see why people are making a meal of this thread anyway its only to give an indication of what sort of service 3G is like; not a ranting base for a certain user to start ranting off at what other countrys have and dis our service; how about you start listing the amount of places that dont have mobile technologys such as 3g as that would be far more interesting read than "Country X has this at this price arnt they great why cant we do that".

Blaster99

Vodafone DE has much greater 3G takeup with products that cost half as much? Maybe, just maybe, there's a correlation between demand and price.

I think somebody pointed out a while ago that Vodafone's 3G network can't handle much more traffic so there's no point in stimulating demand until they provide more bandwidth.

Sponge Bob

Blitz wrote:

it is woth also pointing to stop futher rantings that Vodafone Detuschland PLC have a vastly superior 3G uptake than us which is why they have a better tarrif range and pricing.

Thats my two cents, and i dont see why people are making a meal of this thread anyway its only to give an indication of what sort of service 3G is like; not a ranting base for a certain user to start ranting off at what other countrys have and dis our service;

The reason .de have better takeup than .ie is BECAUSE the price is lower. Were the price set the same as .de in Ireland voda may do even better because it woulc compare very favourably to line based solutions given the crippling line renatl cosst here.

Precisely Why do we have to pay twice what the Germans pay for exactly the same service again ???????

lucernarian

Perhaps the high price of line rental + broadband (€64 with eircom) is precisely why Vodafone have the price higher. If it was actually cheaper than using eircom for a data-only service then the fledgling network would be swamped. People would be able to ditch their landlines and use their laptop wherever they are to access the internet, at a cheaper price than a static broadband connection.

IMO it's a strong possibility that if broadband without making phone calls was cheaper than the current value of up to €64, then Vodafone would charge less.

Edit: at the moment, coverage is the main priority in vodafone's strategy, again IMO. They probably haven't focused on providing capacity for constant data use, as well as for the 3G phones.

Cryos

Sponge Bob wrote:

The reason .de have better takeup than .ie is BECAUSE the price is lower. Were the price set the same as .de in Ireland voda may do even better because it woulc compare very favourably to line based solutions given the crippling line renatl cosst here.

Precisely Why do we have to pay twice what the Germans pay for exactly the same service again ???????

sponge bob once again you have twisted this too look like ireland is carp with 3g roll out, you have not mentioned the timeframe in which 3g has been available in germany, you have not told the readers how much it initially costed and finally you have not told anyone about the coverage in germany at this moment in time in the context of 3g.

HP work with vodafone to build their infrastructure as the demand goes up the infrastructure is expanded, bottom line is get your facts straight because you have drawn a very blurred line with this one.

When 3g came out in germany like us the prices were simular.

jesus_thats_gre

Sponge Bob wrote:

The reason .de have better takeup than .ie is BECAUSE the price is lower. Were the price set the same as .de in Ireland voda may do even better because it woulc compare very favourably to line based solutions given the crippling line renatl cosst here.

Precisely Why do we have to pay twice what the Germans pay for exactly the same service again ???????

Man I think I had this argument with you before.. This is the way I see it..

Vodafone Germany actually have competition in the 3G market. Vodafone Ireland didn't until recently and lets face it, 3 hardly set the market alight, nor do they offer similar data services.

Vodafone Ireland took far less of a risk in launching 3G with an initial outlay of just over 100million. Vodafone Germany took a massive risk in shelling out on a license for 10+ billion euro..

Competition + massive risk = it needs to be a success no matter what.

If Vodafone 3G fails in Germany, UK or Italy, this will have massive implications on the company and it shareholders as this is their biggest markets.

There is considerably less pressure to ensure takeup here as there is virtually no competition to drive down the cost, nor is their the same focus on making it anymore than a moderate success at the moment. Vodafone Ireland have bet their targets as far as I know.

I would be pretty confident that once there is some decent competition here, once 3G growth figures slow down and capacity on the network improves, they will reduce such costs..

Again, that is just the way I see it.

oscarBravo

To_be_confirmed wrote:

at the moment, coverage is the main priority in vodafone's strategy, again IMO.

They'd want to think about improving their 2G coverage first. There are way too many patches of poor coverage around here, including stretches of the N5. My Meteor phone almost invariably has a better coverage than my Voda, and that's without roaming on O2's network.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

Little bit off topic but...
I've a Meteor phone. How can ya tell if you're roaming on O2? I presume it would be transparent to the user?

ambrose :cool:

oscarBravo

Same way you can tell what network you're on when roaming abroad: it's on the screen.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

Thanks for that oscarBravo. Although I travel a lot around Ireland and I've never seen my network change from Meteor to O2.

ambrose

kingambrose

kingambrose wrote:

Thanks for that oscarBravo. Although I travel a lot around Ireland and I've never seen my network change from Meteor to O2.

ambrose

Thats because meteor are economical with the truth when they say "we've got you covered"
Their roaming agreement only covers the service areas of some O2 tx's.
There are large parts of Wicklow,Wexford and Carlow amongst others with no meteor coverage and when you try to register on O2 it says "disallowed" :mad:

[apologies for the further drift off topic-runs away now]

lucernarian

Originally posted by oscarBravo
They'd want to think about improving their 2G coverage first. There are way too many patches of poor coverage around here, including stretches of the N5. My Meteor phone almost invariably has a better coverage than my Voda, and that's without roaming on O2's network.

I wasn't talking about 2G but I know that can be bad aswell. When I had a meteor phone I had fewer dropped calls at home than with my current phone (vodafone). And that's on the East coast. More often than not there are problems when people ring me.

Tom McHugh

I have just bought an i-mate JasJar in the USA and am intending to use it with Mobile Connect in Ireland. Will it auto-cofigure the settings or will I need to enter them manually. I already have a data connect card for my lap-top and it is much beeter than anything I can get overland. I get 3/5 bars but disconnect regularly. I assume this is normal.

parsi

I have an O2 3G card and I have to admit that it's not all that great. During the great broadband outage a few weeks ago I used it and it was like being back in the days of dialup and that was with around 4bars of 3G coverage. When used in GPRS-land its tear inducing....