I’m a laptop user these days, so to keep with the whole ‘work anywhere’ gig I’m trying to perfect I decided to invest in one of the mobile broadband offerings from 3G, O2 or Vodafone. Truth be told 3G were out before they were even in… I’ve heard a lot of negative things about their overall (speed, reliability & customer care) service, in both the online and offline worlds so I wasn’t going there. As for Vodafone well reliability is meant to be top notch, however it’s €30 a month and has a data cap is 5GB which 02 beats on both counts, so I said I’d look into 02 more…
While I was researching the mobile broadband offering from 02, one of the most important things for me was speed, reliability too of course… but that’s a given. I needed decent download speed but perhaps as important (well not quite) for me was upload speed as being a developer I’m uploading this, that and everything via FTP on a daily basis.
Speed for the 02 mobile broadband service is currently listed as 7.2Mbps for download and 2.0Mbps for upload although they must have upgraded upload capabilities within the last few days because when I ordered last week upload speed was listed as 1.4Mbps, which is good in itself. Those speeds where more than adequate for my needs. I was aware however that these listed speeds are the theoretical max speeds one can achieve given absolutely perfect network conditions, so I wasn’t expecting to get anywhere near them in reality. The truth however is that higher theorectical speeds generally mean higher ‘in the wild’ speeds too so considering it has a 10GB data cap and after a little checking on it’s reliablity I said I’d give 02 mobile broadband a go.
I bought it online (by the way - no sim pin number is included when the modem is bought online for security reasons - you need to call, email or post in their support forum to get it) and it cost €49 for the E270 (the E220 is less powerful upload speed wise) modem and then €20 a month as part of a 12 month contract. I got it the other day and am very happy with it so far, below is some snapshots I got from Speedtest.net. The 1st one is the max I’ve achieved so far while the 2nd one is what I got earlier today.
Both are decent results in terms of download and upload speed. I found 2.5-3.0MB is usually average territory for download speed, while upload average is about 800-900kbs mostly. Quality of service is good too - I’ve made about five long Skype calls since getting this lad in and no problems at all, call quality was as good as DSL based calls. By the way Blacknight have a nice VOIP simulation test at http://www.irishisptest.com/runmyspeed.php which you can use to check how your Internet connection will perform (roughly) using VOIP. As far as I’m aware VOIP call quality has a lot to do with Ping speed (as well as upload/download speed obviously), which above is 159ms and 162ms respectively from left & top which is good for mobile broadband. Call quality on Skype etc. may be a bit hairy on Ping speed of I’d say 270+.
Although I haven’t had it long I’m very happy with it to date, I’ve heard it can be very location dependant (I’m based in Santry, North Dublin) though so depending on where abouts in Ireland you are it might not work as well for you as it is doing for me. On that note check out the Speed Test Thread on the 02 support forum for a load of Speedtest.net result snapshots from various parts of the country. You’ll notice that some of them are not that flattering, but most are decent and considering that mobile broadband is still really new in this country ‘decent’ for five euro a week should be good enough for most people. Word on the wires is that they have plans to upgrade to 14.4Mbps sometime in the next year or so which when it happens should really stir things up.
I wonder though will us Irish ever have it as good as our UK counterparts, the variety of packages and special offers for home, mobile and other broadband services is massive, for instance (and since we’re talking about 02) check out this deal from 02 in the UK which offers free home broadband when you buy mobile broadband.
Resources:
Apparently the software that comes with the 02 modem does not accurately track data usage, I’ve yet to notice but Shane O’ Sullivan has written a tool which logs in to the 02 website and gets your 100% accurate figures.Another recent review which includes figures from a couple of different locations around Ireland by Conor O’Neill.
Keith Bohanna’s review of 02 mobile broadband from September 07 includes more sample speeds from various different locations, notice the sometimes huge differences between location A and location B so do your research before investing.