I decided to conduct an experiment of sorts last night. Well, call it early this morning. I loaded up my unlocked Novatel Wireless 3G/HSPA ready MiFi and popped in a shot of Voda. As in VoadFone.
You see, Voda has been advertising that their network is 7.2 megs capable on the DL (Download) and 2 megs on the upload. Well, not exactly.
After using the settings I found on the Pre Paid Data Wiki, I was off and running. Instantly.
My speeds were very, very good. A quick speedtest over at SpeedTest.Net showed that I was popping over 2 megs down and 1 meg up. Not too shabby going wireless from across the suite at the Andaz where I'm holed up for a few days in London.
The way this all worked is I walked in the other day to a VodaFone store and grabbed one of their 39 pound dongle and 1GB plans, added a second gigabyte and was using the dongle (USB Stick) on both my Mac Book Pro 13" and the Asus 1008 HA. Last night safely back in London after a quick two days of meetings down in Cornwall (on the coast a la Del Mar) and in a moment of boredom, I loaded up the MiFi with the SIM and saw just what a real HSUPA network can do.
Oh, and the experiment. I placed a Skype video call to may pal with the golden eyes, Ken Rutkowski. Ken's been my audio tester for years of new cell phones, softphones and laptops. The result. He said the video was amazingly sharp, clear and perhaps the best ever seen. Yeah Baby.
Oh, and just for comparison I installed the SIM from 3 in the MiFi. I felt let down. While 3 megs will get you going, the speed test was the true indicator. 1 meg down and 750kb up. OUCH. So here's the difference. About 20 pounds.
So while a shot of 3 (http://www.three.co.uk) will get you there, it's the shot of Voda that gets you there faster.
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