Meteor EDGE tests

I'm up in Dublin at the moment and while messing with my Nokia 6680 I noticed that the field test app reported "EGPRS support = 1." In Kerry there's no sign of EDGE but since I had it here I decided to do a speed test. Here's the result, it's not lightning fast but certainly better than GPRS.

Tom Dunne

Karsini wrote:

I'm up in Dublin at the moment and while messing with my Nokia 6680 I noticed that the field test app reported "EGPRS support = 1."

Whereabouts in Dublin? I have an EDGE equipped phone and have never got a chance to test that functionality. Of course, I also need to find someone with a Meteor SIM, but that's a minor point.

flodis79

I have had EDGE coverage on my Qtek 8310 since June 2006 in Dublin area, around Ballsbridge down to Ranelagh/Rathmines. But also in city centre. Think they have a wide EGPRS coverage now.

chrislad

There's EDGE coverage in most major cities. I know Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork should have it now.

damo86

not much use though,is it??

dont seem to see the point of investing in edge technology when they have nothinh to utilise it..unless they have some plans up there sleeve.

mkennedy

nice to know given
i also have an edge device.

anyone know what meteor's data plans are like (do they have any??)

btw what are typical edge speeds anyway?

chrislad

To be honest, I see EDGE being pushed to one side since they've just gotten a 3G licence.

Typical EDGE speeds are, from wikipedia, up to 236.8 kbit/s.

legs11

edge is old hat, HSPA and WiMax are going to be in handsets from 2007-2009.

Tom Dunne

chrislad wrote:

To be honest, I see EDGE being pushed to one side since they've just gotten a 3G licence.

Typical EDGE speeds are, from wikipedia, up to 236.8 kbit/s.

Yeah, EDGE is a stop-gap solution. 2.75G as opposed to 3G. AFAIK, it's cheap enough to implement, it doesn't take too much to upgrade a normal GSM cell to provide EDGE functionality.

However, just looking at the Meteor website, they don't do any real kind of data package. They charge by the kB. How quaint.

tom dunne

tom dunne wrote:

Whereabouts in Dublin? I have an EDGE equipped phone and have never got a chance to test that functionality. Of course, I also need to find someone with a Meteor SIM, but that's a minor point.

Ballyfermot - it's the only place I've noticed it but then again I don't look very often. It's not really that useful, especially with the pay as you use data charges.

chrislad

tom dunne wrote:

Yeah, EDGE is a stop-gap solution. 2.75G as opposed to 3G. AFAIK, it's cheap enough to implement, it doesn't take too much to upgrade a normal GSM cell to provide EDGE functionality.

However, just looking at the Meteor website, they don't do any real kind of data package. They charge by the kB. How quaint.

I'd say it's only a matter of time. Really no point in doing MB packages on a basic GPRS connection. There are business ISP cards though, but again with 3G, I assume this is all being pushed to one side for the new network to come.

Tom Dunne

chrislad wrote:

I'd say it's only a matter of time. Really no point in doing MB packages on a basic GPRS connection.

But it's not a basic GPRS connection - look at the speeds Karsini is getting. I would love to get 132kbps on my home DSL connection, never mind my mobile phone.

At that speed it is useable for surfing the web.

niallb

chrislad wrote:

To be honest, I see EDGE being pushed to one side since they've just gotten a 3G licence.

Typical EDGE speeds are, from wikipedia, up to 236.8 kbit/s.

EDGE would be much cheaper to roll out for a few months to see if
they could put their 3G services on the existing masts.
Building a new 2100Mhz network would be a huge task.

UMTS and HSDPA services will happen on 1800MHz, and a company
that manages to roll out those services without investing in a brand new 3G infrastructure at all will be able to deliver profit to their shareholders with far better prices to their customers.

They'll have to act on the 3G license, but may not roll it out countrywide.

I often get better downstream links than karsini on my Vodafone 3G, though not in the last few days,
but 88k upstream is more than twice what I see.

Tom Dunne

Thanks to Karsini, I am posting this from my 02 atom on the train :-)

Had a little spot of bother connecting to the Edge network, but as you can see, it's working fine now.

Can't wait to see how much this will cost me.

niallb

Is that on O2's network or on Meteor?

Tom Dunne

niallb wrote:

Is that on O2's network or on Meteor?

On Meteor. My Atom is unlocked.

Well that didn't last long. For a whole 10 minutes surfing boards.ie I was screwed to the tune of €10. Well, that's the end of my little Meteor experiment.

It's such a pity that they insist on extortionate rates. I for one would switch to Meteor in the morning if they had some sort of data bundle. Ah well.

rebel.ranter

Meteor use Lucent & Ericsson BTS equipment. They are in the middle of swapping out their Lucent gear for the more up to date Ericsson gear. I'd imagine that anywhere there is an Ericsson BTS there will be EDGE capability.
All the networks will have this capability as a complimentary service to 3G/HSDPA. better 180kbps than 42kbps.
Meteor have a national roaming agreement with O2 (and this will soon be changing to Vodafone), so maybe the areas you were in Kerry are the areas where you were "roaming" onto O2. Vodafone & O2 probably haven't given priority consideration to EDGE as they were rolling out 3G networks. They will have hem in place in the near future.
With the license commitments that the networks have for 3G EDGE may be the fastest wireless connection some of us will get, the license commitments only stipulate that the license commitments have to be met, nothing mentioned about covering everyone.

niallb

tom dunne wrote:

... For a whole 10 minutes surfing boards.ie I was screwed to the tune of €10. Well, that's the end of my little Meteor experiment.

It's such a pity that they insist on extortionate rates. I for one would switch to Meteor in the morning if they had some sort of data bundle. Ah well.

Hmm, I haven't found Meteor quite so bad on data rates, but boards is an
obnoxious site if you're paying by the kilobyte.
Try setting it to "Mobile" under theme - it saves a packet by leaving out menus and pictures and avatars etc.

niallb

Hi Tom,
Just remembered something.
If you're just going by Meteor's website to say that cost a tenner,
wait for your bill to be sure. I wasted loads of time on the phone
to Meteor support when I first used data as the online record didn't
match up at all.

mkennedy

niallb wrote:

Hmm, I haven't found Meteor quite so bad on data rates, but boards is an
obnoxious site if you're paying by the kilobyte.
Try setting it to "Mobile" under theme - it saves a packet by leaving out menus and pictures and avatars etc.

also, you could use reformatting portals like www.mobileleap.com and www.skweezer.net and/or turn off images in your browser's settings.

rogue-entity

Karsini wrote:

I'm up in Dublin at the moment and while messing with my Nokia 6680 I noticed that the field test app reported "EGPRS support = 1." In Kerry there's no sign of EDGE but since I had it here I decided to do a speed test. Here's the result, it's not lightning fast but certainly better than GPRS.

How did you enable FTD on your 6680? I would love to know how to enable it on my N73, especially since their isnt a version of FExplorer available for it at present, and I am the geeky type of person with a passion for hacking things (the good type of hacking that is )

Tom Dunne

niallb wrote:

Try setting it to "Mobile" under theme - it saves a packet by leaving out menus and pictures and avatars etc.

Believe it or not, I had it set to mobile. However, a few pictures still snook in, I only remembered to switch them off half-way through.

Just remembered something.
If you're just going by Meteor's website to say that cost a tenner,
wait for your bill to be sure. I wasted loads of time on the phone
to Meteor support when I first used data as the online record didn't
match up at all.

It's actually pre-pay. I just went out and got a free Meteor sim and put €10 credit on it to try it out. I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the speeds.

It's such a pity as I am beginning to use the laptop on the train now (am I a nerd, workaholic, or "effective time manager"?) and I could use the phone as a modem for the laptop. I don't want to go out and buy a data card from O2 or Vodafone, as I don't need it that bad. I would really love to use my phone for this purpose.