Mobile Broadband: The big roundup
Dave Stephenson
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Nov 6, 2008 11:37 AM
Internet everywhere, for affordable prices. Dave Stevenson investigates the claims, tests the speeds and delivers a verdict on the best plan for your mobile dollars.
3G, or mobile broadband, to give it its friendlier moniker, is increasingly tempting. Most providers claim up to 99 per cent of the Australian population is covered by their 3G networks and at impressive, broadband-like speeds of up to 7.2Mb/s.
It’s hard to ignore the advantage of being able to take your connection with you when you leave home. No more downtime when you’re on the train to work, for instance. And, should your home broadband connection throw a strop, you can simply pop in your 3G card and carry on.
But what are the drawbacks? 3G connections can be expensive, and the small print could see you paying through the nose for extra bandwidth, or your connection throttled after a few gigabytes of data.
We’ve combed the small print of every major 3G provider to outline the best plans out there. We’ve also tested every major 3G modem. Not just for download speeds: we’ve tested upload speeds too. Our testing covered major metropolitan areas of Sydney where providers claim to have excellent coverage, letting us investigate best-case network speeds.
Of course, we haven’t just tested these cards: we’ve lived with them. We’ve browsed the internet, watched videos online, and treated them to the kind of intensive use the most dedicated internet addict would be proud of. We’ve tested the software supplied with each modem as well, evaluating how well it keeps you abreast of your bandwidth use and signal strength.
Finally, for those who want a more permanent solution, we’ve looked at three of the best 3G-ready 802.11g routers on the market. These are fully-fledged Wi-Fi routers with 3G capabilities – perfect for setting up wireless internet access anywhere and sharing it with others.
How we test - plus the ratings explained
3G modems
Some 3G providers advertise speeds as fast as 7.2Mb/s, which is impressive. But do these spectacular claims translate into lightning-fast internet access? The only way to find out is to test each network, whether with a PC card modem, USB modem or internet key. It’s not as simple as merely timing downloads – for applications such as photo sharing, VoIP and video conferencing, upload speeds are every bit as important as download speeds, so we’ve tested them as well.
For our testing, we’ve used www.speedtest.net, an excellent (and free) online broadband testing service. This allows you to choose a server near you and carry out upload, download and latency tests. To ensure accuracy we run each test ten times per device, then average the results.
Our tests are drawn from North Sydney, in which every provider claims excellent coverage, which gives us an indication of an ISP’s best-case performance. You should remember, though, that mobile coverage varies enormously in Australia: check each providers’ coverage claims before splashing out. See below for more.
We’ve also evaluated each device for its ease of setup, and the quality of its software bundle. Although data caps vary both in the quantity of data and the severity of the penalty metered out to anyone who goes over, we think everyone will want to keep an eye on their bandwidth use, so we award more points to modems that have easy to use and understand software. Remember though, that ISPs change their fees and network coverage frequently.
Coverage
Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of grand-sounding claims when it comes to coverage. Telstra, for instance, claims to have “Australia’s largest and fastest national mobile network”. It claims its network is “more than 100 times the size” of any of its competitors’, and covers 98.8 per cent of the Australian population. Telstra’s network is theoretically capable of speeds up to 7.2Mb/s. In practice, it says, you should see speeds up to 3Mb/s, bursting up to 6Mb/s in “some areas”.
Virgin is owned by Optus, and not surprisingly, the 3G network coverage claimed by the two companies is identical. Optus claims its network reaches 80 per cent of the population, but plans to cover 96 per cent by the end of the year –over 690,000 square miles of Australia. Its speed claims are a little less eye-popping than Telstra’s, but still respectable: it claims customers should expect speeds up to 1.5Mb/s. Keep in mind that Virgin currently offers a 3G service, while Optus offers a faster HSDPA service.
Vodafone says “our 3G broadband network covers metropolitan areas in Sydney, Central Coast, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, Adelaide and Perth, plus all major international airports, and is constantly expanding.” It notes that its GPRS network covers 92 per cent “of the places people live and work in Australia”, but using GPRS for surfing the internet from a laptop remains a frustrating measure of last resort.
According to its coverage maps, 3 has one of the most limited HSDPA networks, but its high-speed coverage extends to a vast area. Sydney, Melbourne/Geelong, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Adelaide, Canberra and Perth are all covered.
The major drawback is that once you leave 3’s HSDPA network you’re automatically shifted onto Telstra’s GSM network, for which you’re charged extra. A lot extra, in fact. On 3’s most expensive $49 a month plan, you get only 5MB of GSM data. After that, the flat rate for all plans is $1.65 per MB. Stray outside HSDPA coverage and your next bill could be a nasty shock.
But the most restricted coverage – by far – comes from the WiMax provider, Unwired. It relies on a smaller number of towers to provide internet access, although you could argue companies such as Telstra are at an advantage as they have an existing GSM infrastructure to build on. Nonetheless, Unwired is at a distinct disadvantage for anyone who needs mobile broadband in lots of places.
Without physically covering the width and breadth of the country, testing network provider’s coverage claims is impossible - PC Authority is based in Sydney, so it’s very hard to accurately test Telstra’s claims of coverage in Broome or Perth, for instance. Luckily, ISPs realise it’s in their best interests to provide accurate information, and most have interactive maps on their websites.
The best of these not only illustrates HSDPA coverage – which tends to exist only in major metropolitan areas – but also GPRS coverage. All of the 3G cards on test this month can roll back to GPRS coverage, so it’s important to know where your network will fall back.
The bottom line is that if you live in a major urban area, you’re probably covered, but once you’ve chosen a plan and service provider, check and double check its coverage claims before you set out on a contract. You should also note whether your chosen provider offers a money-back guarantee.
Plans
The table below shows the plans of each operator, but if you simply sign a contract that offers the lowest dollar-per-gigabyte price, you’ll end up spending much more than you need to. It’s best to evaluate how much data you expect to use, and to bear in mind that, at the moment, no HSDPA providers intend their 3G networks to be used as replacements for always-on broadband connections. BigPond is the only provider, for instance, to provide a monthly data cap larger than 7GB.
BigPond also offers the lowest data cap this month at just 400MB. This is enough for daily email, including the odd attachment, and non-video internet surfing, but more serious users – or those with long commutes – will find themselves reaching their caps quickly.
You should also take note of what happens when you reach your data cap. Some providers hit their users with extortionate per-megabyte charges: Telstra charges 25c, for instance, so if you go 500MB over your allowance you could find $125 on top of your bill.
Others – such as Virgin – “shape” your connection, which means the speed drops until your billing cycle renews. It’s a more wallet-friendly way of going over.
While we’ve compared standalone plans, so you get the freedom to choose the data plan that fits, all providers offer discounts if you bundle mobile broadband with a phone plan. Optus offers its standalone plans with $10 off for Optus Mobile customers, for example, while 3 provides its modem for free on some plans.
Wireless Routers
Unlike last month’s wireless routers, none of the current crop of 3G routers conform to the latest draft of 802.11n. Instead, they use 8011.b/g. While this means that you won’t be able to make any of these devices the hub of a modern, media-streaming network, 802.11g remains just fast enough for the day-to-day internet access these devices will be asked to provide.
The routers are compatible with one or more of the 3G modems on page 67. Our main interest with each routers is its speed, range and features. While we expected to find cut-down versions, the routers on test were more heavily-featured versions of standard routers, lacking none of the features we’ve come to expect, and gaining a PC Card or SIM slot for 3G access.
Our testing takes the shape of four timed file-copying tests. We start with a single 100MB file to test the router’s raw transfer speeds. Then we copy nearly 3000 tiny files, totalling just over 77MB, between a PC wired to the router and a laptop connected wirelessly: a real torture test for networking devices. These tests are repeated with our target laptop immediately adjacent to the router, and then a few rooms away, blocked by doors, walls, and a torturous environment complete with metal objects and interfering wireless networks. If a router can perform well in this environment, it can perform well anywhere.
Finally, we’ve evaluated the integrated HTTP server of each router. This is how you access the settings of each. A good menu system has to be intuitive and easy to use, so we’ve awarded more points for menus that make setup easy.
