Cellphone modem speeds

I am trying to find out what speeds you guys using a cellphone for a modem are getting. (Like how many kbps if you were to download a file)

I have been looking at the wireless pc card modems from various providers and I don't know how fast they are. The T-mobile one for instance lists the speed as 56K so is that the connection speed ?

I don't have any experience with using my cell phone as my modem but I have heard some good things about sprint's wireless network. This article states that they range from 50-70 kbps with bursts up to 144 kbps. Definitely faster than dial-up.

I think Derrick uses it (though I'm not positive) so maybe he can have some input.

I have heard sprint is good too.

Here's a bandwidth test done with my T610 on T-Mobile.


Full Size

I'd say that claim of 56k is pretty accurate. That's about what it feels like.

Oh yeah, my friend has some Verizon PCMCIA card that he uses on their Express Network. He claims it's like double 56k. Verizon says the network is up to 144k.

Cool thanks for running that. So I would think I should get about the same with the PCMCIA card vs using a phone for the modem. I was looking at the verison website too so do they use the same network as Sprint ?

ATT claims about the same as Sprint and Verison but they charge so much ATT and Verizon had unlimited for 80 dollars a month and Sprint wants 100.00 for 300MB.

There's an open question whether the vendors are giving you as much bandwidth as the raw system can manage. If you're using the latest CDMA voodoo, you should be able to get megabits of traffic, but nobody is giving that level of service to their customers, yet.

I don't think there's any difference between using an external handset vs. an internal wireless card, in terms of performance. The benefit is having your laptop work without your celphone being connected (either via IR or Bluetooth).

In terms of dollars per bandwidth, it's hard to beat T-Mobile, since they're price seems to currently be "free if you're smart enough to realize that we didn't disable it."

Do you live in the Wash DC or San Diego areas? Verizon has a new wireless data service that gets in the 300-500 kbps range. I believe it's the fastest in the U.S.

Nope, i'm in Minnesota. Do you know what the service is called ?

Nope, i'm in Minnesota. Do you know what the service is called ?

Hello from Maple Grove!

I have had "T-Mobile Unlimited" (their data service) and have since cancelled it due to horrible service. Maybe chalk it up to my flaky T68i but I had to constantly re-connect, data rates were horrible (less than 56k), and often the connections would stall for minutes at a time. Add to that the problems I experienced connecting to anything other than ports 80, 25, and 110 and I got fed up.

It seemed to me that they didn't allow connections to ssh, https. While I could (sometimes) connect to secure IMAP, most of the time the connection would drop. My mail server is set up to require an encrypted connection for IMAP, so my email was basically unaccessible via my expensive T-Mobile service.

In reply to:

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Nope, i'm in Minnesota. Do you know what the service is called ?

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BroadbandAccess

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobileoptions/broadband/index.jsp?action=broadbandAccess

Add to that the problems I experienced connecting to anything other than ports 80, 25, and 110 and I got fed up.

Having only those ports open is now free with T-Mobile. It's hard to get annoyed at that when you get it for nothing.

If you want all ports open, you have to get the VPN plan for $19.99 per month extra.

I have used the T-Mobile GPRS service in Stony Point, NY, Albany, NY, Philly, PA, Las Vegas, NV, and Anaheim, CA. I was always able to get signal and keep a connection alive for hours. Not a single problem here. I will probably setup an HTTP tunnel at my house at some point to get around the closed ports.

If you want all ports open, you have to get the VPN plan for $19.99 per month extra.

Odd, I had the $19.99/mo plan, but I still couldn't connect to https or (reliably) secure IMAP.

Yeah, you had the standard data plan before they opened it up for free. Note that I said "VPN plan" and not "$19.99 plan." Both plans cost the same, but the standard plan comes with an allotment of multimedia SMS messages (or something like that).

Yeah, you had the standard data plan before they opened it up for free. Note that I said "VPN plan" and not "$19.99 plan."

Well those poopy heads. Any idea when they made it free? I was still paying for it monthly until about 2 months ago!

It was some time in November 2003.

I have used the T-Mobile GPRS service in Stony Point, NY, Albany, NY, Philly, PA, Las Vegas, NV, and Anaheim, CA. I was always able to get signal and keep a connection alive for hours. Not a single problem here. I will probably setup an HTTP tunnel at my house at some point to get around the closed ports.

I've used it all over the U.S., and had mostly positive results. In general, if WAP works, then GPRS data works as well. The two most common failure modes that I've observed are T-Mobile's DNS servers going down (seems to happen far more than it should) and data traffic simply stalling out. I use IMAP over SSL and HTTPS all the time, and they work quite well, as does outgoing SMTP over SSL on port 25. No problems there. The only major port that I want to use and have found to be filtered is port 22 (SSH). One of these days, I'll get off my duff and run SSH on port 80. The horror.

Of course, as Rob has pointed out, it's hard to beat "free".

(On a side note, Marriott's in-room Internet service filters outgoing port 25 but allows just about everything else. I got our sysadms to run a port-redirector for me on port 2525 so I can work around Marriott's stupidity.)

Thanks for the link. I'll have to watch and see if they get that in Minnesota ever. That might be good enough to use at home too and I could just drop the cable modem.

Hello from Minnetonka There's at least two empegs here.

Let me know if it's any better now if you try it again. I think I might try and get a tmobile PCMCIA card on ebay or something and give it a try.

For what it's worth, one of my business partners says sprint has decent data rates and it's unlimited for free as well.

What plan is that ? I keep reading sprint charges if you use your phone as a modem and for the pc cards the most they have listed is 300MB for 100.00 a month.

I have heard Sprint is pretty fast also.

My brother has a sprint phone, and while he was off in Iraq we played a bit with it. We were seeing download speeds of about 300kbps. When I asked my dad what the bill was like he told me it was normal. The time came out of his minutes, but there was no other data charge for it. All I know is that the plan was for 500 minutes, I couldn't say any more.

> It seemed to me that they didn't allow connections to ssh, https

My t-mobile on a SE T610 does ssh, https just fine. It's dog slow, though. But, hey, unlimited and relatively cheap.

-brendan