Today I handed back my T-Mobile 3.6mbps HSDPA modem and closed my 2 month trial contract. It wasn’t worth it in the end. Simplicity won over high bitrate.
I had a 200MB HSDPA contract with 2 hours hotspot usage for 45 Euro per month which included a 4G Systems HSDPA-capable USB modem. The HSDPA service from T-Mobile in Germany is great and they also seem to have WiFi hotspots all over the place. It really was a good service. The only problem was that it taught me something. It taught me that I don’t actually need faster bitrates I just need a bigger data volume. You see, the main problem with the package was the USB modem. In comparison to a ultra mobile PC its big. It also requires physical tethering through two USB ports (actually it works with one but its advisable to use two USB ports for power reasons) and because of that, I found myself dropping the SIM card into my Nokia 6280 3G (UMTS) mobile phone and using the service over Bluetooth 2.0 instead. No physical tethering. At first I thought I might find the bitrate through UMTS a bit limiting. 350kbps down and 56 kbps up isn’t the best so at the beginning of March I went looking for a Nokia E65. I couldn’t find one. The only choice I had left was to continue to use the T-Mobile card in my existing phone. But of course, I was left juggling two SIM cards and that’s a real pain. At one point I put an old phone back into use for voice but having two phones is certainly no easier than two SIM cards. So in the end, I just left my normal Vodafone SIM in the phone (as I had used before getting the T-Mobile contract) and carried on using that instead. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. The T-Mobile card has been in my wallet but I’ve rarely put it into use and I’m happier having a single SIM card for voice and data and continuing to use UMTS speeds. 350kbps is fast enough for most streaming activities on the net and the 56kbps upload speed, while a little slow for posting large images to the portal, isn’t too bad. Productivity doesn’t suffer by any measurable amount.
Another thing its taught me though is that I dont really want a SIM card slot in my UMPC. I would rather have a single SIM with voice and data and use a single mobile phone as a modem. Multiple contracts and multiple SIM cards is a pain.
T-Mobile HSDPA-capable USB modem. Gallery available.
So that’s how I’ll leave it. I’ve just upgraded my UMTS data package with my existing provider and will continue to use UMTS speeds until my contract is finished in Feb next year. At that point I guess data rates will have dropped (flatrate 3G is already down to 25 Euros per month in Germany via O2.) and there will be a nice choice of HSDPA capable mobile phones out there. I need something S60 and small. The E65 or 6110 Navigator are top of the list at the moment but there’s a long way to go until Feb 2008.
