Vodafone HSDPA article in Stuff

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sbiddle

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Topic # 9270 4-Sep-2006 06:47

So HSDPA sill only be launching at 1.8Mbps and not 3.6

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3784883a28,00.html

One other thing that intrigued me about the article was this comment:

"HSDPA performance in Wellington is likely to be patchy, due to the capital's hilly topography"

It doesn't say whether this comment is from Vodafone or the Victoria University expert in the sentence above but it's a bold comment - 3G coverage in Wellington is very good, if not better than Auckland which seems to still have significant issues with dropouts.

alasta

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Reply # 45314 4-Sep-2006 07:08

sbiddle: So HSDPA sill only be launching at 1.8Mbps and not 3.6

I thought a 1.8mbps launch was always the plan? In any case, 1.8mbps is fast enough to give Woosh a kick up the backside, and the article notes that an upgrade to 3.6mbps will happen before the end of the year.

One other thing that intrigued me about the article was this comment:

"HSDPA performance in Wellington is likely to be patchy, due to the capital's hilly topography"

It doesn't say whether this comment is from Vodafone or the Victoria University expert in the sentence above but it's a bold comment - 3G coverage in Wellington is very good, if not better than Auckland which seems to still have significant issues with dropouts.

We all know from experience that the mainstream media is renowned for making statements like this without having any facts to back them up, so I wouldn't read too much into it. I agree with you entirely that 3G coverage here is generally pretty good, and I suppose it would be fair to assume that HSDPA will be available in all locations where UMTS is currently available.

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Reply # 45315 4-Sep-2006 09:03

AFAIK they had plans to start with 3.6Mbps, but the last person I talked to, and the official word, is that "We have also now confirmed the launch date - 12 September. We will be launching with a theoretical maximum speed of 1.8Mbps, very quickly moving to 3.6Mbps.".

As for the observation on coverage, yes Wellington seems to be better than Auckland in some parts, but I still see huge coverage problems in densely visited places, such as the Queensgate Mall in Lower Hutt, which is a black hole in terms of Vodafone signal.

As for performance... The people at Vodafone I've been talking to refused to arrange a test card, on the grounds of "firmware not ready yet", then "we are tunning and don't want to give the wrong idea in performance", and so on.

If they really wanted people to get some information out and about they'd have provided this way before launch. It's now only a week to the official date and I haven't seen this working, yet.

I am getting a card today, but not from Vodafone. This is actually great. I can post an indendepent view of this.

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Reply # 45408 5-Sep-2006 07:13

It depends on what article you read. This computerworld article states HSDPA will launch at 3.6Mbit:

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/B1988ED62827600CCC2571DC0015EC6E

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Reply # 45410 5-Sep-2006 07:43

It will launch at 1.8Mbps and be upgraded later. I got my information from two Vodafone people, one being the spokesperson, last week.

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