Does anybody here have experience of the speeds of Hutch vs EDGE? I am going to the Hutch death zone soon - e.g. the area where Hutch works and the infinitely faster CAT CDMA doesn't - and want to figure out if it makes sense to get a BHT 4,900 Hutch USB card + internet access for 999 BHT/month, or if my EDGE connection would be faster than CDMA 2000 1x anyway.

I have AIS Edge, and DTAC would be very easy and cheap to get, getting pretty good speeds up here in the north. As you may know the max theoretical speed for EDGE is just over 200 Kbps whereas it's 153 Kbps for CDMA 1x (not to be confused with CAT's own CDMA Rev B which is currently 10 times as fast at 1400 Kbps). So in theory, EDGE wins. I'd like to know if its the same in practice, if anyone has experience or has compared the two.

Here is how to get online using the iPhone in about 2 minutes, using a jailbroken iPhone and any Mac laptop (*)

1 - Open Cydia, go to Networking, and install PDANet. It's free.

2 - On your mac, click on the WiFi menu bar item, choose "Create Network" and click OK. Remember the network name.

3 - On the iPhone, choose Settings, WiFi, connect to the network you just created in 2

4 - On the iPhone, start PDANet

Done. You are now online surfing via your iPhone's EDGE connection. PDANet shows bytes received/transferred. Would work over 3G too if there was a 3G network in Thailand...

(*) It works on Windows too, but there are more steps involved. Naturally.

PS: I remember trying the same thing a year ago and getting nowhere. Apparently PDANet has been much improved in the meantime. Its really as easy as it can be.

Edge will be faster most of the time, especially if you get the Dtac sim, so you can always take the other provider when one goes down/slow...

Latency and stability is better on Hutch, but you only notice this because VOIP over Hutch often works, while on Edge it'll be pretty much always broken up. Regular surfing/downloading will be faster on Edge.

So, no, the extra expense in buying a Hutch modem/sim doesn't make much sense!

Actually, Hutch has parts in the East covered by EV-DO as well, the modem they sell is only rev.A though. Pattaya and a pretty big area around it is covered, not sure on Koh Chang.

Of course no data roaming between Hutch and Cat (on voice they do have roaming agreements!)