Hi there I am around 40kms inland from Hua hin and have just purchased a 12call internet sim which came with a vodafone usb dongle and uses edge software. It gets up and running but the speed is very unstable and drops completely very often, peaking at best at about 6bps?!!!

Is this just the way it is? Or is there a problem?

Any ideas what to check as im not the best at this stuff.

Thanks in advance.

You can get USB modems with external antenna that would give you a much better signal. Check the one you if there is a socket for it, usually the vodfone ones don't have it as they are the basic cheap models.

garyh:

You do not say if you have a good signal, can check by putting SIM in your phone if no signal bar on the dashboard of modem software. Suspect it ain't the signal so much as the service provider.

...could be the quality of modem too I suppose.

I have a Novatel Edge unit with DTAC..signal nearly always good but can see the mobile tower and level with our house in the boonies..but checked speed is low at 218k down 67 up. ...

Never get... it is usually down at 2-4k sometimes up to 10-25k never better when downloading a file though ..don't know why.

There is good guy at EDGETHAILAND.Com..for assistance.

good luck..

david

Think we should rename the coming 3G to 3CG...third generation Chang Gestation

I did not say about trying the phone sorry, but being 40 km from the city is going to make it difficult, your 218k is much much faster than 6 bps probably because you are so close to the tower. Weak signal will cause very low data rate.

Just as a refresher on bit and bytes!

Connection speeds are indicated in Kilo (or Mega) bits per second (Kbps, or Mbps, note the small B ). This is what your ISP would use when selling you an internet package (example 512 Kbps/256 Kbps).

This is also used by speed test websites.

Download speeds are indicated in Kilo Bytes per second (KBps, note the capital B )

There are 8 bits in a byte.

So if your ISP connection speed is 1024 kbps download, you will most likely get around 850 kbps test result on a speed test website (80% of rated speed is normal due to overhead).

If you divide 850 by 8 (8 bits to the byte) then you can download at around 106 kBps (capital B!).

So for a good GPRS/EDGE signal, the theoretical maximum speed is 238 kbps.

Hence your maximum theoretical download speed will be 29 kBps (238/8).

Since GPRS data uses the same available capacity on a cell tower as voice, a lot of voice calls will seriously slow down your data speed as voice gets priority on GSM networks.

That said, I usually can get an average of around 18 kBps downloads ( a 144 kbps connection speed), a tad slower during busy hours, and going up to 27 kBps in the middle of the night!

With full signal strength of course!