gavin310 Posted September 9, 2012 Share Posted September 9, 2012 Does anybody know if 3G aircards work even where there is no 3G phone service? Finding any solid info on aircards seems to be impossible.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJCM Posted September 9, 2012 Share Posted September 9, 2012 My guess is that Air Cards are depended of 3G and if there is no 3G available I guess they will fall back to EDGE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gavin310 Posted September 9, 2012 Author Share Posted September 9, 2012 My guess is that Air Cards are depended of 3G and if there is no 3G available I guess they will fall back to EDGE. That's my guess too, but I was hoping it worked differently. Right now I can tether my iPhone to my laptop, so I guess I have no use for an aircard. I live on an island with shoddy internet, so I'm trying to find a backup connection other than EDGE if the broadband goes out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pib Posted September 11, 2012 Share Posted September 11, 2012 Aircards are really 3G and/or EDGE cards...that is, if a 3G signal is presence they will use that...if no 3G signal they will fallback to using EDGE. During the late 2011 floods I used an AIS 3.6Mb 3G/Edge Aircard along with a month's worth of unlimited 3G/EDGE service...the aircrad worked fine but unfortunately the place I evacuated there was no 3G coverage; only EDGE...averaged around a 200Kb download speed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gavin310 Posted September 12, 2012 Author Share Posted September 12, 2012 Aircards are really 3G and/or EDGE cards...that is, if a 3G signal is presence they will use that...if no 3G signal they will fallback to using EDGE. During the late 2011 floods I used an AIS 3.6Mb 3G/Edge Aircard along with a month's worth of unlimited 3G/EDGE service...the aircrad worked fine but unfortunately the place I evacuated there was no 3G coverage; only EDGE...averaged around a 200Kb download speed. Wait, your EDGE connection was getting 200kb download speeds? That sounds like 3G speeds to me? The EDGE connection on my phone gets about 8 kb... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lomatopo Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 Aircards are really 3G and/or EDGE cards...that is, if a 3G signal is presence they will use that...if no 3G signal they will fallback to using EDGE. During the late 2011 floods I used an AIS 3.6Mb 3G/Edge Aircard along with a month's worth of unlimited 3G/EDGE service...the aircrad worked fine but unfortunately the place I evacuated there was no 3G coverage; only EDGE...averaged around a 200Kb download speed. Wait, your EDGE connection was getting 200kb download speeds? That sounds like 3G speeds to me? The EDGE connection on my phone gets about 8 kb... You might be confusing Kilo-bits per second and Kilo-Bytes per second? The theoretical maximum EDGE speed is, I think, 236.8 Kilo-bits per second (Kbps) downstream, or ~ 30 Kilo-Bytes per second (KBps). 200 Kbps is probably the maximum real-world download speed when accounting for overhead and other inefficiencies in packet-based communications. Most people have reported ~ 150 - 180 Kbps EDGE here. GPRS max. is (I think) ~ 80 Kbps. For the OP, every/any 3G aircard will almost certainly support quad-band GSM data: 850/900/1800/1900MHz for 2G-GPRS/EDGE in addition to any 3G frequencies specced. When not receiving a 3G signal the aircard will fall back to EDGE/GPRS, assuming that is available. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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