[Minimoke]

Hey all,
Right, I have a Bold (which I love dearly) and I just started college here in England, so I am getting a laptop to use there. It will have bluetooth, which I plan on using to link my BB with it to get on the internet. I get full 3G signal throughout the college, but what I would like to know is where does HSDPA come into this. I know my phone is capable of handling it, but am I able to get it? I will be using the internet on the laptop to acces files and documents from my servers, and browsing the net on the train would be nice. I'd just like to know whether I can get anything faster than 3G I guess. And another question (sorry) should I expect any extra fees at the end of the month? I have an internet bundle, so I shouldn't need to pay more, right? I've read some ghastly stories. Thanks in advance, Chris.

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[mark-d]

To be honest I've had my bold for a year now and I've never once received anything like the speeds HSDPA can offer. I got the Bold because I wanted the benefit of 3G but there's not a great difference between 3G on my Bold and GPRS on my old Curve.

Check with Orange with regard to Tethering. I got told it was separate to your Blackberry data plan. I have 500mb of additional data included in my package outside the Blackberry plan so I can tether up to 500mb with no charge but if you don't have any additional data on your plan you'll get charged.

Even when tethering I've still not received any great speed on tethering via the Bold.

I've also got an O2 broandband dongle and that can reach upto 3.6mbps which is HSDPA speed. I think Vodafone offer the fastest at 7.2mbsp but you'd be very lucky to get that unless you were standing right next to a Vodafone 3G+ transmitter.

The Bold is equipped to receive 3G+ HSDPA speeds so I guess it just depnds on where you are and what signal your Bold picks up.

[Minimoke]

Hey Mark,
I personally experience a lot faster speeds with a strong 3G signal than I do with GPRS. I've got a speedtester on my BB, and the last time I tested a 3G signal I think I got around 400kbps, which isn't bad I suppose. The college literally has full signal 3G everywhere, so the speed might be a lot more there. I'll have to do a test there. I'm there tomorrow, so I'll have to see how it goes.

So, if I were to get speeds faster than 3G, I would get a different 'sign' in the top right corner? I went through Orange's Terms & Conditions last night and I couldn't find anything to do with tethering, so I might phone them up and ask that way. Would rather they didn't know I was doing it to be honest :P

Cheers,
Chris.

[mark-d]

Hey Mark,
I personally experience a lot faster speeds with a strong 3G signal than I do with GPRS. I've got a speedtester on my BB, and the last time I tested a 3G signal I think I got around 400kbps, which isn't bad I suppose. The college literally has full signal 3G everywhere, so the speed might be a lot more there. I'll have to do a test there. I'm there tomorrow, so I'll have to see how it goes.

My 3G and 2G speedtests are pretty similar and nowhere near 400kbps so I'm obviously not in a good 3G area most of the time. That said, even with HSDPA all data would still pass through RIMs servers so wouldn't go at the full speed available. Even on a 4.7meg wireless at work my speedtest comes out nothing like I'd expect yet testing the connection itself shows it's running 4.7meg.

So, if I were to get speeds faster than 3G, I would get a different 'sign' in the top right corner? I went through Orange's Terms & Conditions last night and I couldn't find anything to do with tethering, so I might phone them up and ask that way. Would rather they didn't know I was doing it to be honest :P

Cheers,
Chris.

I think you'll still get the 3G and Blackberry logo signal as HSDPA is still rated as 3G technology.

I'm sure most networks can tell the difference between mobile usage and tethering due to the volume of data a computer browser / email client requests vs the amount of data a mobile browser requests.

[pkcable]

It's NEVER as good as the theoretical maximum

[Minimoke]

Ah I see, thanks for the information mate. What you're saying makes sense. I'd just like enough speed to download files as fast as my server can dish them out (which is around the 500k mark) just so I'm as fast as I can be. Browsing at a reasonable speed would be nice, too. I sometimes feel as though my Blackberry takes too long to load some pages due to hardware lag (I get little loading icons momentarily) so if I were on a laptop it might not do that. All of these speeds are capped again by the speed of Bluetooth in my case, whatever that is.

Cheers Mark, you've been a great help.

Chris.

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