Hauwei HG556a Router (14.4)

With my B970 finally having succumbed to the dreaded packet-loss bug I've been keeping an eye out for anything to replace it with. Several suppliers mentioned the Hauwei HG556a which will apparently be available soon. The Hauwei page on it doesn't reveal much, but from a Google image search and reading it's PDF manual it looks like it is an ADSL router that also support an HSPA uplink mode through any Hauwei USB modem being plugged into it.

Can we hope that this would mean both a 14.4 capable router and a future proof one too?

Anyone know much more about this or when it will be available? The Vodacom 4u store here in Fourways mentions a week or two, while their head-office just says they haven't had it OKed yet from the technical department and do not have any more information they can make public.

Image of the back of the router: http://www.rolvas.com/images/internet/huawei556_01.jpg

Interesting find. Fact that it will take a USB modem should future proof it, but I suspect it's going to push up the overall price.

Another one mentioned was the Billion 7402GXL; Which after Googling it a bit, also appears to be a /ADSL router and also capable of 14.4 speeds.

I don't see a dongle solution to this one, so perhaps cheaper in return for not being upgradable.

If these things are what they appear to be, I think I'd prefer to pay more and get the Hauwei.

Still, the only two white things on my desk are the i{hone tether and router. Would have been nice to have a black option ;-)

There are a number of ADSL routers that have USB ports to which you can attach a 3G modem. The main idea with them is to fail-over to 3G in the event of an ADSL outage, but you can use them to drive just the 3G connection if you don't have ADSL.

Not this one

http://www.huaweidevice.com/worldwide/productInfo.do?pinfoId=2391&directoryId=3860&treeId=2872

But this one

http://www.huaweidevice.com/worldwide/productFeatures.do?pinfoId=2529&directoryId=2741&treeId=741

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and read the engrish...lmf

From the bottom of that page it states that that one (the B970b) does "Up to 7.2 Mbps(DL)". Am I missing something?

RiaanBurger said:

With my B970 finally having succumbed to the dreaded packet-loss bug.............

Click to expand...

Are you also experiencing this?

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthr...-HSPA-Router?p=4288299&highlight=#post4288299

Yup, sorry for not replying to your post nuyork, but I'm experiencing something similar yes.

I also tried to replicate your continued ping, but the ping kept working. It's a very odd problem. When I view pages with loads of images in them, for instance, some won't load. Some pages do not load etc. When I reload the page (through selecting the URL and entering again, not reloading) the cached images remain and a few more will complete loading. In FTP up and down, connections freeze, but remain open and then eventually time out. larger outgoing e-mail do the same, and much closer to 1 Mb they just about never get sent.

I still use it for general browsing and it works for most web stuff but I switch gateways to my Neotel Prime router for uploading websites, sending important e-mail etc.

Firmware updates and using another computer did not help. It's not the tower or service as an E220 here works fine.

It's when I called 155 to see if they could help (reaching) that they mentioned that through my own troubleshooting it is most likely a faulty router and offered the news of the two new routers making their way through the supply channels.

Hi, I bought a Huawei HG556a (Branded Vodafone "Echolife" "Home Gateway") from Makro in Centurion a few months ago- I have returned it for repair by Vodacom and got it back some weeks later. The intermittent dropping of the WiFi service now appears fixed. It still has gliches which I dont expect from a supposedly reputable firm and manufacturer. Now it wont automatically start (you have to manually do it) the 3G service- it started automatically previously. Problems remaining from before: My HP Officejet printer is recognised by the gateway- I can see its details in the advanced settings pages but I cannot access it from a connected Laptop. Although I can apparently see the folders/files on my 'shared' 1TB HDD connected to the gateway via USB, my laptop reports only 30GB of disk space on the drive, all free??? This product appears to be half-baked- it has the latest firmware (26?). Any suggestions.

I have had no responses. I was hoping to attract the attention of a Vodacom rep.to this post. Any ideas on how to do so?