CellC USB GPRS Modem & Virgin Mobile SIMM

[72859]

Hi there.

Have heard (ITWeb Special Focus - August 2006 - Page 18-19) that CellC plans upgrade to EDGE to the 300Kb/sec range .
Has anyone heard anything about this.

Also does CellC USB GPRS Modem work with Virgin Mobile SIMM.
At R0.50/MB and with a speed of 150Kb this is a good mobile and suplimentary ADSL high speed compliment?

 

[jb007za]

Hey

Could you supply us with further details in this regard? AFAIK, EDGE has a theoretical upper limit of 284kbps on the downlink... this is close as dammit to 300 kbps. The problem, as I see it, is signal strength and lack of backhaul capacity (bandwidth) to the rest of the Cell C network and Internet backbone. Are these issues mentioned in the article?

I'm getting speeds of up to around 100kbps on Virgin Mobile on a good day and dial-up like speeds the rest of the time.

Isn't the Cell C EDGE modem network locked. Thought I heard it was.

Ciao
jb007za

 

[72859]

Afaik/edge

Hey...well not really up to the minute on specs. I agree with you (wireless technology and contention ratio) - these are the issues. You probably notice I mention 150Kb in my post - because most people talk about 130 to 180Kb for EDGE in spite of its advertising 216Kb - so again CellC mentions 350 od Kb/sec but in practice .....we'll have to see.

Still....even if one could get the CellC USB modem and it was not network locked and one could use a Virgin Mobile SIMM at even GPRS' 44Kb/sec - that IMHO is good value for money considering you are mobile and not locked into a contract.

L8er

 

[C for yourself]

Hi 72859

I can confirm the Cell C mobile USB modem is notwork locked for Vodacom and MTN SIM cards. The modem does accept Cell C and Virgin Mobile SIM cards.

To connect to Virgin Mobile with the Cell C USB modem you will need to manually configure their APN. This is done by changing the extra initialization command string in the modem's advanced properties to at+cgdcont=,"ip","vdata"

I hope that this helps

Cheers

C for yourself