Wireless Data-cards Round-up

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Wireless Data-cards Round-up

Rohan Naravane, Mar 03, 2010 1201 hrs IST

Comparing Tata Photon +, Reliance NetConnect +, Virgin Vflash, MTNL 3G, Idea Netsetter and Airtel EDGE

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Updated: Click here to check the results of our Wireless Data card survey!

I still remember the time when 56 kbps modems had become a rage many years ago. Though dial-up internet wasn't the best way to connect to the internet - due to traumatizing phone bills, busy phone lines, sub-10KB/s download speeds etc. -- it was the only way back then. We have come a long way since then, as broadband internet is catching on fast, thanks to local cable-wallahs and phone operators. A parallel trend we see is the proliferation of laptops over their immobile desktop counterparts, thus arising the need to break free from wires. Wi-Fi, although not extremely popular in India yet, has been one solution to this need. But you still can't find a Wi-Fi network at most places you go. And even if you do, thanks to its unethical use by terrorists in recent times, it's hard to find a free one that's easy to connect to.

The answer to true wire-free mobile internet access lies with the country's cell-phone operators. By using a 'Wireless broadband modem', one could connect to the net wherever there's cell-phone reception. But their initial services offered dial-up grade speeds and frequent disconnections among a few other issues. But now, all that is changing. A majority of operators have upgraded their systems to the latest technology, by which you can now actually surf the net at broadband speeds while on the move.

Now that we have a fair amount of operators providing this service, we set out to find out how well each one performed, especially since most claim to be the best and the fastest." So we have for you, a mobile broadband modem shoot-out where we travelled across the length and breadth of Mumbai city to check how they delivered. We wanted all the operators to participate in this test, and a majority of them did. So here are our contenders:

Tata Photon+
Reliance NetConnect+
MTNL 3G
Virgin Vflash
Idea NetSetter
Airtel NetWarrior

A few others, including MTS and Vodafone, weren't able to send us their units on time for various reasons, and unfortunately could not be part of this shoot-out."

How we tested?

We decided to do synthetic tests from two of the popular online bandwidth testing websites, bandwidthplace.com and speedtest.net. Speedtest.net gauges the speed by connecting to a local server in Mumbai, thus reducing latency. That was followed by a real world download test where we checked the time it took to download the 'Google Talk' setup file. As expected, the initial batch of tests revealed that the results were very unstable. But this is acceptable since this is wireless internet we're talking about, where the medium of data transfer is the air around us and is subject to more interferences as compared to a wired medium.

In order to peg down on more accurate results, we decided to run each of these tests on every wireless device three times. We compiled this data into graphs that you will see in the following pages. The numbers in the graphs are the average of all three figures we got for each test. The tests were done on an MSI X350 laptop.

We set out to key locations in Mumbai, including Borivali, Malad, Andheri, Dadar, Churchgate and Vashi. These were stationary locations; places where people could typically use these devices (like shopping malls, coffee shops etc.). Lastly, in order to check their performance in motion, we also tested them in Mumbai's Western Railway trains."

What technology do they work on?

Tata Photon+, Reliance NetConnect+ and Virgin Vflash use a telecommunication standard called EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized), which is an evolutionary standard of the CDMA platform. The theoretical download rate for this technology is 3.1 Mbps. That's 3.1 Mega-bits per second, which is equal to 0.39 Mega-bytes (MB/s) per second. So the maximum you can theoretically draw out from of such a connection is close to 400 KB/s. Upload speeds for EV-DO max out at 1.8 Mbps.

MTNL (and BSNL in the rest of India except Delhi and Mumbai), uses 3rd generation (3G) GSM technology code-named HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access). The current download speeds supported by their network is up to 3.6 Mbps. The other players, namely Idea and Airtel, who are still in the process of getting their 3G network operational, use the older 2.5G EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution) technology. It can support a max download rate of 236.8 kbps.

Note that EV-DO and 3G coverage isn't available in every nook and corner of the country yet. So, their devices fall back to older technologies (CDMA 1x and EDGE, respectively) when there's no high-speed network available. In our testing, we almost never faced this hurdle since we got high-speed networks wherever we tested. So, in case you have unfortunately purchased such a device only to find out that there's no such coverage in your area, the best you can do is pray -- first, to all the gods and then to your service provider, so that they eventually get your area covered.

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