Other pages in the review
People depend on mobile phones to such an extent these days that some are beginning to abandon land lines altogether. Wireless modem cards, which are now available from many service providers, allow us to take advantage of cellular technology to access the Internet wherever coverage is available. The question that arises is: can we have the same faith in wireless broadband as we currently have in mobile phones?
Lack of phone access is inconceivable today to city dwellers, though signal strength is certainly still an issue for people in regional areas and even some people in metropolitan locales. Pressure to perform leads us to seek ways to avoid wasted time at every opportunity—a trip to work on a bus or train will quickly reveal how much can be made of travel time and with our growing reliance on the Internet and network resources we want our broadband connection on the train, airport, café or on-site business meeting with the expected level of service at the places we need or want to be. This month we have put six wireless broadband cards to the test to find out how realistic this dream is.
The products tested here, from the likes of 3, iBurst, Optus, Telstra, Unwired and Vodafone have been around for a while. What is new in this test is that we have actually managed to scientifically test download and upload speeds, as well as latency, and also track downtime experienced. Certainly we believe this is one of the most comprehensive tests available for these products. (See “How We Tested” on page 82 for more information). This follows our test of ADSL broadband services, published in T&B November 2005.
Wireless broadband cards allow notebooks to have direct access to the Internet whenever they are in range of the relevant service provider’s cellular network.
Notebook connectivity through a wireless wide area network (WWAN) is similar in principle to wireless LAN services but depends on multiple wireless access points owned by Internet/telephony service providers (ie: those ugly mobile phone towers) as opposed to small user-owned access points found in wireless local networks. This means laptops can take advantage of Internet and email services while on the move in the same way that mobile phones have enhanced human-to-human communication via speech.
The card is effectively a modem which uses mobile phone technology to link a computer with the wider world. The device is inserted into a notebook’s PCMCIA slot to provide for greater or lesser roaming flexibility depending on service provider.