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iBurst
The iBurst wireless access card from Personal Broadband Australia is an aluminium-grey PCMCIA Card device manufactured by Kyocera. Included with the device is a permanent fold-out antenna just a little over 50mm long which can be clipped firmly into a recess in the card when not required; a plug-in external high-gain antenna is also available. Typically the card operates in the 1.9GHz frequency band.
Installation is a breeze. The card is accompanied only by a set-up CD and brief installation notes for Macintosh and Windows users. A simple user interface allows for the device status to be viewed and configuration details adjusted. The interface is available from an icon in the Windows system tray.
Coverage and plans
iBurst offers a relatively high-speed wireless service similar to that offered by Unwired. Coverage by iBurst is restricted to the east coast and includes Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney and Melbourne. Take careful note of your coverage requirements before buying this service as no fallback to another service is available when outside normal coverage areas.
iBurst services are provided wholesale to third-party resellers. One such reseller we have used is Chilli, which offers a great range of data limits at fairly competitive pricing—especially if you use the Net regularly in the wee hours of the morning. Chilli offers very low excess data fees, and shaping or a small fee are offered as options for this. We have also found that its plans offer plenty of variety in terms of speeds and data limits.
Performance
Like the 3 network’s service, download speeds were disappointing at only 133/16Kbps (uploads varied from 100 to 200Kpbs over time). This is substantially less than the expected speed of 1024/256Kbps. Other recent testing conducted by the TestLab shows that iBurst’s performance near the CBDs of both Melbourne and Sydney is quite variable—average speeds between 50 and 500 Kbps were measured depending on the location, indicating a great deal of sensitivity to the physical environment and gaps between base stations. These issues should become less in time as iBurst rolls out more base stations for its service. More positively, iBurst manages a perfect availability score; average latency was a pleasingly low 272 milliseconds.
Overall the iBurst service is very patchy, which is a critical issue when there is no fall- back service. Speed can vary wildly from time to time, and place to place, but on the positive side third-party distributors of this product do offer an excellent range of plans at good prices.