Short review of Vodacom 3G connectivity
I will not go into too much detail regarding 3G but I thought it would be nice to provide an idea of the speeds available.
Testing was done with a Nokia 6680 and the signal was tweaked using Netmon
The local Telkom tests shows us that 3G is capable of decent speeds
For international testing I went with my regular speakeasy test;
Multithreaded downloads show that fair speeds can be obtained even on international files.
Unfortunately I am on a VPN APN and cannot do ping tests however from memory local pings hover around 300ms and international pings can be as high as 700ms which is probably the weakest point when it comes to 3G.
3G is really not intended to be a broadband solution, it focuses more on mobility and availability and will probably attract more businessman than power users. The following pros and cons are worth considering.
Pros:
1) Its truely mobile, even in areas without 3G coverage it will fall back to EDGE/GPRS
2) The cellular providers have excelent coverage and fair support.
3) You are billed per MB which is great for low usage requirements such as E-mail on the go.
Cons:
1) It is definately not the fastest solution out there and latency is a concern
2) The startup cost is very high, although 3G phones are slowly dropping in price.
3) Although users are billed per meg the cost is still far higher than other solutions.
In all honestly 3G is a great mobile solution and I would suggest to anyone looking for a mobile solution to look at 3G before anything else.