6 days after the launch I am ready to post a review of Vodacom’s HSDPA service.
First things first, HSDPA behaves a bit differently to other solutions in the sense that it only provides bandwidth as it is required. IE: Although Vodacom is marketing a 1.8MB solution you will not get that off the bat. It is in theory the maximum speed (although not hard capped).
My testing enviroment is quite simple, I am using an Option Nozumi HSDPA enabled card on SUSE 10, Thanks to Tazz_Tux for providing drivers and a decent Linux howto. I am using the external antenna that was included in the package.
As always I will start with the local Telkom test which always gives an inflated idea of the maximum speeds. I did the test several times with the worst test in the region of 1200Kbps.
Next was the speakeasy test , I like this test since it tends to be quite harsh and generally rather accurate when it comes to international speeds.
The real dissapointed here is the upload speed but then again HSUPA will look after users with upload needs once it is available.
Here is where the real improvement shows, latency is far better than it was with 3G, and if you have read my 3G Review you would know it was one of my concerns.
Local latency is just slightly worse than iBurst
International Latency compares very well with iBurst and even ADSL
So with the figures out of the way I can confidently say that this is a great mobile solution. There is very little I can complain about. The only downfall is the cost, it will not attract big downloaders and power users.
I started a thread on MyADSL to see what results other users are getting.