AT&T 3G Wireless Card

[stimpson]

A friend of mine has an Acer Aspire 5920. He lives in a rural area with no way to get high speed internet other than Direct Wave ect. He bought an AT&T 3G wirless card. It shows full signal strength and he's getting 200k down, and about 130k up, according to speedtest.net. Is that about right for the speeds?

 

[StevenD]

Thats probably right. Your bandwidth is dependent upon how much bandwidth is at the cell tower, from what I understand.

 

[VinceT3]

he might not have 3g available where he is.. might be using edge because that's all it see's.. thats about right for edge.. 3g is much faster.. closer to dsl speeds if I remember correctly..

 

[sullivbt]

That is...

definitely slow if he is in a HSDPA area (ie. the Cingular high speed network). If he is in an EDGE area, then that is about right.

 

[stimpson]

I'll let him know. Thanks all.

 

[avediswolf]

In a rural area, he's most likely getting Edge, as 3G rollout is mainly in urban areas last time I looked.

 

[rcdallas]

Yeah that's EDGE speeds. I tethered my phone to my computer for sometime as I had really no other options then the high dollar satellite. 200k I would considered good for EDGE, as my last place 50 miles north of me the EDGE sucked, I got *MAYBE* 48k down. Luckily now I have other options.

 

[VinceT3]

3g is soo nice.. I had two bars and was getting like 500+k gotta love that..