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HSPA and HSPA+ speeds

I've been searching around the internet and getting vastly varying information on this topic.
The impression I seem to get is normal HSPA can do 21mbps in the downlink (HSDPA), with dual carrier DC-HSDPA, this can then be doubled to 42mbps.

In terms of HSPA+, I've seen single carrier theoretical speeds of 21mbps, 28mbps and 42 mbps, with dual carrier being double of each respectively.

Would someone be so kind as to explain this. I can merely deduce that there's confusion as a result of HSPA+ being a further iteration of the 3GP standard, rather than a distinct technology.
 
HSPA+ is DC-HSPA.

DC stands for Dual Channel (not carrier)

This doubles the theoretically attainable top speed from 21Meg to 42Meg on the downstream, with the upstream staying at 5.76Mbps.
 
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At the end of the day what you can receive depends what your operator has chosen to implement, the layout of your area (trees, buildings, topography etc.) and how much spectrum + backhaul capacity they've allocated, plus in which particular bands they've chosen to stick it. But right now most of the UK deployments seem to be dual-carrier (correct me if I'm wrong) and top out at around 20-40Mbps, although in theory there is another level of 80Mbps+ but I can't see why anybody would bother now that 4G is here.

All these different variants of the same base standard can be confusing though, especially when you add in those from other countries. In any case predicting performance by the technologies theoretical capability rarely works, there are just too many variables to consider with mobile.
 
"I can't see why anybody would bother now that 4G is here"
...and, while it's slightly off-topic, perhaps it's worth pointing out that even with 4G things seem to be extremely variable!

I am less than 150 yards from a forest of masts on top of Willesden telephone exchange - and as I'm up the hill a bit I can see them, almost level with me, when I look out my front window.
Now that 4G is here, I've considered ditching the landline, so to see how it performs before taking the plunge, I got a Three data SIM and an EE data SIM, and for the past few days I've been sitting here experimenting with an Alcatel Y-800 thingy plugged into my desktop PC via a 1.5m USB cable, which puts it a bit nearer the window than the PC is.

This one, about half an hour ago, using the EE card and a VPN, is the best so far:


The best I've had using the Three card wasn't a lot below that - but I've also had much slower results, around 25 down and 20 up. Those are actually still fine for me, as my interest is in the upload not the download, and even the "poor" results are as good on the upload as I would get with the top (80/20) FTTC offering, but it does show how yo-yo like things are.

I would add that with my low usage (total data consumption well under 20GB per month), when line rental is taken into account it would also be a darned sight cheaper to go mobile than to go for the 80/20 FTTC offering, so the landline will be getting cancelled shortly!
 
Good God :)

Shows what it can do when you're close to the transmitter. We only get 2 or 3 bars of signal and around 20 to 25 down and 20 up.

Spent today researching a pair of omni-antennae to go on the roof which should work for both EE and Three (their 4G isn't here yet).

As you say, I think it's best to think of mobile as a "better than" service e.g. "it's always better than X" which here is about 20 Meg down, the upstream is remarkably consistent too but then that probably goes to contention - as we're rural, I suspect the main reason we don't get anything like your speeds even in the middle of the night is signal strength.
 
Yes, I'd imagine that signal strength does indeed make a big difference - not surprisingly at my distance, it's a solid five bars all the time here on both networks. I must say, I'm impressed - I've always taken mobile broadband advertising with the entire annual output of a Siberian salt mine, but it seems that if you're in the right place, as I am lucky enough to be, it's darned good!

Just need to sort out the phone now. In terms of call costs it's almost an irrelevance (my total call charges at 1.2p a minute came to £1.32 for the first six months of this year, so even at 3p a minute on Three's PAYG offering we are looking at well under £1 a month), but my (t)rusty old Nokia 3210 isn't 3G, of course, so won't work with a Three SIM.
I'd rather not be using a titchy little mobile phone for my home one anyway, so I want to get a 3G desk phone before I switch over, either the Tecdesk 1000 or the Telecom FM 3G desk phone, still dithering over which one to go for at the moment.
 
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Nice looking bit of kit - but it wouldn't suit me, I'm afraid.
I like to keep things "simple", which means "separate" where phone calls and computer are concerned. My brain can cope with a phone that I can just stick a Three PAYG card in and it works.

VOIP gives me a headache. :laugh:

I prodded around VOIP providers some time ago, had difficulty in finding anyone who catered for my call pattern - they all seemed to offer things like free VOIP to VOIP calls (useless to me), cheap international calls (I make two a year at most), complicated "free days", a free cuddly toy, whatever, but would charge me an arm and a leg to call my sister on the boat unless I pay £x per month - a bit like BT with their "packages" aimed at families who spend their entire life gassing!
Furthermore, when I did find a couple of providers who I thought were worth considering, their offering was dependent on software that didn't seem to want to know about a Linux system - I could probably have got it working with a bit more effort, but with such low costs in the first place it really didn't seem worth the hassle.

It was actually the introduction of Three's "3-2-1" PAYG tariff that prodded me into looking at the possibility of ditching the landline in the first place, as that one is ideal for me, and I've actually been a bit pessimistic in my earlier statement about costs.
I looked at it and said to myself...
"OK, it will cost me 3p a minute instead of 1.2p a minute to call Diane in Doncaster, but it will also cost me only 3p a minute to call sis on her mobile on the boat instead of the 9.5p a minute that I currently pay. If this 4G mobile broadband lark that I've read about is any good, so I can ditch the landline and save the £11.82 a month line rental, this begins to look like a good idea!"
...hence the current situation. :)

Edit:
Sorry, current 9.5p a minute to call a mobile should read 11.4 p a minute - I included VAT for the landline call charge but forgot it for the mobile call charge.
 
Last edited:
I like that router.. I don't need it but for some reason I like it :).

Anyway which omni-antennae are you looking at?
 
It's quite a nice looking thing.

http://solwise.co.uk/3g-antenna-outdoor.htm

Haven't decided yet - have posted in their online forum to ask about these. Any views..? I'll need two of them.

The most expensive of them seems the most capable in terms of frequency sets, while it is to work with EE - Three and Vodafone 4G are due here fairly imminently. Have yet to do the research.. and book my "antenna man" to climb up on the roof again.

I did try attaching the directional antenna pointing at the Three cell - the router doesn't automatically use it despite being set to "Auto" which is a clue. If you force it to "use antenna 1" it is actually slightly worse but then that's what you'd expect given that it's not pointing at an EE cell.

What I'll be interested in trying is putting the Three SIM in it, I'd then expect it to auto-select the antenna as that's where it points, and seeing how it performs versus the dongle I was using though I'm sold on the upstream of EE 4G versus Three 3G so it would be for curiosity only as I never did have the combination of DC-HSPA (only HSPA) and the antenna.
 
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Nice looking bit of kit - but it wouldn't suit me, I'm afraid.
I like to keep things "simple", which means "separate" where phone calls and computer are concerned. My brain can cope with a phone that I can just stick a Three PAYG card in and it works.

VOIP gives me a headache. :laugh:

I prodded around VOIP providers some time ago, had difficulty in finding anyone who catered for my call pattern - they all seemed to offer things like free VOIP to VOIP calls (useless to me), cheap international calls (I make two a year at most), complicated "free days", a free cuddly toy, whatever, but would charge me an arm and a leg to call my sister on the boat unless I pay £x per month - a bit like BT with their "packages" aimed at families who spend their entire life gassing!
Furthermore, when I did find a couple of providers who I thought were worth considering, their offering was dependent on software that didn't seem to want to know about a Linux system - I could probably have got it working with a bit more effort, but with such low costs in the first place it really didn't seem worth the hassle.

It was actually the introduction of Three's "3-2-1" PAYG tariff that prodded me into looking at the possibility of ditching the landline in the first place, as that one is ideal for me, and I've actually been a bit pessimistic in my earlier statement about costs.
I looked at it and said to myself...
"OK, it will cost me 3p a minute instead of 1.2p a minute to call Diane in Doncaster, but it will also cost me only 3p a minute to call sis on her mobile on the boat instead of the 9.5p a minute that I currently pay. If this 4G mobile broadband lark that I've read about is any good, so I can ditch the landline and save the £11.82 a month line rental, this begins to look like a good idea!"
...hence the current situation. :)

Edit:
Sorry, current 9.5p a minute to call a mobile should read 11.4 p a minute - I included VAT for the landline call charge but forgot it for the mobile call charge.

Sipgate is fairly no-nonsense, have used that before. £5.90 a month for 1000 landline minutes, 9.9ppm to mobiles. It also had a good range of geographical numbers, so we have a "landline" number with the right prefix, though haven't used it in ages - normally use Skype for video calls - but, and I may be out of date on this, I don't think that can work as a SIP provider.
 
Yes, Sipgate are fairly non-confusing - but like most, not a lot of use for my calls.
The idea of paying £5.90 a month for 1000 "free" landline minutes, plus 9.9ppm to mobiles, is a total non-starter for someone like me whose total call costs are less than £1 a month - why would I want to pay £5.90 for them, and extra for mobiles?
Their "ordinary" offering, with no monthly charge, would get me landline calls at 1.19ppm and mobiles at 9.9ppm, which is "not bad" - but with the high mobile charge, given that my sister on the boat doesn't have a landline (no surprise there!), and there are a few other calls I make which are to mobiles, would it work out any cheaper than Three's flat 3ppm to either?
One of the things that attracted me to Three's "3-2-1" offering was the low 3ppm cost of calling a mobile and, while I haven't actually analysed what percentage of my calls are to a mobile rather than a landline, I very much doubt if Sipgate would save me anything.
 
I think with Skype video and mobiles, landlines seem so ancient. Where's the video - it's only voice..

I get Skype video calls on my mobile in the living room piped over the internal Wi-Fi network all fed by 4G.

Phone is PAYG and I put £5 or £10 on it about once a month and that does just fine. Who needs landlines ;)
 
"Who needs landlines ;)"

Well, yes, that's exactly what I asked myself when I looked at the "3-2-1" tariff and the 4G broadband situation.
However...
"Where's the video..."
You haven't seen my sister! :p :D
(I hope she's not reading this... :eek: )

Seriously, I guess I'm just the old-fashioned type - I'm not a Luddite, I'm happy to use new technology to get what I want, but I really have absolutely no interest in video, text-messaging, voicemail, whatever. To me, a phone is a phone is a phone - I ring someone, they answer if they are in, and we talk. If they are out, I don't leave a message on their answering machine (if they have one), I try again later. Same applies in reverse, of course - I answer if I'm in, they can try again later if I'm out.
I don't even like push buttons much! :laugh: My current phone has a real dial, just like the one I grew up with in the 1950s but with added * and # holes so that it can be used when ringing companies that have "enter your account number then press the hash key" type menus.
 
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Good luck. :)
I had a read of that Solwise page that you linked to, and I must say it's very detailed - they certainly seem to know their stuff and are extremely realistic about things, so I doubt if you'll go far wrong with them.
 
For an unscientific test I just tried holding the router out of the window and speed testing it.

3640501929.png


Doesn't help with the upstream which then becomes pants, obviously not a 'sweet spot' but shows that more is certainly possible. This was repeatable until I put the router back down on the window sill again when a normal 23/20 was resumed.

Looking forward to getting that antenna.
 
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