New (old) mobile carrier...

Just recently switched my mobile phone carrier b/c my (entire) family got connected to the same carrier-network. Better coverage, higher bandwidth and last but not least, family-network offers and included minutes/texts.

My previous carrier (NetCom AS) was better at customer relations and support, but they've gone downhill after they were bought up by another major scandinavian service provider (Telia AB, Sweden).

NetCom touted for a long time about their 4G-network coverage, and for some time (while they had few customers connected to their 3G- / 4G-nets) they delivered quite good HSDPA-connectivity. But after a lot of people migrated from various carriers over to NetCom the last few years, their remote end-networks (small towns) suffered as the base-stations at selected areas couldn't handle the traffic-surge very well (few, if any, of the base-stations had optical WAN-uplinks).

This had a negative effect on my SSH-connections from my smart-phone / tablet, and used to cause a lot of spontaneous traffic-drops and disconnects.

To my surprise (as Telenor is the biggest ISP in Norway, with a grand total of approx. 140 million mobile customers worldwide through various daughter-companies in Russia, parts of Europe and India), I got a minimum of 12-14Mbps via HSDPA (3G), whereas NetCom could only offer (at max) 2-3Mbps.

To my delight, I haven't experienced a single SSH-related disconnect on any of my 3G-devices :)

Telenor FTW!

Struping på 3G trafikk

Viser seg at operatørenes mobile bredbåndstilbud har blitt offer for egen suksess. Både Telenor og NetCom struper trafikkmengden ved å sette en maks mengde data ned per måned. Henholdsvis 149kr pr.mnd med grense på 5 gigabyte fra Telenor, og 129kr pr.mnd med grense på 2 gigabyte fra NetCom.

Tallene viser til begges minsteabonnement på mobilt bredbånd, men begge har også utvidede abonnementer med fri dataflyt for iPhone og Google Android (begge er da smart-telefoner med behov for høyhastighets-Internett forbindelse for full utnyttelse av funksjonalitet).

Jeg har personlig iConnect-abonnement med fri dataflyt fra NetCom siden jeg har mobiltelefonen HTC Magic (med Google Android OS), som koster meg 349,- pr.mnd, dette uten datamengde-grense. Telenors tilsvarende abonnement koster deg rundt 1099,- pr.mnd for fri dataflyt, 499,- pr.mnd uten fri dataflyt med en grense på 1000 megabytes.

Grunnene skal være nokså enkle. Bare Telenors datatrafikk i juli måned kom på over 150 terabytes!

Post- og teletilsynet (PT) er skuffet over prisøkningen på mobilt bredbånd, men innser at operatørene er nødt til å tjene penger på produktet.

Telenors tall fortsetter å synke gradvis, både med kunder som bytter operatører og altfor lite nye kunder. NetCom har allerede begynt med utrulling av LTE-baserte (4G) nettverk i Oslo. Mens Telenor fortsetter å bygge ut turbo-3G nettet sitt i stedet.

Link:

http://www.digi.no/