‘Wireless F1’ wannabes Charles and Kugan take the Celcom HSDPA ‘racing’ modems out for spin. Read on to see if they returned dazed or amazed.

 

Interest in wireless broadband options is growing steadily. This is partly due to increasingly heavy promotions in the media as well as because people who are frustrated by land broadband performance. All three mobile operators, Maxis, Celcom and DiGi offer mobile data services. The first two telcos and companies like Izzinet and Jaring also offer fixed wireless broadband services providing advertised speeds ranging from 384 Kbps to 3.6 Mbps.

HSDPA wireless service, commonly also referred to as 3.5G and touted as the fastest mobile wireless service commercially available in Malaysia currently has drawn a lot of attention. We set out to test what kind of performance one can expect from this wireless service. In this issue, we test out Celcom’s HSDPA service. A forthcoming issue will put Maxis’ HSDPA service to the test.

The gear and method
For this story, the Mobile World team took two Vodaphone branded Huawei E220 HSDPA-USB modems and 3.6 Mbps data unlimited SIM cards on the road to find out how they actually fared in the field. The modems and SIM cards were commercial versions provided by Celcom.

We took our notebook PCs running Windows XP and Vista along on the trip. We measured data download and upload speeds using Dumeter (www.dumeter.com), a popular Windows-based soft-tool used by many telco engineers both here and worldwide.

In order to get a proper picture of performance, we conducted several tests to gauge download and in some case upload speeds from and to servers within Celcom’s network and outside it and also conducted tests to gauge the general surfing, download and streaming experience.

We measured the download and in some cases upload speeds of a test file from Celcom’s FTP server to eliminate any delays and latencies due to third party servers, routers and other network equipment beyond Celcom’s control and in most cases, this yielded the fastest speeds, typically around 800 Kbps maximum average.

The Results
While that may seem impressive enough, it’s about 22% of 3.6 Mbps, though in some places it achieved above 1 Mbps.

While 800 Kbps is certainly much better than 56 Kbps dialup or 512 Kbps ADSL speeds, 22% of maximum marks would be a failing grade in any school test.

Of course Celcom’s HSDPA service is not to be found everywhere. Only selected localities have HSDPA equipment installed. Other areas are served by Celcom’s basic 3G coverage. On a side note, we found Celcom 3G coverage was extensive and its 3G speeds very stable; anywhere at above 300 Kbps download speed. For example, we obtained 329.4 Kbps download speed in front of the UMNO Selangor building in Shah Alam, which is over 90% of the full 384 Kbps basic 3G speed.

We continued getting above 300 Kbps as we drove back from Shah Alam towards Kuala Lumpur along the Federal Highway but lost connection briefly after we passed the toll gate before Subang Jaya.
It was rather interesting to discover that Celcom’s HSDPA coverage was like islands of HSDPA within a sea of 3G, quite often within buildings.

For example, the modem’s indicator showed 3G outside Low Yat Plaza in Kuala Lumpur but briefly went bluish-green as we passed its entrance, so we went inside the plaza and found that we could achieve HSDPA download speeds of 873.8 Kbps maximum average in the centre of its main concourse.

By “maximum average” we mean the highest average reading indicated by Dumeter during the download of a large file of at least 10 Mb and in most cases a 25 MB file from Celcom’s and our own FTP servers.

In Cyberjaya, we obtained a 3G speed of 341.3 Kbps max at Hassan’s Sidewalk Cafe in The Street Mall but got an HSDPA speed of 831.9 Kbps from Celcom’s server in the Cyber View Lodge car park and a slightly more sedate 771.4 Kbps from our own FTP server.

We achieved one of the fastest average speeds of 1.04 Mbps from Celcom’s server in the Centre Court on the ground floor of Mid Valley Mega Mall but a more sedate 511.3 Kbps in the middle of the Food Junction food court on the third floor, which still is an HSDPA speed but slower, perhaps because we were not in direct line of sight of Celcom’s transceiver or too far away from it.

The fastest speed achieved was 1.10 Mbps from Celcom’s FTP server in the centre of the KLCC food court overlooking the park and a slightly less 1.05 Mbps at the Starbucks cafe also overlooking the KLCC park.

We achieved an average speed of 1 Mbps at the Starbucks cafe in Amcorp Mall in Petaling Jaya. General surfing of graphics-heavy sites such as The Smashers, www.smashpop.net yielded 601.5 Kbps.

For further details of our test results at the different locations, please refer to our table.

Some issues
It’s rather curious why Celcom would provide HSDPA coverage within buildings, considering that quite often, many of the outlets inside, such as Starbucks and Coffee Bean would already have WiFi.

Probably competition was the driving reason with Celcom aiming to provide coverage of those outlets which don’t have WiFi, as well as the common areas, so people need not buy a coffee or food to be able to access the Internet while sitting down. After all, how many people access the Internet from their notebook PCs while walking or at a roadside teh tarik stall.

The average download speed from our own FTP server was as high as 842.2 Kbps, while the average upload speed reached 109.3 Kbps.

While most Internet connections are optimised on the downlink, Celcom’s upload speed could be faster.
For example, we often upload digital pictures to our FTP server and they take too long at this speed. Also, a higher upload speed such as 256 Kbps with 512 Kbps Streamyx ADSL broadband is needed for VoIP and video call applications.

We also faced an issue of not being able to access an online radio station called Club 977 via Celcom 3G but could with Maxis and DiGi.

We clicked on an Advanced Stream Redirector (ASX) file which tried to obtain the relevant audio stream in Windows Media Player over the Celcom HSDPA connection but it could not. It worked when we switched to a DiGi EDGE connection.

Another issue was that the Vodafone Mobile Connect Lite software provided often crashed, though fortunately leaving us connected.

This piece of software installs automatically from the modem the first time you plug it into your PC and it provides you with a dialer for going online, lets you configure automatic or manual connection.

It also lets you send and receive SMS but only when not connected to the Internet. You can create SMS messages while online but they will be stored in a queue and sent the moment you disconnect and any SMS received while you were online will be received.

Other issues are that Mobile Connect Lite is rather slow to load and the modem consumes a lot of battery power, which it draws from the notebook’s USB port, though to be fair this is a known issue with some other makes of USB modem.

We also found international sites like You Tube to load very slowly and to be rather slow, with much buffering and consequent hesitation of the video, which spoiled the viewing experience.

 

 

 

 

Fast Local Sites
However, locally hosted site like Bernama and Worldip.TV loaded very quickly and we enjoyed smooth video streams from Worldip.TV.

Well this isn’t surprising, since Celcom uses TM Net’s backbone as indicated by the Speedtest portal at www.speedtest.net and also by the Ping and route tracing utility Ping Plotter (www.pingplotter.com)
Ping Plotter indicated only 11 hops, including via TM Net between our PC and the Worldip.TV server in Cyberjaya, with a round trip time of just over 100 mS, while reaching You Tube required 15 hops with an average round trip time of around 331 mS.

Celcom’s unlimited HSDPA/3G/GPRS data package costs RM120 per month but Celcom postpaid subscribers can have it for RM99 per month and if they also have a Streamyx account, they can have it for RM88 per month. The cost of the modem is extra.

Celcom officially has over 330,000 3G customers, though unofficially these could be higher. Moreover, it’s estimated that Celcom has 1,815 3G and 3GX (ie. 3.5G or HSDPA) sites nationwide.

Celcom’s Response
The results of our road tests were shared with Celcom and their technical folks were dedicated enough to investigate why we got slow network speeds. Their response is shared in this article. In essence, they say that areas which registered low speeds were either 3G-only areas or in the case of HSDPA enabled areas, were facing heavy user loads at the periods we carried out the tests.

Our road test had one unexpected but very pleasant result. Celcom engineers enabled HSDPA in four test areas that were previously only 3G enabled. Celcom enabled HSDPA at KL Golf & Country Club, KL Sentral Blue Cube booth, outside DiGi D’House Subang High-Tech, Sri Paandi, Section 11 PJ, Quality Hotel, Shah Alam and UMNO Selangor, Shah Alam.

So if you’re not getting HSDPA speeds in your area, do a speed test and submit your results to Celcom.

Conclusion
Despite being much slower than 3.6Mbps and some of the issues mentioned above, we feel that Celcom’s unlimited HSDPA offering and its around 800Kbps HSDPA speed and over 300Kbps 3G speed is value for money for mobile subscribers needing to send and receive e-mail and surf for information while on the go, especially considering Celcom’s wide and stable 3G connectivity.

If anyone needs to watch You Tube videos, download many bulky music files or software, they can always do it on their desktop PC over a fixed broadband connection, unless they’re renting a room and can’t get a fixed line.

However, besides watching You Tube videos, we could do the rest over Celcom HSDPA quite well.

It would help however, if Celcom bundled the modem with the data package, like other operators are doing.