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Josh's Blog Telstra NextG wireless woes | Telstra NextG wireless woes | | Print | |
| Saturday, 27 October 2007 | ||||
Give me the Cantenna insteadSome of the things Telstra say about their new NextG wireless network are probably true. Yes, it may provide connectivity for 98% of the population. And yes, in ideal circumstances, it may even be fast. But what they don't say is how reliable that connection will be for most of the time. Drop outs are common in my experience, regardless, it seems, of where you are. I wouldn't dare guess how much time and productivity have been wasted for me by drop outs, which often occur even with a good connection. This is highly frustrating, because unless I save my work every 2 - 3 minutes, there's no guarantee it'll work when I save it. Thats supremely annoying when you run from battery power (in a tent), which I do often. I've had to re-write or re-code so many things because of this and it's starting to irk me, hence this rant. Honestly, I think I'd rather use a 3rd world cantenna. My last job involved travelling to 3rd world countries, where I investigated the relationship between poverty, the education gap and the digital divide. But I'm starting to learn that we have a digital divide here in Australia to. The sad thing is that we really shouldn't. Wireless should be nationwide - for free - for the benefit of us all. Let the telcos offeir their premium services for whover wants or can afford it, but for those that can't, provide something at least. In this age, a digital divide - at any level - makes for a marginalized community. This can be bad in so many ways. New Orleans figured this out after Katrina, and many other US municipalities are following their lead. Of course, the telcos over there (such as Verizon) are crying a river over it now. Telstra would do the same if a government here grew some balls and followed suit.     
27-10-2007 18:46 At the risk of stating the bleeding obvi Have you thought about writing up your article in Wordpad or something similar then copying it across once your online. It won't stop the drop outs but will stop you losing your work. I'm interested in hearing more about your experiences with Next G in out of the way places (ie not capital cities). I'm planning my own adventure at some stage in the future and was banking on it to keep me connected. 27-10-2007 21:31 At the risk of stating the bleeding obvi Yeah, I write everything in Editpad then transfer to a spell check then copy to backend. Its not that work that I lose. Its html editing (albeit with a very clean system, so not like typical html editing) that causes issues. Mucking around in the backend is what causes issues, and not everything can be just as easily saved to notepad/editpad. I probably should create txt templates for most of the stuff I do (and I will soon) but some tasks require more than that. The good news for you is that NextG has at last been good at providing a connection. Thats why I said thy may be right in their claim to covering 98% of the population. Technically, that may be true. And it does seem to provide better connectivity via wireless than anything else I'm aware of in Aus. The real problem is in staying connected. It drops out way too easily, wa too often, and with no damned explaination for it either. I'd like to see us all go back to smoke signals to be honest. 27-10-2007 21:37 At the risk of stating the bleeding obvi Oh yeah... I forgot to mention that if you drop out, it usually means a reboot to have a chance of getting a connection again. Imagine how frustrating this was with Vista, which can take ages to load (and shut down for that matter). XP isn't as bad, but still infuriating. If it just was a matter of drop out, then click reconnect again to get back online, it'd be easier to swallow. Its the fact that the wireless cards (and I've tried 3 types now, including with external antenna) are just tempremental, and will go haywire at whim. Sometimes I get hours in - othertimes minutes, before having to be rebooted to establish a connection. It will improve I'm sure. What I want to see improve the most, however, is price. I mean... shit! $115 a month for 1 gig upload/download is a flat out rip off for air waves. 28-10-2007 23:52 I agree the price is a ripoff I'm looking at using my nextG handset as a modem, can get 3Gig for $119 on a business plan that way. I've done some testing with the Next G USB modem for work, found the signal strength can improve around 50% with the external antenna. Though I think that there would have to be some non telstra antenna's about that could do even better. Only registered users can write comments. Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.6 |
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