O2 Broadband; Day 1 « Life is grand

O2 Broadband; Day 1

I was given one of the O2 Broadband USB modems today. Hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll get to test it out and see if it is a viable.

From initial tests I have the following comments:

Neat packaging with two lengths of USB cabling, one short and the other longer with a dual/repeater USB head. Nice touch.
SIM cradle is very iffy, when I opened it again the SIM card stayed inside the main device. Had to put it on one end to jiggle it out.
It doesn’t work out of the box for Mac OS X users. It gives me an “Unreadable disk” error and there is no information to help in the documentation. So I phoned O2 support where a very helpful Danielle stepped me through a bunch of “Is your computer on?” questions before getting deep into a “You need this extra download.” So Mac OS X users, head on over to the O2 Online site and download the DMG. Thanks Danielle, good support.
You have to have the O2 Connect app. running whenever you want to be connected. Not major but not ideal.
First it has to detect the device and this fails the first time almost every time. Clicking it again takes about 20 seconds.
You can then click Connect which, depending on your coverage, takes another 15 to 20 seconds.
Our building has very poor O2 mobile coverage but my iPhone picks up GPRS from my desk while this O2 Broadband modem doesn’t. So I tried it upstairs and it managed to connect to GPRS. No 3G coverage out here or at home, I’ll test that when I get into an urban center.
With a GPRS connection I get 5kbps downloads from a NEO Office server. Usable for critical information sites, like the Rugby World Cup site. It seems to be about as fast as using GPRS from the iPhone.

So it works but only just and was a bit complicated to get going on Mac OS X. I’ll give it a fair test though over the next week or two and hopefully find some 3G coverage to try the 3.6mb claims.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Brian White 1 year ago 1 point
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I have the 3 HSDPA modem and I found it to be pretty useful (currently on loan to another TSSGer who's just moved house).

Signal seemed pretty solid everywhere I've used it, never hit speeds higher than what you'd expect on a 1MBit DSL line -- but that's impressive enough for me sitting in a car at 100km/h.

The 3 SIM I have is configured not to use a PIN, which is why I think you need to run the O2 software (might be wrong on that though).

There's details on configuring it for Linux too here: http://the.taoofmac.com/space/Huawei/E220

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http://dogg.ie

neil c 1 year ago 1 point
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Paul,

Is this O2 modem a huawei e220 ?
If it is do you have any issues with it and your mac ?
mine is a Tele2 branded one (sweden) and my macbook locks up periodically.

you might also be interested in this..
http://m.ac.nz/cheetahwatch/
a monitoring tool for mac.

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Paul Watson 1 year ago 1 point
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It is the huawei e220. No lock ups so far.

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http://www.paulmwatson.com/

keith bohanna 1 year ago 1 point
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hiya Paul

good to see you again briefly yesterday. have a look at
http://bohanna.typepad.com/pureplay/2007/09/rev...
- it will be interesting to see what your experience of the speeds is. You are definitely right on one thing - the modem is ultra sensitive to location.

keith

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http://keith.bohanna.com

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