Technobiography

Laptop Surfing the Internet with a 3G phone

February 17th, 2006 | by ka edong |

Last part of our 3G demo with Globe was surfing the Internet on a laptop using a 3G phone for a modem.

I’ve done this before with Brosia connected to Kurdapia. I was able to connect via dial-up using Brosia, my Smartphone. (The cheaper way to connect is through a GPRS connection and not via dial-up).

But this time around with the Nokia N70 and N90, the 3G network is expected to be many times faster than my old dial-up experiments.

Lance, the Globe demo guy, claimed that internet speeds could rise up to 400+ kbps on their 3G network. We took it for a test drive. Lance hooked up the phone to his demo laptop, plugged in the 3G and used a Nokia software to connect to the phone. He dialed the Internet via the software too.

In a minute or two, we were connected to the Internet. First page I checked was Google. It loaded and we were on the Internet, for sure. I searched for Globequest’s Internet speed tool (Globequest Bandwidth Meter). I wanted to verify whether we were indeed on a super fast Internet connection.

Even before I run the Internet speed gauge, I knew we weren’t doing 400+ kbps. It felt too slow for 400kbps.

And the results (drum roll please): 280kbps!

Not 400kbps. But quite okay, 4 times faster than 56kbps. Tough luck for me (or tough luck for Lance). It didn’t feel like 280kbps, though.

Nevertheless, it was a good demonstration.

Lots of things we can do with 3G. It’s going to be expensive when they launch it commercially. But things will pick up.

At least now we have more mobile broadband, more layers of telecommunications to deliver much needed (relevant) information and communications to the hinterlands and islands of the Philippines.

That’s power that at our fingertips, if only we can use it wisely.

ka edong
powerless in His hands