Difference in mobile broadband speeds depending on device

Hi Everyone

I am looking at comparing 3G Datacards, USB fobs and these new MiFi devices so that we can give some to our sales staff. What I did was run a little test by running the mobile broadband speed tester against each device (I used the same SIM to rule out coverage issues).

I would have thought that, speedwise, they would all be the same, since they are all connecting to the same 3G network, but in reality the 3G datacard was the slowest, with the USB fob and Mifi device roughly twice as fast.

Does anyone know why this is? And would we have expected to see one out of the USB fob or MiFi device being faster than the other?

It could be something as simple as the use of different chipsets or antenna configurations. Certainly if you think about connection speeds of standard wired ADSL connections, different modems can sync at better speeds than others.

If you didn't have access to the specifications of the different devices, it's possible that they support different 3G protocols, e.g. the newer devices may support 7.2Mbps download and HSUPA whereas the PC Card based device may have only supported 3.6Mbps HSDPA. Without knowing the model numbers of the devices and their specs it's hard to give a definitive answer.

jayteedc

APN is something else to consider if you're looking at O2. Pay monthly iPhones and Mobile Broadband (but sadly not iPad) can bypass the proxy through APN mobile.o2.co.uk with Username: bypass Password: password. In HSDPA / HSUPA areas this can triple the performance in speed using good modems such as Option & Novatel.