Review by gopnick 
UPDATED: 2.1 years ago
member for 4.8 years, 964 visits, last login: 49 days ago
 Benton,Saline,AR
 $80 per month (24 month contract)
 about 3 days
 "Incredibly fast HSDPA"
 "Costly"
 "Awesome for the mobile professional"
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Connection reliability:
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**Update: 8/9/2007**
My speeds on the 3G network have gone down slightly as more 3G devices are sold by AT&T. It is still respectable, running at 600-1100k depending on network activity and time of day. Latency is superb. EDGE has improved as well! With better compression techniques, I read the other day that EDGE will be running at over 1 megabit by 2011. I'm getting 100k-150k now when in an EDGE area.
**Update: 11/28/2006**
I now have an AirCard (which is great) AND a Windows Smartphone (Samsung BlackJack) on Cingular's 3G network. I am consistently getting better than 700k, all times of the day and night, even on my BlackJack.
Cingular has terrible customer support, but it's been getting better; at the same time, so does the service and data speed.
**Original Review**
My company supplied me with a Cingular Air Card (860) for mobile use in my Dell laptop. It is a D820 (and has the ability to put in an internal SIM chip) but I chose to instead use a PC card for the added coverage from the external antenna and the ability to hook it up to an external antenna mounted on the top of my company car.
I get about 1 meg down and 300-400 k up. The service is reliable. VPNs are great. I use Citrix over it almost every day.
The only drawback (other than price) is that Cingular's 3G service is only available in select markets. We have it here in Little Rock, but outside of the metro area I drop off to 144k EDGE (I really get about 60k). Alltel and Sprint have extensive EV-DO coverage, and my CDMA Windows smartphone gets EV-DO in lots of areas where I have no Cingular 3G. However, it is much slower, running at 300-500k down and less than 100k up. We'll see if EV-DO catches up when they deploy Rev A.
I recommend Cingular's 3G service in the Little Rock market. It is excellent. Oh, but the customer support sucks, just like it always has from Cingular.
Followup comments:  mlohrwork
join:2001-05-30
Laurel, MD
| His experience matchs mine In non 3g areas Baltimore suburbs and Virginia Mountains, I have only been getting near 100 Kbps. In 3 G areas Phoenix AZ it flies >1 Mbps. The rate has actually dropped to 10 Kbps when driving between towers. The actual rate is not nearly as consistent as my DSL or Cable connection. | |
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