Right around lunchtime I hear that all too familiar metal clanging noise that usually means I’ve got mail. See, I’m a writer for an online publication, so my office is the kitchen table in my studio apartment. Ignoring the mass of useless junk mail that was just shoved through the slit in my front door, I keep on shoving food in my face while listening to a live stream of the BBC World Service. There’s a reason why my previous three girlfriends nicknamed me “grandpa”. Anyway, time to do the dishes and shove the mail in the trash, only this time there was actually an envelope for me. It was from the post office saying that there was a package waiting to be picked up. Who was it from? DNA Finland, one of the local wireless operators.
Last week while combing through my RSS feeds I read an article that said DNA Finland was in the process of testing their brand spanking new 4G LTE network and that they were looking for volunteers. It didn’t take long for me to navigate to their press site and email the head of public relations and explain who I am, what I do for a living, and why I absolutely need to get in on this trial. The next day I get a phone call congratulating me for getting into the beta program, and that I should shortly be receiving a USB 4G LTE modem to test out.
That package that I picked up after lunch, that was the modem; more specifically the Huawei E398. The retail packaging is easy on the eyes and has a strong resemblance to that of the Apple iPhone 4. Inside there’s the modem itself, a small manual, and a warranty card. DNA Finland also provided a SIM card and a two page printout of how to setup this thing up, which was sadly in Finnish, but the fact that there were screenshots in said printout meant it was easy enough for me to figure out what to do next.
Now for the fun part, plugging this baby in. My work laptop is a 2010 17 inch MacBook Pro running OS X 10.6.8 and it has absolutely no beta software installed. This thing is responsible for my monthly paycheck, so downtime is not an option. Once I plug in the modem it mounts itself as a disk and launches an installer for “Mobile Partner”, which is Huawei’s software to get things connected. After the typical “yes”, “yes”, “accept”, “yes” prompts required to get the software on my machine, I launch the app, type in the supplied credentials, and hit connect.
First speed test result? Roughly 6 megabits per second. That can’t be right … can it? For Americans that might seem like a lot, but this is Europe, and LTE is supposed to break 50 megabits per second. At this point I quickly noticed that I skipped a step and forgot to set “Mobile Partner” to connect to “LTE Only” and ignore DNA’s 3G network. This problem took just a few seconds to fix, but then it caused another problem … now the modem wasn’t connecting to DNA at all. Not the 3G network, nor the 4G LTE network. This was obviously upsetting, so I shoot off an email to my contact at DNA and then, for reasons I can’t explain other than sheer curiosity, I attempted to see what would happen if I tried this modem on my other laptop, a Lenovo ThinkPad x100e running Windows 7 Ultimate.
Similar to the setup process on the MacBook Pro, the modem mounted itself as a USB drive, an installer popped up, went through the “yes”, “yes”, “yes” cycle of software installation, entered in the supplied credentials, and after all was said and done it connected to the 4G LTE network! If I had to come up with an explanation as to why this happened, I’d say because the USB port I used on the ThinkPad was closer to the window than that of my MacBook. First thing I do is obviously run a speed test and disappointment sets in again. Just 8 megabits per second. Not good.
Having established that my ThinkPad can connect to 4G LTE, I figure it’s time to give the MacBook a second shot. Here’s what happened over the course of the next 30 seconds: Plug the modem in, launch the “Mobile Partner” software, hit connect, jump for joy as it goes through, go to speedtest.net and run a benchmark, and then cry like a little girl when I see it hitting nearly 40 megabits per second.
So how should I test this? Sadly, the only thing that I know of that can saturate a connection is pirating content off usenet, something I’ve been doing since I was a teenager. Before you even ask, No, I’m not going to explain how usenet works or tell you what I’ve illegally downloaded for the sake of producing some numbers for this article. That being said, what have I managed to do in the first 60 minutes of jumping on LTE for the first time in my life?
After getting everything working I reset the data statistics in “Mobile Partner”, ran some speed tests, and started up my usenet client. In the span of just one hour I managed to burn through 8.77 GB of data, what Verizon charges you $80 per month to access. My maximum download speed, as measured by looking at what my usenet software was reporting, was 5112 kilobytes per second, which translates to 39.94 megabits per second. It wasn’t all rosy however. Twice during my download spree my speeds fell to less than 1 megabit per second. Closing my usenet client and then launching it again after about half a minute fixed the issue in both instances. Could it be that DNA was throttling me due to my insane use of bandwidth?
No. DNA distinctivly told me to “go crazy, use as much data as you want” because they want to test this network, which let me remind you is only being accessed by volunteers right now; roughly 200 of them. So what was causing those dips? In short, heat. After several minutes of grabbing “stuff” off usenet I wanted to see if tilting the angle of the USB modem would increase my speeds, and man, I wasn’t prepared for how hot this thing would be when grabbing it. It’s about as uncomfortable as holding a fresh cup of coffee and having said cup made out of thin paper. You really can’t even put your finger on this modem for more than a few seconds without feeling a bit of pain. Going through the documentation provided with the modem, it says: “It is normal that you wireless device gets hot when you use or charge it.”
Found that one out the hard way!
That’s all I can really say at this point. The trial is supposed to last for a few weeks after which I’ll be required to mail this thing back. My plan is to rely exclusively on this modem for my internet connection during the trial. Once it’s over, I’ll write up some conclusions.
If you’ve got any questions about this network, feel free to leave a comment!
Update: After a quick trip to the super market, meaning I turned my laptop off and let the modem cool off for a bit, I got the following speed test result:
