Cingular's HSDPA hits Indianapolis

Cingular is really raising the bar with the HSDPA rollout, with the latest stop on the 3G tour being Indianapolis, Indiana. This brings the high speed wireless availability to 35 million people in 52 areas overall for Cingular's BroadbandConnect service.

Since James and I are both paying Verizon customers, we tend to focus on EV-DO, which is VZW's offering, not to mention Sprint's. I know we've got some HSDPA consumers that read the site: how is it working for you? Would you consider giving it up? Is your HSDPA via an integrated radio or through an external device or card?

[Edit: I had to repub this due to some flakiness on Typepad. Sorry if this appears in your RSS reader 2x]

Comments

[Matt Faulkner]

Hey Kevin - that's my back yard! i will be walking over there today to see if I can sign up, maybe I can get off my ISDN line at home now. There are pros and cons of living out frm the city... I'll let you know what I find out.

[Scotty]

I got a ZX20 a couple weeks ago. I'm still pretty raw about not getting the promised free upgrade from my pair of A845's. I was forced to trade in my blue SIMs for Orange SIMs, the new Cingular rate plan SUCKS and their network SUCKS (constantly not delivering calls, but if you get the call they don't drop it, VM's that take 2 days to get etc...)

The HSDPA part of the deal is a mixed offering as well. They don't deliver incoming phone calls due to overload, well the HSDPA has regular periods where the Cingular IP network is overloaded as well. It takes anywhere from 5 to 120 seconds to establish a TCP connection. But once you are connected you can get the promised 1.5Mbps (unlike EV-DO where I've never seen 1.5Mbps)

But getting the pipe up can be VERY frustrating!

Traceroute clearly identifies the problem server but Cingular Customer service is clueless to deal with it.

My advice, stick with Verizon. I've got a 7130e as well and it works far more reliably than Cingular's HSDPA e.g. you're getting a side by side comparison here.

[DP]

I'm in NYC and have high-speed data cards for both Cingular and there's no comparison whatsoever: Sprint service is so vastly better it's hard to believe anyone even uses Cingular. Until very recently, Cingular's HSDPA service seemed confined to only a tiny area near Wall Street, with only EDGE speeds available in business-heavy midtown. And, even as HSDPA has become more widely available (though, last time I checked, still not even everywhere in Manhattan), the signal is invariably weaker, and the speeds invariably slower, than what I get on Sprint EV-DO. Sprint seems to work well all over the metropolitan area, on Metro-North trains, in speeding cars, and in the back of restaurants where my (Cingular) cell phone can't get a signal. Honestly, Cingular should be embarrassed. At least T-Mobile, which has only EDGE service, is cheap!!