Today, about 10 days from my last post titled 3G on the road updates, Indosat has again made improvements for your pleasure. You may won't believe it but now in some areas you can enjoy broadband Internet on the road at ... hold your breath ... real 1.3Mbps or even more.
It means, you can download files at a speed of more than 100kbyte/s. Imagine, 1Mb just in less than 10 seconds. You can watch film trailers or latest music videos from Google video at its best quality on the road.
Will it be available on all areas covered by Indosat 3G?. I hope so, but I can't say anything about this now. I have modified my GPS program and I have done some tracking on the signal strength and the available operation mode during my trip to my office today. If HSDPA(up to 3.6Mbps) mode is available, you will see red marks on the map, if the card operates in UMTS(380kbps) mode you will see blue marks. If 3G is not available, the card will operate in a lower GPRS mode and the map will be marked green. How larger and darker the mark, how better the signal strength.
This one was taken few days a go in area around arteri pondok indah. Green marks mean no 3G coverage on the area yet.
How about download speed with HSDPA available? here are some pictures to impress you. Even with only two bars signal strength, download speed of 130kbyte/seconds can be achieved.
Fasten your seatbelt, and welcome to 3.5G era.
Updates on 1 December 2006:
How fast can you go? find your speed with bandwidth meter:
170KB/sec is not bad, isn't it?
If you live around Permata Hijau area, then you are lucky, HSDPA is available since today with a good signal strength.
What about the tariff? some info from http://3g.indosat.com/about/tarif.php :
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Paket Promo Data:
- Light : Rp 130.000/bln - 1 Gb.
- " Medium : Rp275.000/bln-2.5 Gb
Note : kelebihan penggunaan dikenakan tarif Rp 0.5/Kb
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Again, fasten your seatbelt, and welcome to 3.5G era.