Val Vladescu

3 years ago today I went into my local Vodafone Store and got myself a Vodafone KU-something modem.

By that time it was an experimental device, they launched it officially in december 2009 and I remember all the hassle with making a contract for a yet-unreleased offer. Pen to the rescue when software fails. Print a regular contract then handwrite the new conditions. Even to this day everyone’s looking funny when I come in the store with the contract for updates.

This little thing is a powerful device, supports up to 21.6 Mbps HSDPA speeds. At that point I thought that by 2012 I would look at it and feel like I was feeling back then about the 56Kbps X-Net over the regular phone line However, this is not the case. I was expecting more, the iPhone was out on a boom, Android devices were already popular even here so I was expecting a blast in mobile broadband also. The blast did happen – number of connected devices increased dramatically, however no sensible infrastructure updates seem to have taken place. Oh yes, there’s Orange with some gimmicks here and there, lots of PR for totally worthless services (remember HD Voice? Who uses that?) Vodafone seems to come closer to peak every day, now I get a network congestion (call fail, dropped calls) every few days.

I blame it all on the long-awaited 4G licences which were recently awarded and hopefully will bring higher speeds and higher reliability. In the meantime price dropped, I still use my little 21.6 Mbps gadget and it still is a viable alternative in a market where even business rely on good old 7.2Mbps devices for mobile connectivity.

Do you need more? What do you expect from 4G services?