November 8th, 2011
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| Image source: mtctouch.com.lb |
During the first 24 hours of subscribing, I really had my doubts. I couldn't get the signal locked in for more than mere seconds, after which my Nokia 5800 XM (spare the jokes) would display 3G instead of 3.5G (indicative of HSPA+, otherwise branded as 3.9G by mtc), then directly jump back to EDGE which, to add insult to injury, would simply go on-hold and refuse to connect me to the world wide web. Indoors, 3G signal was as real as a unicorn.. (though one could always hope :P). Starting the second day though, things changed.
The fastest my phone could reach was 2.46Mbps which is pretty good for a 3 years old phone, though I doubt you could reach more than 4Mbps on one of the newer smartphones, and that's if you're lucky. That's not to say the speed is bad, this is exactly what's expected from the 21Mbps HSPA+ the carriers deployed (also comparable, as far as I know, to speeds reached by the same technology in European countries and the U.S.). Later deployment of the 42Mbps HSPA+ could make things even better, and select LTE (4G) coverage (I believe in Beirut, provided you have an LTE-capable phone which aren't cheap and have horrible battery lives) makes me think we're on the right track.
Speed, however, wasn't consistent, and I found myself rarely reaching that maximum speed, and more often than not on speeds lower than 700kbps. This said, I can proudly (shamefully ?) claim that the connection was better than my so primitive 128kbps ADSL connection provided by a shitty ISP (*cough* Ogero *cough*), that is yet to be upgraded to 1Mbps. Tethering to my iPad (that's transforming my phone into a WiFi-hotspot or router and using my 3G connection to devices connected to it) was a truly satisfying experience (I can now die peacefully :P), though it went through my megabytes like a mad beast, and I knew better than to keep doing that.
(Update 31/03/2012: If you're here because you googled "mtc 3g tethering" (you're not alone :P), I can't help you much. If you have an Android, Windows Phone or iPhone (smartphone in general) you should be able to do that from the OS (or there could be apps for that), but in short what works for other carriers works for mtc so you should simply google "tethering [your phone's type]". Tethering is free (for now at least) and the APN is "mtc". If you rock a Nokia (Symbian) last I checked there's a paid app on Ovi store, but otherwise you're out of luck. Hope that helped, and feel free to ask about anything else in the comments section (: )
A major problem though seems to be battery life, which is being drained like hell. Normally, my phone would still have full bars at the end of the day, whereas with 3G I'm returning home during the evening with only two bars left (and I'm usually paranoid, which means whenever the bars count drops to half I seriously stop using my phone). I know LTE drains battery like that because the standards aren't finalized, but this should not be the case of HSPA+. I may be wrong on this point, but hopefully it's just an optimization problem from the part of the carriers that would be fixed soon. (Update 31/03/2012: Apparently this was because 3G coverage was limited at the time, and the phone had to continuously switch 2G/3G modes. This is no longer the case, but if you're still having that problem try selecting 3G mode only (Or HSPA, or UMTS) from your phone's settings, though you would be more prone to lose signal that way.)
(Update 31/03/2012: If you're here because you googled "mtc 3g tethering" (you're not alone :P), I can't help you much. If you have an Android, Windows Phone or iPhone (smartphone in general) you should be able to do that from the OS (or there could be apps for that), but in short what works for other carriers works for mtc so you should simply google "tethering [your phone's type]". Tethering is free (for now at least) and the APN is "mtc". If you rock a Nokia (Symbian) last I checked there's a paid app on Ovi store, but otherwise you're out of luck. Hope that helped, and feel free to ask about anything else in the comments section (: )
A major problem though seems to be battery life, which is being drained like hell. Normally, my phone would still have full bars at the end of the day, whereas with 3G I'm returning home during the evening with only two bars left (and I'm usually paranoid, which means whenever the bars count drops to half I seriously stop using my phone). I know LTE drains battery like that because the standards aren't finalized, but this should not be the case of HSPA+. I may be wrong on this point, but hopefully it's just an optimization problem from the part of the carriers that would be fixed soon. (Update 31/03/2012: Apparently this was because 3G coverage was limited at the time, and the phone had to continuously switch 2G/3G modes. This is no longer the case, but if you're still having that problem try selecting 3G mode only (Or HSPA, or UMTS) from your phone's settings, though you would be more prone to lose signal that way.)
Finally, one thing I had the chance to try was Ovi Maps, Nokia's native maps client, and to quote Kevin Shields: "IT LOOKS AAWWEEESOOOOME!". Seriously though, I fired it up on the way to Beirut at Monteverde, and it showed the tiniest details and road turns, even when I was only on EDGE (no 3G coverage), and all the way down it only used 130KBs (I had the map of Lebanon pre-downloaded).