Vodafone Data Traveller is a Con!

[barryd]

I think there are areas like Teesdale where the wimax product could work. The charges for 2MB (its actually often faster apparently) are £20 a month. When there is no other option I dont think thats a bad price.

Problem is the level of IT understanding in the upper dales is really low. Most of them wont know where to start. We have been addressing this and I have been working for the last 6 months implementing systems and support for rural areas, businesses and farms. However. I just found out (by email) that my contract to support the dales has just been terminated as of the end of next week due to admin costs and funding!

Looks like the summer holidays will be early this year (for me)!

 

[Byronic]

Would it not be cheaper to extend existing 3g services to those remote rural areas instead of setting up a WiMax? From my limited knowledge of WiMax I thought it was more suited to urban areas?
2MB seems a reasonable enough connection speed, however would this be near the transmitter or as a guaranteed minimum? £20 month, not a lot as you say, but there are free options such as I'm currently using, ie o2 textandweb, I use the sim in a netbook via an unlocked dongle,(although it's intended for phone use only).
HSDPA theoretically can give 7.2MB but I've never seen better than 2MB and even then onlly for a short period.In the semi rural area in which I live it's never better than 1MB, but at least coverage is almost Natiowide. I can't see WiMax being much use for the roamer, if it doesn't provide similar coverage and how long is that likely to take?

 

[Byronic]

You are correct of course I reckon should know and I'm getting old but mainly I blame that barryd bloke I was responding to his post!!
I've also forgotten that a megabit = 10 to the power 6 or 1,000,000
and that a megabyte = 1,048,576 bytes
I don't lose any sleep over it but I wonder why data transfer rates are given in bits per sec. and not bytes per sec? If 1byte = 8 bits then why is eg 8 Mbs not given as 1 MBs? Makes it easier to remember for people like me.

 

[barryd]

Having worked in IT for over 20 years I suppose I should have got it right. Im pretty sure however that anyone still reading this thread who hasnt got bored by now will understand what it means!:rolleyes2: