Telecom versus Vodafone: NZ 3G shootout

15.12.2006
How do Telecom New Zealand Ltd. and Vodafone Group plc's revved-up 3G (third generation) offerings stack up compared to one another? To find out, Computerworld New Zealand snagged a Sierra Wireless AirCard 595 from Telecom, and a Merlin XU870 data card from Vodafone to test.

The idea was to conduct an apples-with-apples trial of the newly launched EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) Rev A service from Telecom, and compare it to Vodafone's UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service) HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Data Packet Access).

Before the trial, Vodafone pointed out that its network is a production one that is lightly loaded compared with Telecom's Rev A grid. However, Rev A runs over the same physical network as the existing Rev O one, sharing backhaul with it, and according to Telecom, it's a production network too.

Telecom's Rev A has very limited coverage at the moment ' just Auckland central business district. On the suggestion of both operators, Computerworld New Zealand tested their services in the downtown Britomart, lower Queen Street area. In those spots, both services registered very good signal strength ' five bars on the respective software clients, with the Sierra showing -47dBm, or twice as good as what Telecom's techies say is 'exceptional."

The real-life results were surprising. Although testing at Telecom's Auckland headquarters pushed 2.6Mbit/s down and 500kbit/s up, this time around the Rev A data card managed only around half that performance: just over 1Mbit/s down, and 200kbit/s up.

Low latency is the strong point of Rev A though: 50-70ms is very good indeed, making time-sensitive applications nice and smooth to use.