Faster cellular internet?

S

salty dogma

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A few weeks back I signed up for T-Mobile's GPRS Edge cellular internet service using a Sony Ericcson GC89 card in my Powerbook G4 Titanium 15" w/ OS X Tiger. It took some playing around to get the card to work, but once it was configured it hit speeds of 25-35 Kbps. Slow, but hey, I was not expecting much.

Enter the pc. I also have an older PIII Dell laptop I use for nautical chartplotting. I put the Sony card in and used T-mobile's connection software to login. The result: Much faster 100-250 Kbps speeds. Clearly, I was getting the EDGE speeds on the pc, but not on the Mac.

To complicate matters, I have since returned the GC89 card and swapped it for a Motorola V360 "Edge Enabled" phone. Connecting via USB cable (as I would have to purchase a bluetooth adapter separately for the Tibook), I am getting about 50 Kbps speeds on Mac and PC. Does anyone know any tweaks to bump up the speed of the T-Mobile connection on a Mac?

As per T-Mobile's instructions, I am using the modem script "Null Modem 115200". There isn't one faster than that to choose.

Thanks!
 
Hello: Saw your T-Mobile EDGE quandry. I have a G4 Powerbook and T-Mobile EDGE. My solution was to purchase a Sony Ericsson GC83 pc card off ebay and use Smith Micro's QuickLink Mobile software. If you have a strong EDGE signal you will get 150 -250 kbps data rates - if the sinal drops, or you are in an area that is not brodcasting EDGE your speed will drop and it will switch you to GPRS and you will get a solid 50 kbps rate. I do not know of any other mac user using this config - so it will be you and me if you decide to try it out - dont expect any coooperation or help from t-mobile they will tell you it will not work and is not supported. I have used my set-up since November when EDGE came on line and T-mobile did not even have EDGE cards for the pc users for another two months. It works well - and it is all you can eat for $29 - mine is on 24/7. You might call Smith Micro and see if their mac software will drive the card you already have... www.smithmicro.com
Best: Rick
 
Hey Rick,

It is hard to believe that we are the only ones! You are right about T-Mobile support---nice enough but clueless on the Mac and a little light on their support for internet products in general. The service has been reliable for me and a great deal, but I just wanted to get those Edge speeds again, and knowing that it is possible makes it worse. What I still do not know and will find out, is if it is possible on my "Edge-Enabled" Motorola v360 phone. Now I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that "Edge-Enabled" actually means that it is "Edge-Enabled" and not just GPRS. I could be wrong...

As for the software you suggested, that makes two commercial applications available, smithmicro's Quicklink and Mobile High Speed for Mac. After my initial experience with Mobile High Speed and the original GC89 card, I think I'll try Smith Micro as you suggest. It looks a little more complete.

All that searching and I didn't find out about Smith Micro either!! How are other people going to do this? T-Mobile and others should get some support info out to Mac users.

Thanks for your help!

Darwin
 
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