[plug] 850/900Mhz UMTS modems - 3G Broadband

[Kevin Shackleton]

We have several Ericsson W25 devices on farms.  We use NextG cards in
them.  I have no idea what bands they support but they are great boxes
with 4 * 100Base-T ports, 2 analog phone ports and wifi, plus an SMA (?)
antenna terminal - we have Yagi antennas about 1.5 m long on farm house
roofs that give 80 - 100% signal strength (according to the W25 web
interface) in locations where hand-held mobiles are zeroing out.

External antennas are definitely the key to successful regional wireless
broadband.  A good Yagi costs up around $200 and are not easily
obtainable through your rank and file vendor, who probably thinks you're
having a shot at them if you ask.

Most of our W25s are for broadband but we do have a "landline" phone
service on one, where Telstra agreed (after a year or so of bickering)
to provide a service this way instead of dragging copper 2 km and
through 3 creek crossings.  The concept of not being able to deliver
boradband over copper was not a factor in their position.  The 3 creek
crossings was what put the fear up them.

The W25 is superseded by the W35 now, which may have more bands.

I did fiddle with a pretty little Optus Huwei box, which worked
remarkably well at Cataby (picking up Lancelin I think) but Optus were
unable to provide an external antenna and with limited time I could not
find a suitable connector for an external antenna given the
sub-microscopic antenna connection on the box.

Being APs, these solutions are OS agnostic.

hth,

Kevin.

On Wed, 2010-08-11 at 21:19 +1000, Tim White wrote:
> We are in the process of moving even further out into the sticks, and 
> are looking for mobile broadband options. I'm hoping to find a modem 
> that will support both NextG and also the Optus/Vodafone extended 
> network (hence the 850Mhz and 900Mhz). Ideally, it'll also support the 
> 2100Mhz UMTS band, as well as all the normal GSM bands.
> Ideally, it would be a standalone modem that connects to the lan via 
> ethernet, but failing that it needs to work flawlessly under Linux. From 
> my research so far, most solutions are USB dongles that plug directly 
> into the computer, and a separate "3G Modem" that you then need to plug 
> the dongle into. If that's the case, it probably makes more sense that I 
> just get the dongle and use my Linux media centre as the gateway.
> Failing finding a 850/900Mhz modem, what 3G modems (ether 850 OR 900) 
> "just work" with Linux?
> 
> What experiences do people have relying on 3G broadband?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Tim
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