We tried a Telecom mobile internet T-Stick loaded with a new XT SIM card that shows off its new HSPA+ (high speed packet access) system.
You slide your SIM card into the T-Stick, and then plug it into your laptop's USB port. The stick connects to the internet using the 3G network and away you go ... provided you're in an area where the Telecom network is available.
We tried the stick first in central Wellington and central Auckland - and later in Waiuku, a small town just south of Auckland (and where our Vodafone iPhone showed no 3G coverage). These results came for the T-Stick came from Speedtest.net:
While they seem much slower in the Waiuku test, browsing speeds were still fairly good and we were able to watch YouTube videos with ease. In the central city (Wellington and Auckland) we could watch full streaming video with no problems.
However, after a long browsing session, the stick became incredibly hot - and when it was removed, the metal of the USB connection was almost too hot to touch.
Details
- Sierra Wireless 308 Turbo T-Stick with Telecom XT HSPA+
- Price: $399.00. Telecom offers 3 monthly plans: 500MB for $29.95; 2GB for $59.95; 4GB for $79.95. There is also a pre-pay option.
- Good points
Very good download speeds and fast browsing. - But
Only useful in Telecom coverage areas. T-Stick can get very hot during extended browsing.
More information
- Telecom network coverage: www.telecom.co.nz
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i bought a telecom turbo t stick (an mf668+) which is a 21mb/s capable stick last year in march. it worked amazingly right up to December. i was getting between 5 to 9 mb/s at four different locations on 4 different computers and i was incredibly happy with this. but now since December i am lucky to get 1.5mb/s at any of the same 4 locations i tested it with when i first got the stick. the stick was sent away to be "repaired" and it is still slow. telecom are saying that because it still downloads (at a constant 0.8mb/s) that they wont replace it. i am on a 2 year plan paying $80 a month, i don't want to pay that for another year and only get .8mb/s. what can i do??? why have the speeds dropped off? can i demand a replacement stick as it has not even been a year??? please help. thank you.
We wanted to have a T stick on hand for out on the road or hotels etc., but the monthly plan charges - on top of what we already pay for phones and internet connections for business and at home - is a big turn off. We should be able to buy either a dollar amount or data amount on prepay and use just like a prepay phone with a set time limit, e.g. 6 or 12 months.
I've used it on and off for a few months now. It's ok if you're in a good coverage area like Auckland CBD, Hamilton or Wellington, but incredibly I found that I was unable to use it at all in the hotel I was staying at in the middle of Tauranga, and neither could I get it to work at all in Whakatane. Rotorua was fine. Goes to show that they still don't have consistent coverage yet.
It's a lot cheaper than the usually rapacious hotel internet charges, although to be fair to the hotels I think they allow much greater MB limit than Telecom's T-stick, whose miserly 500MB limit for a whole month is pretty disappointing. This month I found Telecom was giving an extra 1GB and I used all of that in a day browsing some training videos, avoiding going over my miserly 3GB Telecom broadband limit.
Apart from the very small MB limits, my biggest gripe is why they don't let you top up the stick *directly* with a credit card ONLINE instead of either doing an online payment to get a voucher number to use and then mess around phoning the 0800 323-232 number, or phoning the 0800 number to make a credit card payment (which I've had problems with and spent ages on the phone trying to resolve).
I am in a rural area where land line broadband is not possible so the only options were Tstick or expensive satellite. T stick was 10 times faster than basic ruralzone satellite setup.
However if the T stick is in place when the computer starts up, it causes the bios to be confused about where the operating system is and causes a delay of 45 to 90 seconds in startup time.
While the tstick gets hot I have not found it as hot as claimed in the article.
Where we live (Rural) our ADSL was so poor we were getting download speeds of 0.55Mb/s and now with xt and a 3g router with aerial we get up to 4.5 well worth the extra cost when running a business.
The Good - works where the network works. Have found few places with no coverage. Rapid download, and provides good internet access when away in the caravan.
The Bad - prepay top up not available on line or o8oo from a cellphone. Top up hence is cumbersome.
The stick works very well in Auckland & Wellington and was really simple to install / use.
For an infrequent user where it is a good backstop to other connections (such as free WIFI) the month expiry on the prepay plan is poor and not the same as mobile phones. Guess I'm not the target market!
I discovered recently that my mobile, a Nokia 6120 classic, could be used as a modem, just like this t-stick.
The phone connects to the computer via a USB cable, and with their Nokia PC Suite you can synchronise the address book, calendar and messages, etc.
One of the options in the Nokia PC Suite is "Connect to the Internet". If you select that while the phone is connected to the computer, the phone will provide the internet connection to the computer.
If you're going to use this, you need to look at data plans, otherwise it will get very expensive. But handy to know it is there.