Moved from Dialog ‘Unlimited’ Student Package to Mobitel Zoom 1290

May 7, 2010 | By Rakhitha | Filed in: Me, Myself & I, Sri Lanka, Tech.

Mobitel SIM PackageI was a happy customer of a Dialog Mobile Broadband Student Package for more than a year. In fact, after getting my student ID of the MSc program, first thing I did was signing up for a student package (So far its the only useful thing I got from this MSc). Signal reception was pretty damn low at my place. No bars at all. But E220 modem managed to connect and deliver around 40KB/s downlink speed on manual network selection.

Recently my girl friend purchased a Mobitel M3 connection. It turned out that Mobitel gives a 8Gb data bundle at LKR 1290/= + Tax. Which is damn better than Dialog student package (5Gb for LKR 1500/= Tax). Dialog connection is pretty damn useless after you cross 5Gb limit. Dialog offers a package with 10Gb data bundle but that is almost LKR 3k/= + Tax. I did a bit of math, and it turned out with a Mobitel Zoom 1290 package, I can use 10Gb per month for a cost of roughly LKR 2k/= including taxes. When you add the taxes for Dialog 5Gb student package, it is almost LKR 2k/=.

I did a test run using a Mobitel SIM just to check the signal strength. It turned out I have used a Dialog connection for more than a year with almost zero reception while Mobitel has full signal strength at my place (Five Bars). Speed was not the best but was ok. Managed to reach 100KB/s at my place. Speeds drop to around 20 KB/s at night. Any ideas on improving this?.

First I had to unlock my device. I just  followed the instruction on this page. At first it was bit scary. Last time I flashed a firmware, I ruined a perfectly good motherboard. But the instructions were simple enough and it did not involve changing any firmware.

Finally I purchased a Mobitel connection of my own and asked Dialog to terminate my connection. So far it has been a good experience. Though I would like to hear any ideas on improving speeds at home. I have full signal reception but speeds are only around 100KB/s (Still little better than dialog). At my workplace, with the same connections I managed to go over 200 KB/s (Almost 2Mbps).

/Rakhitha


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

6 comments on “Moved from Dialog ‘Unlimited’ Student Package to Mobitel Zoom 1290

  1. sajini says:

    good choice 🙂 compare with Dialog, Mobitel broadband connection is worthy so far.

  2. Ricky says:

    Hey buddy. Photocopy case I’m facing out here in Ja Ela. In the market for a mobile connection and the journey is irritating..frustrating…etc. I don’t have much of an idea how to help you but do you know if dialog gives you a different SIM (usim i think) for postpaid connections? Using my prepaid I could pretty much have a cup of tea in between browsing a page. Downloads are around 10kBs a sec for me 🙁 mobitel has a more comprehensive coverage eh?

  3. Rakhitha says:

    I think they give USIM for everyone now. I don’t know if dialog limit bandwidth for pre paid users. But when you use the broadband connection with a phone lot depends on capabilities of the phone.

    To my experience coverage is ok in both dialog and mobitel. Mobitel guys says that they cover all major routes between all major cities. I recently had to travel around the country a lot. I was able to get good reception on both dialog and mobitel connections most of the time. When there is no 3G reception it was not there for both dialog and mobitel.
    /Rakhitha

  4. Ricky says:

    Thanks for your reply man. I actually went with mobitel’s zoom 1250 because I didnt want to have to deal with any fair usage policy. I have full coverage but the first few days my speeds were less than 10Kbytes per sec. I discovered that despite what they told me I had to actually select “WCDMA preffered’ not ‘only’ in the network.Fabulous speeds now. Happy with it so far.
    Thanks again

  5. Rakhitha says:

    Interesting. I have so far used ‘WCDMA Only’. Will see if there is a diff when using ‘WCDMA Preffered’. My issue with WCDMA preferred is, with that option when 3G signals are week (but still usable) the device (E220) switch to GPRS mode. Which was undesirable in some places that I use the connection.

  6. Ricky says:

    Yeah that’s what mobitel says happens. Maybe I’m special 😀 Or maybe the 2g signal is pretty strong in my area? Anyway you try and post.