Ever since bmobile and DST launched their mobile broadband offerings (Zoom! and Go!)I was interested to see which one offered the best deal. I’ve had a few weeks with the bmobile’s Zoom! service using the older modem with 3.6Mbps max speeds and did some speed tests and real world tests. In the real world tests it got frustrating at times with quite a few timeouts and YouTube videos loading only to stop loading half way. Real world download tests weren’t fantastic, typically under 512kbps which is even slower than the lowest tier E-Speed plan. My regular locations were at home in Jalan Kebangsaan Lama, and at the old airport road which is basically just across Telbru Headquarters. After a while I found out that doing a regular speed test at Speedtest.net was not giving optimal results, I would get less than 300kbps (~40KB/s) download speeds but in actual fact when I download podcasts I would get over 500kbps (~60KB/s) easily.
I found that if I do multiple downloads/connections I would be able to get faster speeds. I was able to roughly max out the modem to the full 3.6Mbps connection (but that was close to Telbru, not at home). At home torrenting some music off Jamendo managed to get up to 100KB/s but it was not consistent. Below shows a torrent downloading at over 200KB/s.
I know location and people/connection saturation are important factors for any mobile broadband connections and honestly I’m pretty jealous of David Cheok’s reports on his Go! getting good speeds in Subok
“actually.. have been getting avg 500KB daily.. last night was good coz it broke 700KB..” (via Twitter)
He also went on to say the following statement which I totally agree with:
“if downloading is your thing, Go for GO. If good response time/less lag, Zoom. Even better, espd.” (via Twitter)
That also brings me to another important fact that Go! seems to have pretty bad upload speeds (up to 20x less than Zoom!). If you’re planning on uploading photos or doing some streaming video from your webcam or even Skype, Go! may not be the answer you’re looking for. For anything to do with uploads, stick to E-Speed or Zoom!
Zoom! speedtests: Behind MOE (Old Airport), Jalan Kebangsaan Lama, Desa Cafe (Delima), Aman Complex, MOF
Go! speedtests: Behind MOE (Old Airport), Jalan Kebangsaan Lama, Giant
Hi,
I’ve just subscribed to the new ZOOM! unlimited plan and have been using it for a week. I’m staying in Panaga area and what I have been experiencing so far are:
1. Surfing speeds are somewhat slower than my 512kbps espeed.
2. Http/ftp downloads are rather fast (up to 200KB/s) from what I’ve tested so far.
3. utorrent indicated that there’s no incoming connections, and the max speed attained is about 50KB/s at best, whereas my espeed can get up to 60+KB/s.
4. Google Maps/Youtube speeds are horrible!
So I’m kinda puzzled when you said that your torrents can reach 200KB/s. Are you using the USB modem or you have a 3G router? And my connection seems to loose connectivity after a while even though the modem is still connected.
I’m now deciding whether I should stick to my espeed and unsubscribe the ZOOM. Any comments?
Hi Eric, I’m was using the “3.5G modem” shown in the ‘Gadgets’ section on the Zoom! page. For records sake I was using Miro on OS X. Also when torrenting it depends on the seeds and other connections. Miro did not let me see peer details (e.g. number of peers & location) so couldn’t find out which peer/peers was/were giving me good download speeds.
Does utorrent show no incoming connections when using both E-Speed and Zoom! or only on Zoom!?
Based on your findings it seems that the Zoom! experience is pretty mixed. Seems good for normal non-torrent downloading which would be great for podcast downloads but YouTube experience and Google maps is bad. To alleviate the YouTube problem you can try some services to download YouTube video such as KeepVid or Video Download Heler (if you use Firefox).
If surfing and torrenting are slightly slower than E-Speed I would personally keep it due to the high download speeds of non-torrent files, but that is my case where I download lots of podcasts. If you use Google Maps a lot and find that download YouTube videos doesn’t help or is just too inconvenient, stick with E-Speed. Hope that helps =)
Hi there,
utorrent has no problems with the incoming/outgoing connections; only ZOOM! has that problem so I guess they may have blocked the ports on their router.
Will continue to use it for another week or so before I make the final decision. I really wish I can keep it though :)
halo…now i using zooom 3.5g modem.if i change to 3.75g modem is it faster surfing n downloading????or is the same as usual.