Millenicom Wireless: a review and test

Now we know the true reason why you were getting poor miles!

 

does anybody play playstation or xbox360 online with this? If so is the connection strong enough so there is no lag while playing?

 

Millenicom represents multiple carriers (Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, Clear, believe others upon request). Speaking from my experience with the Millenicom/Verizon version:

Haven't done online gaming but have done occasional live video streaming or big downloads. Download/upload speeds and latency(response delay) are dependent on:

1) Does the tower you are accessing have heavy duty data feeds? By major highways and big cities speeds are faster because their may be multiple T-1 or even a T-3 high speed data line hooked up. In rural areas there may only be a single T-1 or possible a cable or microwave link feeding it in very rural areas, so speeds will be slower. Example of around 1 mbps download by my rural home in North Granby, CT, around 1.5-2.0 mbps download by my office in a major office park in Windsor, CT near I-91, and close to 2.5 mbps when I was at the Houston, TX airport a couple of weeks ago. Uploads are usually at a slower speed than downloads, but are usually respectable.

2) How many people are accessing the tower. It's a shared resource. More people doing heavy duty data tasks (whether for business or pleasure), mean the average speed drops.

3) How strong the signal is. In a very weak signal area, some people may use a third party bi-directional amplifier (e.g. Wilson, Cyfre, etc.) and an antenna hooked up to their wireless modem to improve their signal and the data speeds.

4) Latency (I think it's the speed it takes for a signal your computer sends to get a response from the server it connects to) varies but usually is good. The exceptions I've seen where with the late unlamented Slingshot broadband service that I had bad latency when roaming off-network (no relation to Millenicom) or sometimes when in far flung areas (remote islands like in Hawaii trying to access servers on the mainland or marginal high speed connections on some Caribbean islands).

5) Is the tower you are accessing high speed capable (e.g. 3g or the newer and somewhat faster 4g towers)? With Verizon, they have a very comprehensive 3g data service and some areas are also now 4g. With AT&T (used to use by tethering to a cellphone a couple of years ago) I would get 3g in some areas but EDGE slower service in many other areas that was faster than dial-up but would be ill-suited for video streaming or gaming.

6) Are they doing maintenance on the tower you are accessing? If so, speeds may be reduced while they are doing the work or data services might even be temporarily unavailable on that tower. It's rare, but things sometimes break and technicians need to fix it.

Will gaming work well? If the gaming console needs a higher speed data feed like I suspect it does, the answer would be yes if you've got 1.5 to 2.0 mbps download speeds where most commonly used. If a slower connection around 1.0 Mbps or less it would probably work but you might have a sluggish response that would likely be frustrating (speaking from trying to do the occasional live news video feed in rural areas on slower connections).

 

The latency (ping time) is the most important factor in gaming.By gaming, I mean WoW, a first person shooter, XBox live, etc. An EVDO connection will vary from 400-1500 kbps, but that's not the important number. The ping time is. On that, it varies by all the factors listed above. At best, you'll get 120 ms ping time. Anything from 120-250 ms gaming you are going to have a positive experience, with some minor lag. It won't be as ideal as a good wifi connection, but it's playable. Anything over that, well, you just find something else to do. I'm no network expert, but the trend I've been seeing is that the more traffic a tower is getting, the higher the ping time. If I'm parked inside a large city, or a crowded truck stop with 5-10 Mifis listed in the available hotspots around you, then I usually don't expect to do any gaming. The best results seem to come from those days when you have a tower all to your self.

 

That is an excellent post sir. Your are right on the money.

 

Hmmm, some thoughts on potential solutions if the ping/latency is too high and/or the download speeds are too slow:

1) It might be possible to have a primary and a secondary wireless provider for a reasonable price. Thinking Millenicom/Verizon as the primary, and a prepaid provider such as Virgin Mobile/Sprint Broadband2Go as the secondary. This might be feasible because a Broadband2Go modem can be kept dormant for up to one year before the modem is deactivated for non-use. Or you could just tether to a cellphone on a different carrier as a backup if the phone has high speed data capabilities and data is reasonably priced on it. Would give an option if one carrier is being used more heavily.

2) Use a small directional antenna and a bi-directional amplifier to point at a more distant tower that is more lightly loaded than the one nearest you.

3) Possibly the very techie solution of using a cellular router that can take more than one wireless broadband card (e.g. a Verizon and an AT&T card) and has load balancing firmware to run them simultaneously. This might increase throughput speed but would likely not help any with bad latency/ping.

4) Buy a hybrid 4g/3g data card. If in one of the 4g coverage areas, speeds and latency might be better(in theory...). Millenicom will reportedly be offering a 4g plan in a few weeks but does not currently ($80 for 10 gb with fallback to 3g speeds if occasionally exceed 10 gb monthly limit). I'd rather stick with my 20 gb 3g plan for $60, but the 4g plan will likely appeal to people who need the snappier performance of 4g.

Comments or other ideas?

 

they won't kick you off as long as you pay the extremely high overage charges

 

they will never kick you off as long as you pay the extremely high overage charges

 

i have used millenicom for over 3yrs now..they started out great, but since the launch of 4g, the 3g has become very very slow..rule of thumb for 3g..the more populated the area, the slower your speed will be..we r talking dial up slow..but the unlimited service is truly unlimted..

 

I took about two years off from Millenicom because the tethering my hacked iPhone on T-Mobie got REALLY easy and I had a truly unlimited plan. Last month T-Mobile decided to boot me from their network because I "roam too much." After doing some searching it looks like this isn't all that uncommon.

Last week I went and got myself a new Verizon iPhone and I signed up for Millenicom again. I went with the 4G/3G hotspot(Verizon). Good golly 4G is fast in Seattle! About 17MB/S compared to my home Comcast at 20MB/S, or about 85% of the speed! The 3G speed is on par with what I was getting back when I had Millenicom via Sprint.

The bad news is that my overall cell bill jumped from $105 after taxes for unlimited voice/text/mms/data/tethering to somewhere around $200 for my iPhone plus Millenicom. Oh well, good deals don't always last forever.