Entel wireless HDSPA Internet: bullshit
I read a review at Fayerwayer, in which they said they had a great experience trying it. Entel was also announcing a limited time offer available just for December which consisted in unlimited traffic for a flat monthly fee of $29.990 (like €41). So, I signed up.
They assigned me a ZTE MF622 3.5G USB modem, and it worked great, for a while. December was the golden age for my mobile Internet. Download speed was great, reaching 130 Kbps. In direct download from Rapidshare. I could be connected for days without losing the ppp link. I chatted all the way to Santiago on a bus from Viña del Mar. I even used Google Earth to find an empanada deli in the highway, while my mother ran my bimmer to 180km/h (like 120 mph).
But, just as in every relationship, it started to fail, just when I was falling in love. By late January, the low downloads speed and ppp dialing fails became just too much. I made so much noise in Entel, submitting tikets and complaints, that the company changed my modem to a Sierra Wireless Aircard 875U. They said that “Mac computers had troubles with ZTE modem”. I own a Macbook running Leopard so I believed them, even when it seemed to be more of an internal rumor than a technical fact.
Actually getting the new modem was like the seven tests of Hercules. They had ran out of Sierra cards at all shops, so I had to go a bunch of times to Entel. At the end, they managed to get me a card only available in Entel La Dehesa (I’m still grateful of the saleswomen from Entel Las Condes). Meanwhile my business’ partner was trying to change his modem too (same problem, same company). He had to wait like a month to get a Sierra card.
When I first used the Sierra card, the change was remarkable. I was still having some problems, but much less than before. The torrent download was never the same again, but I was able to navigate again, to use MSN and check my email. That was all I asked for to the XXI century for me. The connection in the route Santiago – Viña del Mar was never like before, it would disconnect at some stretches of the highway or reestablish all tcp connections.
At mid April, it started to fail at home, specially in peak hours. First on Sundays, between 20:00 and 24:00 hrs, and then every day at 19:00 hrs. Some times I was unable to establish the ppp connection, when I could finally connect, I couldn’t load web pages, because it wasn’t able to make dns lookup o tcp connections.
I made a couple of complaints to Entel, and they asked me to check my Sierra card. Meanwhile I was using, during that week, the Huawei E226 instead, a modem which doesn’t have official drivers for Leopard, but pirate drivers did work very well for me. When my Sierra card was back from the technical service, the people from Entel said to me: “the modem is ok, and we have a technical failure”, but they where unable to give me an estimated date of repair. Until today many many users of Entel’s mobile broadband are still getting problems to connect.
All opinions are welcome at comments. If you have something to say, please do it.
En buen Chileno: Entel banda ancha móvil: blasfemia
Nahuel @ June 8, 2008
Nice, Nahuel!