Testing a Cat-7 HSDPA Card In a Live Network

I recently got an invitation from T-Mobile's press center to check out T-Mobile's HSDPA network in Friedrichshafen, which has become Deutsche Telecoms open air test bed  'T-City'. There, the invitation said the HSDPA network was upgraded for maximum performance with category 7 HSDPA cards. In theory (no interference, no neighboring cells, single user, close to the antenna), such HSDPA cards are capable of speeds up to 7.2 MBit/s. Interesting stuff, so I went there to check it out.

In the local Telecom shop they let me check things out first hand with a notebook and an Option Globetrotter GT max HSDPA card which they said they had updated with the latest software. You won't see a big difference when web browsing once speeds are higher than about 1 MBit/s so I decided to download a large file from a high capacity server on the Internet. The average download speed was around 4.2 MBit/s. Quite impressive even when compared to my already fast category 6 Motorola V3xx HSDPA mobile with which I have reached 2.5 MBit/s in the past.

For more on HSDPA on my blog take a look here.