This is actually a combined review of O2 and Vodafone Ireland mobile broadband services since I tested them in parallel. Neither is a replacement for fixed-line BB but in certain situations, the O2 modem is extremely fast and was my winner overall.

I’ve railed against both O2 and Voda on repeated occasions for not offering decent value proper data plans on phones. I’ve also read a wide variety of opinions on the various mobile broadband offferings with Three getting the most abuse. In order to find out for myself I signed up for both O2 and Voda’s dongles on the same day.

They are both Huawei devices with the O2 one being the more modern E270. I believe the only major difference is that the E270 supports HSUPA (7.2 Mbs) out of the box but the Voda one has to be upgraded.

I ran a variety of tests over the two weeks of the Vodafone trial period (O2 offers 30 day trial). They both had pros and cons as follows:

• You can get 7.2Mbs on O2 in a variety of locations including parts of the Cork-Dublin train line
• There are far fewer delays on O2 when doing streaming media like Qik
• Both work well as a SIM in an N95-8GB phone
• Throughput on O2 was better when I tested both using a co-located mast in Bandon Garda station
• Bittorrent works on O2
• I cannot get a HSDPA signal on O2 where I live in Bandon (but I can on Vodafone)
• Both offer half price three month deals
• Voda dongle is cheaper
• O2 seems to have better coverage in general on Cork-Dublin line and can fall-back to EDGE speeds before falling further. However overall coverage on both is terrible on that line, particularly in North Tipperary
• Both have patchy coverage in general and both suffer from congestion. I can get very high speeds in Bishopstown at 7.30am but quite poor speeds at 1pm in Emmet Place.
• Remember that coverage stats are based on population not land area so large swathes of rural Ireland have no 3G let alone 3.5G
• I happily sat in the Epicurean Foodhall in Dublin today with laptop connected at 7.2MBs and its performance was not that noticeably slower than many wifi hotspots I’ve used

In the end I chose the O2 modem due to the higher HSUPA speed in many urban settings and better throughput in most of my tests. The PC software is less clunky too. I returned the Vodafone dongle and got a full refund.

I recently did some bandwidth testing on the Cork-Dublin line using iperf on a laptop and GPS on the N95. Whenever I get around to merging the two datasets I’ll publish the findings on Google Maps.

Pat Phelan from Cubic Telecom in Cork has kindly let me try out a pre-release version of the Cubic phone for the past few months. This device, when released, may finally shock the mobile operators into changing how the gouge their customers.

The phone is at the low end in terms of features except for two important things. The first is that it has built-in Wifi and the second is that (like the MAXRoam SIM) you can have a multitude of international numbers on the phone. It is a rebranded Pirelli DP-L10.

The Wifi means that if you are connected to a home wireless network or public Hotspot, you can make calls over Wifi and receive them too! This drops the cost for both incoming and outgoing to almost nothing. Given that wireless is becoming ubiquitous in most cities, this could result in massive call savings for mobile users.

The multiple numbers means that you can register e.g. a UK number, an Irish number and a US number. You then give the relevant number to those who call you from those countries. Now they are making an international call to you but it’s only costing them the price of a local call.

I don’t know if the entire pricing structure has been defined but the ballpark numbers seriously undercut the incumbents.

Downsides? There is only a mickey mouse camera built-in which doesn’t work, predictive texting is clunky and there is no bluetooth. But based on the release price that I heard (which will include a MAXRoam SIM), this phone will be a steal!

The only difficulty I see at the minute is the confusion between the phone, the SIM and Wifi. What costs what for whom? Which uses callback etc? When I call someone, which system is being used? I have to admit I get mixed up when trying to describe all the options to people.

I don’t know the release date for this product but I expect it to fly off the shelves given the cost savings and usefulness for anyone who makes/receives international calls. 

We’re doing some playing around with video reviews right now and what better thing to try it out on than the saviour of the Irish tech industry.

Digg It

I headed over to Amsterdam on Thursday for TheNextWeb and kicked it off with a short stint at the first International OCC. There was a large group of attendees of multiple nationalities and the banter flowed. We had a quiet night of the Irish Mafia that night with Nooked, PollDaddy, PutPlace and LouderVoice in attendance.

The event was held in a wonderful building called The Tuschinski Theatre – a gem of a theatre with beautiful decoration everywhere. My first pleasant surprise was that this was not going to be a huge mob conference like Le Web 3 so the chances of finding who I wanted to talk to were much higher. The three guys were decked out in white so you could spot them from 100 metres away!

Throughout the whole day everyone was eager to network and I had wonderful conversations with people ranging from the Ziki guys to the Widsets guy.

Scott Rafer was a total pro as the MC and had a great lightness of touch when the odd thing went screwy. The first speaker of the day was Saul Klein and his topic of “Why Europe needs to seed the growth of its new stars” is one very dear to my heart. A storming start to the conference!

The two old farts Canter and Clavier really added to the whole day with their Statler & Waldorf routine. Apart from the humour, they made some good incisive comments on the startups who did showcases on stage. On a side-note, why were these not announced a week before as promised?

Jeff gave a great talk but I missed Deborah Schutlz which I’m annoyed about. I saw bit of Tapan Bhat’s talk but to be honest it sounded like the usual corp-schtick and washed over me without me noticing.

Tariq Krim had flight problems and looked wrecked but I thought his presentation on the widgetization of everything was a killer and it really got me going. Particularly considering my earlier conversations with Widsets and PollDaddy.

The Speed Pitching session was in danger of collapsing in disorganisation due to tons of no-shows but the guys pulled it together and it ended up being the highlight of my day. Four minutes to each of three VCs really focused the mind. My only tiny criticism was that they were not critical enough. I was hoping to be scorched but all the feedback was encouraging!

Dick Hardt gave the classic Dick Hardt presentation. I was very surprised to see that many of those sitting near me had clearly never seen him in action. I had thought everyone had watched those videos online. Unfortunately, whilst I love the style, I came away from that unsatisfied. It was less Identity 2.0 and more Identity 101. He needs to add depth and I don’t know how you do that in such a rapid-fire style.

The only showcase which really stuck in my head was Respectance. Initially I thought it was one of the worst ideas of all time. I was expecting it to be monetized via ads for coffins. But the more I think about it, the more I think they may have a winner. I want to write about my late Grandaunt and whilst I’ll probably do it on my blog, I may give Respectance a go too. The CEO needs to learn how to use his laptop tho!

Felix Petersen was a no show but I didn’t notice as I cannot shut up talking about LouderVoice. I returned to the main room for Rod Beckstrom. This looked like it was going to be some slick sales pitch but was a wonderful eclectic race through a bunch of ideas, stories and biography. I’ll be buying The Starfish and The Spider this week as a result. There was a hard deadline on ending the event which was a terrible pity as I could have listened to Rod for another hour.

Very little downside on the day. A few things – where the hell was Arrington? His name is still on the site and he is bitching about the Plazes guy being a no-show? And the demo booth idea didn’t really work for me. I had been disappointed not to get a slot for LouderVoice (particularly when 4 were given to sponsors) but seeing it in action cleared that up for me – too tight and cluttered.

I headed home right after the gig so I missed the meal and the party. All reports are that it was a wild night. Damn!

Well done Boris, Patrick and Arjen. I’ll definitely be back next year.