T-Mobile’s webConnect Rocket USB Laptop Stick is aptly named because it’s a mobile broadband missile. On the outside, it offers a similar appearance to the current 3G webConnect USB adapter that T-Mobile sells — a USB interface, software included on the device for plug-and-play installation, and a microSD memory card slot. It’s what’s on the inside that shoots you to the moon — a 3.5G radio that maximizes bandwidth on T-Mobile’s upcoming 21 Mbps network. I got a chance to test this device on T-Mobile’s 21 Mbps test network and it was blazing fast! Here I show off a speed test, podcast download and 720p YouTube stream over the 3.5G network. And I couldn’t help myself by testing a Google Nexus One on the network while I had a chance = 4 Mbps downloads!
zsmorr92 says:
That’s faster than my Uverse…
February 17, 2010, 4:52 amrhoa23 says:
Wow dude you just made my day. I’m anticipating the upgrade supposedly coming this sunday. I live in Miami, and my nexus one right now averages 500Kpbs… so for it to get a 500% increase is huge to me. What I don’t get though is why if the N1 is 7.2 HSPA enabled, cant we hit those speeds if the network is running at 21megs?
March 11, 2010, 1:40 amTheGogetassj says:
bahaha….
March 28, 2010, 3:40 amur nexus one is faster than My running my wifi….n urs on a mobile network…lmao
bkpadilla says:
7 mbps is fast. I don’t know why everyone keeps saying 21 mbps though. HSPA+ is pretty much 4G at least for mobile phones. WiMax and LTE are going to replace cable internet and DSL internet though in just a few years. Supposively LTE will be more efficient for phones so we’ll see what happens.
April 23, 2010, 12:37 pmLivingInDa978 says:
@rhoa23 yes you can, but it probably wont happen since t mobile still caps their per-cell speeds at 3.6Mb/s for single-cell towers and 7.2Mb/s for dual-cell towers (the fastest HSPA and HSPA+ installations use two parallel cells, over a total of 20MHz bandwidth.. this is called carrier aggregation).
May 13, 2010, 7:35 amLivingInDa978 says:
@bkpadilla yes 7mbps is for the HSPA upgrade and the reason you hear people claiming t mobile has 21mbps is cause t mobile is upgrading their network again which is called HSPA+ and this one is on its final stages t mobile announced it would be launched sometime this year.
May 13, 2010, 7:44 amHSPA+ is currently the fastest 3G data network speed currently possible, at a whopping 21Mbps. It was tested in Philadelphia earlier this year, and according to T-Mobile, HSPA+ will be launched sometime this year.
cmikecs says:
I’ve getting a consistent 800kbps-1000kbps in Cleveland right now. The T-Mobile 3G network has been down intermittently for about a month up until just a few days ago. I’ve asked my T-Mobile people and some of them said that it’s due to the HSPA+ upgrade.
Will I see faster speeds when HSPA+ does get turned on in Cleveland on my non HSPA+ 3G devices such as my Nexus One? How does this upgrade happen? Do all the towers get bandwidth increases? All turned on at once?
May 26, 2010, 1:11 amsouth02m says:
i think its that fast because there not many people using it……. once everyone has a phone capable of 21mbps, the speeds will suffer…. like they always say… CAPABLE of 21mpbs, not real world numbers
June 7, 2010, 5:05 am