For the past 2 months Celcom 3g constantly switches between HSDPA and WCDMA after 5 to 10 minutes of connection. Once the cycling between connection modes starts you cannot browse and must disconnect then reconnect, then wait a few minutes – repeat.

I contacted Celcom to find out what the problem was and they replied that they were ‘very sorry’ but that they were performing upgrades and I would be experiencing this problem through June. The service is quite expensive by local standards, 26 USD per month for up to 5GB of transfer monthly. I asked them to stop billing me until the service is reliable.

They called back 2 weeks later and said they can offer me a 5% discount. I let them know that I would be canceling the service if they could not offer a better discount until the time when they can offer me reliable service. I’m now waiting for their reply. Apparently the maximum discount they can offer for slow speeds is 5%. If you are calling Celcom about getting a rebate for poor service tell them your complaint is not about speed but line stability.

When HSDPA is working I am very satisfied with the service. I hope they can work something out and get upgrades completed quickly. Maxis offers mobile broadband service but I find that when you are actually mobile in a car or otherwise, Celcom service works better. For reference I experience the cycling WCDMA/HSDPA problem in PJ Section 14, Section 19 and many other parts of KL.

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That said, in my opinion so for in this part of Malaysia, Celcom has the best network for anyone that plans to use their plan while in motion or outside of major urban areas. I’ve been able to get a full HSDPA signal on high speed boats halfway to Indonesia and on a bus with nothing but palm trees viewable on the way to Johor. If you will be using mobile braodband in Nilai or Melaka you’ll be happy with Celcom HSDPA coverage.

The modems come with a driver / script package from Huawei that in general, sucks. I’ve experience several lockups and kernel panics on Leopard with the Mobile Connect app. I’ve not ditched mobileconnect.app and just use the dial-up networking in OSX combined with Cheetah to monitor the signal quality.

• Uninstall the Mobile Connect application by dragging it to the trash.
• Plug in your modem then go to network preferences and click + to add the interface (Huawei Mobile) and service type (3g)
• Click on the Configuration drop down and create a new one, mine is called Celcom3g.
• Set the telephone number to *99# and leave the rest blank.

• Click Advanced and choose Generic for vendor and GSM/3G for Model, Set APN to celcom3g if you are using Celcom otherwise set the one specific to your provider. For Maxis it is maxisbb. Maxis also requires a username and password where Celcom does not. (maxis/123)

• Click PPP and uncheck “Send PPP echo packets” under Configuration in the Settings drop down menu.

From here you should be able to connect from the menu bar rather than launching mobile connect every time and having to enter your admin password. Grab CheetahWatch to monitor signal quality and usage stats.

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After deciding on Celcom 3g, I bought the Huawei e272 from Andrew on LowYat. I’ve not had a chance to do much testing but it was very easy to set up on the Mac. The design is quite nice and looks great with the white MacBook. A bit of 2 sided velcro tape keeps it in place. I left it peeking to the side a bit so the line status light is in view. Note to designers, put the LED on the end so that the modem can sit flush to notebook screen edge keeping the LED status visible. The attached cable is also just a hair too short.

Looking forward to using the HSDPA connection on the go. Celcom supports speeds to 3.6 Mbps. The modem is capable of 7.2 Mbps.

photo by wicho

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