Problem with the suntel phone lies with Aiji brand CDMA phone which is often disconnects even within 20 seconds of inactivity. Suntel apprently has switched to Huawei Brand CDMA phone that doesn’t suffer with this problem and transfer the data at high speed. I have not done a full test bet when comparing two service provides both CDMA phones should be identical otherwise we get misleading results.

My personal experience I would sugget you guys to go for Huawei brand rather than with Aiji or ZTE where these brands have a maximum speed 115.2kbps while Huawei is 230.4 kbps.

Well Suntel offers low rate for the internet between 6.00 pm to 7:00am.

WiMax does not offer both the high speed and the extended range well what is possible is that either somebody lives close to the tower will get more speed while the person who lives in the border gets slow connection which is true in CDMA as well where speed is often depend on the signal strength.

I do find the certain bittorrent downloads as faster like downloading ubuntu linux and I think there should be some guys seeding the Linux torrent from Sri Lanka as well.

I have contacted SLT, who did not reply, Suntel likewise and Lanka Bell gave a figure of between 14 and 115 KBps!!

Having attempted to setup a SLT Citylink CDMA phone with a PC by international voice call instruction (as none is given by SLT), with a friend in Rambukkana, Kegalle area has been extremely frustrating, firstly the serial RS232 cable supplied at additional costs did not work, I then contacted the manufacturer of the CDMA telephone in Korea, AIJI Systems, who answered expediently and informed me that SLT only requested serial connection cables.

Following a long struggle and no luck, and no advice or sensible suggestion whatsoever from the SLT Helpdesk, other than “there must be something wrong with your PC”!! I advised my friend to buy a Serial to USB connection from a PC shop in Colombo, which was purchased and worked immediately it was connected with the phone, and connected to the internet.

This is now where the problem arises with knowing the existing data speed and expectations, as although the phone connects (as per a dial up connection), it stops there! ANY Downloads and updates to software will not work and “time out” likewise POP3 mail will not send or receive using Microsoft Outlook, and browsing is abysmally slow.

Do you have any suggestions please with respect to true data transfer speeds using the current CDMA technology, and is SLOW data connection the aetiology of the problem described above?

All the CDMA providers boast high speed internet connection but is this the reality for the customer?

Best Wishes

As for the intl pipe, I think SLT uses a separate connection from Suntel, Lankabell, etc.. At least I hope they do.

If you have ADSL you should get a real speed of between 200 – 450k – which translates to downloading at about 10 – 40kbps (depending on time of day)

Best way is to test your connection at an uncongested time (e.g. late night) here
http://homepage.eircom.net/~leslie/testpage/testlrge.htm

If you have ADSL home, you should get around 300kbits upwards… Though, of late, this figure is dropping…

No matter what you do on the last mile, if the intl pipe isn’t allocated better (note allocated, the capacity is there) it doesn’t matter if the end-user connects via WiFi, CDMA or carrier pigeon. It’ll still be slow.

Also, from what I hear WiMax is targeted more for internal connectivity (connecting routers, etc) than end-users. The WiMax standard isn’t even agreed upon yet, Intel is partly just testing it here.