Category: 3g

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Lack of connectivity

Lack of connectivity

I know I shouldn’t be, but I am consistently and constantly surprised by the lack of connectivity that I see and find on a daily basis.

At the time of writing here in Weston super Mare I have no signal with Vodafone and just GPRS with O2.

There is a BT Wifi Hotspot, but at £5.99 for an hour I think not.

The lack of conduction means that I can’t access Google Docs to write this, also means Evernote isn’t an option. So I am using Pages, but not using iCloud, so will need to transfer the file later or when I do have connectivity do a cut and paste.

Without a decent connection I am loathe to try and deal with email. Too many people send big emails with attachments, or links which I can’t deal with on a slow connection.

Of course I could turn off the phone, but them I wouldn’t be able to write.

I could read a book, well if I had remembered to bring a physical book with me then I could have read that. I did try and read a book I had purchased from the Google Play Store, alas I hadn’t downloaded it to this device and I can say similar things about iBooks and the Kindle app.

It would have been sensible to download stuff in advance. The trouble is that unless you know already, how poor the connection is, you will be otherwise stuck.

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Flaky WiFi

Cross Country Trains

Back in October I talked about the wifi on CrossCountry Trains.

In the end I went with an £18 for 30 hours deal which I have been using since then.

I finally finished my 30 hours and it was time to renew. However at this time I have decided not to renew.

My main reason was that the last couple of hours was rather flaky and I often had dropped connections. With that kind of connectivity then I might as well rely on 3G and not pay any extra money.

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Connectivity

Today was one of those days when I needed some decent connectivity and I didn’t get it.

I was at lunch in Worcester discussing various iPhone, iPad and Android apps (as you do). However, maybe because of our location and the building we were in, my connectivity to O2 and T-Mobile were very poor. There was still a connection, but not quite what I would expect from 3G and in some cases dropped connections. This meant that the apps were not working as they should or failed to make a connection to their server.

It made me realise that many apps are very web dependent and do not work unless you have a decent connection. Sometimes with a good connection, they work great, but without it the apps are basically useless.

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EyeTV on the move

I wrote last week about how using my Airport Extreme with my new FTTC broadband.

I said then:

EyeTV has an iPad and iPhone App which have worked really well on my home network, but so far I have not had any luck accessing it away from home, even though it is correctly configured.

However I thought this was because:

I do believe though this is because of the remote network I was on. I have yet to try on a public wifi network and I suspect I will have better luck then.

Well when I was in a good 3G area I gave it a try and was pleasantly surprised that not only did it work, but the quality was pretty good too.

Not sure how it will fit in with my 3G data cap, but now and again it will prove useful I think.

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O2 WiFI Authorisation Error

One of the reasons I like the iPhone (and my O2 contract) is that it gives you free wifi access when you are in the vicinity of a wifi hotspot.

From O2

You can use Wi-Fi at home or in your office if you have it, or at any of BT Openzone and The Cloud’s hotspots.

This has the potential to be really useful, especially with data limits when using 3G.

The problem is too often these days this happens.

So what’s the solution. Well you have to revert to 3G.

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MiFi

So you want to be connected to the internet on the move? Or you need connectivity at a conference without wifi?

Yes you could get a 3G USB dongle or stick, but that only allows a single computer to connect.

What happens if you also want to connect your mobile device, a second laptop, what happens if there is more than one person and only one dongle?

In the past the solution I used was Joikuspot which was an application which ran on my Nokia N95 phone. It acted as a wireless access point, it connected to the internet via 3G and then shared that connection over the phone’s wifi connection with other devices. It was a very clever technology which made life easier for me. There were a few downsides, the main was battery life, it drained battery from the N95 really fast, so was only useful for an hour or two or when the phone was plugged into the mains. Of course this meant that I couldn’t use the N95 as a phone, as the battery would be drained. Another problem I had was with devices such as the Nokia N810 and Sony PSP which would not connect to the Joikuspot wireless network. The reason was a limitation in the Symbian software which meant that the phone acted in ad-hoc mode for wireless rather than infrastructure. The N810 and PSP had issues with connecting to an ad-hoc network. It did however work fine with the iPod touch which was how I mainly used it.

I was very interested to hear from Andy Ihnatko on MacBreak Weekly about the MiFi. A battery powered 3G wireless router. Using a 3G SIM it would connect to the internet and then allow  up to five wireless clients to connect and share that 3G connection. With a four hour battery life, could be charged via USB and about the size of a credit card, it seemed ideal. Of course I didn’t expect to see it in the UK, probably only available in the US on Verizon or Sprint…

I did an internet search (as you do) and found it on sale at Expansys (without a contract). Ordered and delivered.

Using a SIM from a Vodafone 3G USB dongle it was  very simple to set up and configure and I would recommend that you use the details from Ross Barkman’s excellent website on connection settings for GPRS/3G to save having to work out where the information is on your providers’ website.

You can configure it wirelessly, and the first things I did was rename the wireless network and add WPA2 security.

Once configured it is simply a matter of turning it on, waiting for it to connect and then connect your laptop (or other device) to the wireless network.

It works very well and felt faster than using the USB dongle!

One problem I have had is the MacBook Pro losing the wireless connection and being unable to re-connect with the result the only solution was to reboot the MiFi. I am now trying just WPA as I think it is a MacBook Pro wireless issue rather than a MiFi issue. Or it could be an issue with the fact I was on a train!

I do like the MiFi and it does what it says on the tin.

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3G-less areas mapped

So you want to use 3G and you have no idea if it’s going to be worth it.

So in London it is possible with HDSPA to get 7.2Mbps, but in rural areas you generally only get GPRS speeds and that is like a very slow dial-up connection!

Hopefuly Ofcom will be able do something about this.

The BBC News reports:

There are still significant notspots when it comes to 3G mobile coverage in the UK, regulator Ofcom has revealed.

It has pledged to investigate why some places, particularly in rural areas, are still failing to get any coverage.

It also said it will investigate mobile broadband speeds, which vary tremendously in different areas and at different times of day.

Personally I am a great fan of 3G, I was on Vodafone 3G when it first came out in 2004 and since then have used them, T-Mobile and 3.

Picture source http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin-kliehm/1352621004/

Now I know I can’t work or play without a 3G connection, if I am on holiday in an area without 3G I find it very frustrating. It’s not that I want to spend my holiday online, but so much we do these days is dependent on knowing information, opening times, route planners, online reviews, communication; without a decent internet connection you can feel a little lost. Though it has to be said to be totally internet free can be somewhat refreshing.

Hopefully one day there will be greater 3G coverage, or whatever takes over form 3G will have greater coverage.

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No BBC iPlayer with JokiuSpot on the iPod touch

If you have an iPhone and want to watch BBC programmes using BBC iPlayer, you need to be using a wifi connection, it’s not possible with a 3G (or EDGE) connection.

Of course the iPod touch only has wifi, so in theory you shouldn’t get that problem.

Oh look!

Hmmm.

So how did I manage to get that with the iPod touch?

Well I was using wifi, but I was using JoikuSpot. What JoikuSpot does is basically turn your 3G wifi mobile phone into a wireless hotspot. So the Nokia N95 connects to the internet via the 3G network and then allows wifi clients connect to it via the 802.11 wifi.

Well the BBC must know that I am accessing their server from a 3G connection and serve me up with that error message.

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Firmware 2.2 on iPod touch stops BBC iPlayer – Update

Well a couple of interesting bits of information have come my way since I posted yesterday about how firmware 2.2 on the iPod touch stops the BBC iPlayer from working.

Though Apple updated the firmware, and the BBC did not change anything, it is looking like the BBC’s platform/connection detection code is coming to the wrong conclusion.

That code according to FrustratedByiPlayer on the BBC Message Boards, looks like this.

case ‘STATE_CONNECTION_TYPE’:

// hack for demi – in case demi variables mysteriously disappear as they are prone to do.
if(data.response.DEMI_ERROR_FAILOVER === ‘true’ && _failOverCount < 3) {
_failOverCount++;
return device.connectionType();
}
else if(data.response.DEMI_ERROR_FAILOVER === ‘true’) {
_self.setState(“STATE_MEDIA_UNAVAILABLE”);
return;
};

if(data.response.ALLOWED_NETWORK === ‘true’ && data.response.IP_IS_UK_COMBINED === ‘yes’) {
_state = ‘STATE_IS_MEDIA_AVAILABLE’;
_mediaAssetProfile = data.response[_serviceType.toUpperCase() + ‘_MEDIA_ASSET_PROFILE’];
_self.setMediaAssetProfile(_mediaAssetProfile);
return mediaSelector.mtis(_versionPid, _mediaAssetProfile);
}
else if(data.response.ALLOWED_NETWORK === ‘true’) {
_state = ‘STATE_OUTSIDE_UK’;
_self.setState(_state);
return;
}
else {
_state = ‘STATE_NON_WIFI’;
_self.setState(_state);
return;
};

It is the _state = ‘STATE_NON_WIFI’; which is the result of the detection code failing to correctly recognise the iPod touch as a wireless device and thinking it is a 3G iPhone.

Note that the 3G iPhone on wifi works fine!

By adding the correct device to the detection code by the BBC web development team this should solve the issue.

Lakeuk on the BBC boards has been able to recreate the error on Firefox.

User Agent for FW 2.1.1 works:-

Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F138 Safari/525.20

User Agent for FW 2.2 gives the error everyone is getting:-

Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77a Safari/525.20

According to the BBC Message boards this message has been passed onto the BBC team.

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Firmware 2.2 on iPod touch stops BBC iPlayer

BBC iPlayer on the iPod touch is one of the best things that arrived on my iPod touch. However bad news if you upgrade to firmware 2.2, you won’t be able to access BBC iPlayer on your iPod touch!

When you try you get the following error message.

iplayerbbcerror100

Sorry, programmes can only be accessed over a wifi connection.

Hello!

The iPod touch only does wifi!

It would appear that the fault lies with both Apple and the BBC.

The BBC use a browser detection script which identifies that the user is using an Apple iPhone or an iPod touch. I would assume before firmware 2.2 that the browser identifier used by the iPhone and the iPod touch were different when on wifi compared to when the iPhone was using 3G or Edge.

With firmware 2.2 it would appear that the BBC script incorrectly identifies the wifi iPod touch as a 3G iPhone. Now this could be because of a change by Apple on the mobile version of Safari.

So alas at the moment we have no way of watching BBC iPlayer on an updated iPod touch!