How do I put this?

I do not have statistics for the rest of the world, but I do know that in my experience here in Nigeria, using GPRS/EDGE for almost anything is a painful experience.

In my opinion, the least internet capability of any device that you want to use for web browsing, social networking and/or instant messaging should be 3G. Add 3.5G/HSDPA and that’s even better.

But my experience is just that. Can everyone share their experiences and point out the following:

Have you used GPRS/EDGE exclusively on any device?

What device was that?

Where? Your location.

How stable was it?

How usable in terms of speed?

Would you recommend a GPRS/EDGE only device to someone looking to get online via mobile?

Any other info welcome. The more the details you provide, the better. Thanks all!

I just got a tip-off from Shayman about new mobile internet bundles from MTN Nigeria. The new monthly plans are:

• 250MB @ N1,300, text 109 to 131
• 500MB @ N2,000, text 110 to 131
• 1GB @ N3,500, text 111 to 131

This information has not been verified by us, but I think I can stick my neck out considering the source.

The Mobility team was invited to attend the official launch of Etisalat Nigeria’s broadband mobile internet service (branded Easyblaze) at the Lagos Oriental Hotel.

Find below some key information about Easyblaze.

10 Quick Facts about Easyblaze

1. easyblaze is Etisalat’s high speed broadband internet service
2. It operates on a 3.75G HSPA+ technology that can achive top speeds of up to 42Mbps
3. HSPA+ means – High Speed Packet Access
4. HSPA+ is the latest release of the 3G technology versions
5. Etisalat is the only GSM operator in Nigeria to offer 3.75G HSPA+ broadband internet service.
6. easyblaze enables Etisalat subscribers faster internet browising and downloads, video calling, live video streaming, interactive online games, live music streaming online and more.
7. easyblaze is currently accessible in Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Akwa, Nnewi, Warri, Kaduna, Kano, Zaria, Enugu, Onitsha, Aba, and Benin.
8. easyblaze has several data plans including 200MB, 500MB, 1.5GB, Night & Weekend, 3G and 6GB.
9. easyblaze is accessible using 3G enabled devices such as Smartphones, Tablets, USB modems, Routers and MiFis.

There are a number of new features available with this service as follows:

• Auto-renewal: Automatic renewal allows subscribers to purchase any of our data plans, as long as the subscriber has sufficient airtime credit in his account.
• Data Roll-Over: This allows a subscriber to rollover unused MB of the current data plan provided a new data purchase can be made before the end of validity period of the unused or active data plan.
• Product speed cap: Ability to apply cap on the speed per product and PAYG speed cap.

The Huawei U8180 Codename "Gaga" is sleek, and costs only N20,000

Apparently, Etisalat Nigeria is in partnership with Huawei for terminal supply, as a list of Huawei devices were available, including the sexy, budget Android smartphone, the Huawei U8180 “Gaga” phone, and the E5 Mifi device for connecting up to 5 devices via Wifi.

The Mifi also a Huawei product

Etisalat recently acquired the 3G license awarded to Alheri Engineering, and it seems that they have been hard at work setting things up. My Etisalat SIM now delivers 3.5G service wherever there is coverage.

Etisalat’s 3.5G network is not as extensive as their 2G network yet, but I’m hoping that they will be more ambitous in their rollout than the other networks have been.

Then, we can experience better competition in the mobile broadband space.

Airtel Nigeria has stated that they are expanding their 3G infrastructure to cover nearly 80 percent of Nigeria’s population by 2012. This is in a bid to deliver reliable and affordable Internet services to customers.

Before now, Airtel had the poorest coverage of the existing UMTS networks in the ccountry. Already, the expansion can be felt by subscribers, some of who are now seeing a 3G signal on their Airtel lines for the first time in years.

Airtel is targetting 2 million active 3G subscribers out of their total active mobile subscribers of 16 million. Airtel’s plans are a stark variance to the situation on ground with other operators. The default is that 3G is offered in only a few select cities while GPRS/EDGE is deployed in the remaining vast majority of the country.

If well implemented and supported with adequate capacity, this will make Airtel the network of choice for mobile broadband in Nigeria.

A year ago, we had published here that Etisalat was reported to be in talks to acquire the 3G license that was awarded to Alheri Engineering back in 2007.

Good news to all Etisalat subscribers – your network now has the coveted 3G license in its kitty and hopefully you should be enjoying broadband speeds shortly.

From a Vanguard news item:

EMTS, Etisalat Nigeria, announced the agreed purchase of Alheri Mobile Services Limited, a fully owned subsidiary of the Dangote Group in Lagos. Alheri Mobile is a holder of a 3G licence for Nigeria . Management sources said that the acquisition will put Etisalat Nigeria in the position of having immediate access to and full use of a 3G licence in line with the other three GSM operators in Nigeria.

CEO of Etisalat Nigeria, Steven E. Evans, said, “we are delighted to acquire the 3G licence, which is an essential element of our plans for further developing the market for mobile broadband in Nigeria.
We have placed a strong emphasis on offering data services to all our customers from launch through enabling edge on all our cell sites throughout Nigeria . Now with 3G, we can further develop our data and mobile broadband portfolio and offer our customers even higher levels of service. There is pent-up demand in Nigeria for broadband and we intend to be leaders in satisfying it.”

Here’s to more competition for the other GSM operators already running 3G networks, and in particular Airtel whose 3G coverage has been very limited, to say the least.

Full news item: In two years of operation, Etisalat Nigeria acquires 3G Licence

Thanks to Keweno for the tip-off.

Modern smartphone users want larger, brighter and crisper displays, and more powerful processors that power fluid user interfaces and a long list of features. In addition, we want our phones to stay connected to our email servers and social networks round the clock, and via 3G broadband too.

While the wishes of users in terms of hardware and features have been granted, unfortunately battery technology has not kept up with the pace of development of displays, processors and other features.

As such, the internet is littered with complaints of “crappy” battery life by owners of such devices as the 3GS, HD2, Nexus One, Satio and the like.

But what were we expecting? All the above-listed devices and others in their camp – including my own N900 – have a minimum of 600 MHz processors and vibrant 3.2-inch displays. Add always-on 3G or Wifi connections, and you have a recipe for relatively shorter power cycles.

Modern smartphone users simply cannot eat their cake and have it. At least not until some revolutionary battery technology shows up.

In the meantime, let me say here that battery life on those devices are really not as “crappy” as most of the complainants want you to believe. Most of them are actually capable of lasting much longer even under moderate to heavy use.

For example, I read a smartphone user’s complaint about how he cannot get 6-8 hours out of one of today’s cutting-edge mobiles. Yet, with a little knowledge and sensibility, he would easilly get 20-30 hours out of it.

Many times, people who complain of terrible battery life on their devices are doing so from a point of ignorance. With a few tips, smartphone users can easilly get an extra 10-12 hours per charge from their devices.

Amazing, right? Now that I have your attention, here are a few tips for getting better battery times out of your shiny new smart toys.

Charge your battery for at least 6 to 10 hours the first time
Yup, the first time you charge your phone, keep it connected to the mains for between 6 to 10 hours at a stretch. Ignore that “Battery full” notification that you get after 2 or 3 hours. The battery is NOT full, so keep it connected. Trust me.

If you don’t do give your battery this initial extended charge, it will take longer for it to reach it’s full potential – or it never will. Once it gets used to not being fully charged that way, the rest is history…

Cycle the battery through a few times from discharge to full charge
For the first few charging cycles of your smartphone, let your battery run out completely till the phone shuts down. Switch it back on and then immediately plug in the charger till it is fully charged. Again, ignore that “Battery Full” notification. Keep it charging for an extra 30-45 minutes to get a full charge.

Thereafter, repeat this process about once a week or more to get maximum usage.

If you don’t need an application running in the background, shut it down
It is foolishness to do things just because you can. Simply because your super smartphone or mobile computer can run 60 apps simultaneously does not mean you should. The more apps you leave running in the background, the more your battery life will suffer.

My car can do 180 km/hour comfortably, but I have never ventured that far, because I understand the consequencies. Its called wisdom. If however armed robbers are after me one day and I have the highway, you bet…. Until then, I’m hovering at 100 km/hr max.

Reduce your data sync schedule
Take a second look at applications that connect automatically to the internet and determine if you really need them to connect that often.

Do you really need your RSS reader to refresh every 30 minutes? Unless those feeds are work-related, you need to get a life. Again, with all the noise about PUSH email, do you really need your email to arrive on your device in real time? Again, unless work-related, modify the sync schedule. Many times, a 1 hour schedule is okay. For a lot of people, even a once-a-day schedule is fine.

How about those social networking applications – Facebook, Twitter, et al? Do you really need to know what some guy halfway across the world just had for dinner? Right now?

When you do not need broadband speeds, stick to 2G and turn off Wifi
You know that you don’t need 3G speeds all the time. Some of you have internet access at the office. What do you need always-on 3G for? Turn it off when you don’t need it, or get an application to automate the network switching.

Wifi is also one of the greatest power hogs, so keep an eye on it like a hawk. Turn it off when its not needed.

When not needed, turn off GPS
Simple: if you are not using it, do turn it off.

Reducing the backlight
The display of modern (especially touchscreen) smartphones are huge power consumers. As such, having the brightness set to the highest option means that your battery drains much faster. If you do not need your display backlight that bright, turn it down a few notches and enjoy a few more hours of power on your phone.

Check that homescreen/desktop
The more widgets you have running on your homescreen, the more power is consumed, especially with widgets that refresh often to keep up-to-date.

Also, some of those homescreen apps e.g. Sense on HTC devicee, and Timescape on Sony Ericsson devices, among others, are huge power guzzlers. Disable (or replace) them and you might be surprised at how many extra hours of battery life you get on your smartphone.

Conclusion
Have you noticed that even people who drive SUVs avoid the bad sections of the road as much as possible? And to think that SUVs were built to handle tough terrains, right?

Bottomline, condition your battery, especially with the first couple of charging sessions.Thereafter, be sensible with your mobile usage. Just because modern smartphones are all-powerful does not mean that you must run them at full power all the time.

Pardon me but 4G does not exist – it has been invented by the press and by people with little knowledge of the mobile world and the standards being used.

To call LTE 4G is simply misleading and is contributing in moving focus away from the possibilities created by mobile broadband and over to a technological race with nothing else than the number of G’s deciding whether something is good or bad.

Source: LTE not 4G – Strand

Strand are not alone in this. Here is further affirmation that 4G does not exist, whether we are talking of LTE or WiMax:

Hakan Eriksson, chief technology officer of Stockholm, Sweden-based telecom equipment giant Ericsson, doesn’t much care for WiMAX. He doesn’t even think of it as a real 4G wireless technology — though to be fair, since the ITU hasn’t actually set the standard yet, there are no real 4G technologies.

Source: WiMAX Not Really 4G: Ericsson CTO

Ericsson’s CTO seemed biased towards affirming LTE as 4G though – understandable, seeing that his company has invested in that technology. Understandable but wrong all the same.

MobilityNigeria regulars here will remember our own article titled
LTE – Beyond HSDPA/HSUPA in which we stated that “…LTE is more of an upgrade or enhancement of 3G technology the same way that EDGE is an enhancement of 2G technology..”

As such, the HTC EVO 4G is not really a 4G device. But who cares? The power of misinformation.

Both MTN and GloMobile offer 3.5G-based mobile internet services in Nigeria. They both regularly claim to offer the fastest 3.5G service in the country.

Members of our team use both services extensively and here we present a few observations from our use of both of them.

MTN 3.5G delivers a significantly faster browsing experience than Glo 3.5G
With MTN, we observe speeds of over 250 Kb/s regularly, though it can slowdown to almost unusable speeds at certain hours of the day – especially between 9 and 11pm.

On Glo 3.5G, we get between 70 and 150 Kb/s, plus we also observe that there are times it gets unusable too. However, there does not seem to be a fixed period that these downtimes occur. As a result of the slower speeds on Glo, downloads and video streaming are not quite as pleasurable as obtains via MTN.

MTN 3.5G often has issues with secure browsing
By secure browsing, we mean accessing encrypted websites and webpages with the https prefix. Every now and then, such sites simply are inaccessible on MTN internet.

MTN’s error 3180 issues
A problem has cropped up recently while using MTN 3.5G. When attempting an action that requires either a login or a form submission on a WordPress installation, “:3180″ is inserted in the URL string and results in the page not loading.

We are certain that the above are not indicative of all that there is to the two 3.5G mobile services, so if you have experienced any other issues or noticed other merits of either services, do feel free to post them in the comments section below.

GSM operator, GloMobile has upgraded their prepaid bundle mobile internet packages, giving subscribers more value for their money.

Click on the image for a larger screenshot.

The Always MAX package now offer a 5GB data cap instead of the 3GB it had before.

Always MIN now offers 1.5GB as against the old cap of 1GB.

Always Day now offers 150MB as against the older figures of 100MB and 50MB.

Lastly, G 300 now offers 4GB data in place of the old cap of 3GB.

Thanks to Timmy lawal for the tip-off.

GloMobile has just stepped up the stakes in the mobile internet service landscape of Nigeria. It seems that Nigerians are beginning to enjoy some of the benefits of Globacom’s submarine cable. The current bundle plans from Glo are without doubt the most competitive in the market.

A huge thumbs-up to Glo.

PS: Is it only at our end that MTN GPRS/EDGE/3G/3.5G went AWOL today? We haven’t been able to get a single data connection on the MTN network since mid-day till now. On a day that Glo is glowing so bright (pun intended), the MTN data blackout at our end looks really black.

A revised edition of the free ebook, Guide to Mobile Internet in Nigeria (first published in June 2009), is now available for download, as lots of information have changed since its initial publication.

A revised version is now available for download

A staff member of ours was at Ikeja in Lagos to carry out some business. Because of a new development on ground, he suddenly needed to check up some facts online.

Unfortunately for him, there was no cyber cafe in the vicinity. Well, he had on him a lower mid-range GPRS-enabled feature phone with a regular phone keypad. Thinking it would be a snap to get the required information on his handset, our man launched the browser and slowly typed out a search engine address. It took another few painful minutes for the phone’s low-end browser and his network’s GPRS connection to load the desired page.

Then he typed out his search keywords and hit the “Search” button. Five minutes later, he was still staring at the same page. Six minutes. Seven minutes. Ten minutes. Nada.

Well, he never did get the information he needed.

This incidence reminded us that there is not one factor responsible for a pleasant mobile web experience.

Network Data Capabilities
There is no doubt that if the phone in question had been 3G or HSDPA enabled, the search would have been smoother. The extra speeds available via 3G services would have made some difference, surely.

Browser Capabilities
Another factor is browser capability. Had the browser been a more decent application, surely we can expect better performance.

Text Input
Typing out fairly long strings of text with a regular mobile phone keypad can be painful and frustrating. SMS shorthand won’t help here because your search keywords have to be accurate. A hardware QWERTY keyboard, handwriting recognition or virtual QWERTY keyboard on a touchscreen certainly will help here.

Phone Processing Power
We all know that phones with powerful processors make everything – including loading of webpages – speedier. As such, phones with lower processing power may just lack that extra burst of energy that you may need for those quick searches and forays on the web when you are out and about.

This combination of factors, we believe, are the most vital in getting a good mobile web experience. While we are not expecting that people will need to use these features on their mobiles everyday, perhaps it is not such a bad idea that they think of the odd times that these functionalities may come in essential when thinking of their next mobile phone.

The user interface is another factor that deserves a mention, but that is a discussion for another day.

If you use the internet as a source of information, think about these things:

• Network Data Capabilities
• Browser Capabilities
• Text Imput Mechanism
• Phone Processing Power

Did we leave out anything?