philippe::niquille | regular niche market thoughts

After testing the swisscom unlimited card I had to try a different product from one of swisscom’s competitors: the sunrise mobile broadband card (TDC Switzerland)
I’ve been using this neat little card all over Switzerland this week and sometimes felt a bit disappointed. Sunrise does not seem to have the same strong signal coverage than swisscom - my link got killed up to five times while sitting in the train from Zurich to St.Gallen and I even had to surf at GPRS speed a few times. What a pain. And do look after your volume counter while using a vpn connection - it does not seem to capture that type of traffic (maybe because it’s a different virtual network interface?).
But let me also point out some positive aspects:

• The pcmcia card design is way cooler and handier - you can just pop off the antenna and the card can stay in the protective slot.
• You get 2GB and 1000 PWlan minutes for 49 CHF instead of 1GB (including PWlan) for 79 CHF..
• Mac OS X drivers do exist! Read this and use this tool.
• The card’s brand is “Sierra wireless” (AirCard 850) - it seems way more spread than the swisscom globetrotter card.

At last: Sunrise too hasn’t yet updated there systems with HSDPA, although they advertise it..