Data cards go head to head

A TechEd visitor (left) with Vodafone's Fraser King (centre) and Telecom's Gary Rogers.

Microsoft's TechEd developers' conference in Auckland last week proved to be a high-speed race for credibility in the competitive market for mobile data cards.

During a break in proceedings, Vodafone's marketing manager for data products, Fraser King, challenged Telecom's data solutions manager Gary Rogers to the electronic equivalent of a drag race, in which he pitted his Vodafone 3G data card against Telecom's equivalent T3G card.

Both cards allow users to connect to the internet and their company networks at high speed whenever they are in 3G mobile coverage. There is hot debate as to which is the better buy overall.

Telecom, which was able to download files faster, claimed the race as a victory for its card.

"If you bring a pocket knife to a gun fight, that's what happens," said Rogers of Vodafone's 3G data card. "I was disappointed with [Vodafone's] network's performance."

Rod Drury, the chief executive of technology startup Aftermail, watched the tests and agreed.

"[Vodafone] broke the cardinal rule of comparison testing. Never go into a contest you're not going to win," he said of the speed challenge, which he wrote about on his website, Drury.net.nz.

The speed debate spilled into the forums of the Geekzone technology website (see link below).

While files were downloaded faster via Telecom's card, Vodafone's network also lagged in terms of latency - the time it takes to retrieve information across the network. Vodafone's card was also slower to come out of dormant mode, which both cards go into when they are not transferring data.

King shrugged off the slow re-activation time. "We are not convinced that this actually means a great deal to customers, however we will be doing some more investigating to understand this."

But Rogers said it would prove a hindrance for Vodafone users.

The furious comparisons of the 3G cards have played out at industry conferences since Vodafone entered the market last month.

The 3G data cards will be the tool of choice for mobile workforces, and Telecom and Vodafone stand to make much more money out of customers using the cards than consumers making video calls and watching TV clips on their mobiles. A lot of business is at stake.

Telecom's mobile technology has a much higher maximum speed - about 2.4mbps (megabits per second) - than Vodafone's, but usually averages between 300 and 500Kbps (kilobits per second). Vodafone's new network has a maximum speed of 384Kbps but usually connects at 200 to 300Kbps.

But Vodafone uses data compression software to reduce the size of files on web pages, allowing them to load faster, though at lower quality.

In pricing, Vodafone seems to have the edge, with a one gigabyte data plan costing $149 a month. Telecom has a 400 megabyte monthly plan for $99.

So why doesn't Telecom use compression technology to reduce download costs as Vodafone says it does? Rogers said mobile data plans allowed content to be downloaded affordably, uncompressed.

"If mobile data was $30 a megabyte, it would be a different story. It's now relatively cheap," he said.

King said Telecom had dedicated mobile capacity at TechEd, giving it an advantage in speed tests. Rogers rejected that. "We were operating on the public network," he said.

And while King admitted he was beaten in the most important performance measures, he isn't conceding defeat. In an email to Vodafone colleagues, he said Vodafone's data card was the better option overall.

"The bottom line is that we believe both networks are evenly matched from a speed perspective," King said.

"However, Vodafone's optimised network still provides significant savings over Telecom's and at times will outperform it on the speed front," he defiantly concluded, noting that Vodafone has data roaming to 31 countries, beating Telecom's reach.

Rogers said he invited Vodafone to participate in more scientific, independent tests, which he said he was confident would prove Telecom had the better technology.