I just obtained the CCU-680 from CAT telecom of Thailand.

CCU-680 delivers rev. A of the CDMA2000 EVDO technology.

After a couple of hours of testing with various equipment i must say that i consider this a considerable improvement compared to previous hardware and technologies available to me, that being the CCU-650 and Sierra Aircard 580.

1. Latency is down, pinging with frames of 1500 bytes only produces a latency of about 100-200 milliseconds to my first point of connection, before this number was around 1000-1500 ms.

2. Upload is considerably better, i am at times almost pusing half a megabit of upload.

3. Download is slightly faster.

4. The entire control of the connection seems to have improved, even when i am surfing or downloading it does not raise my latency times with any considerable amount when pinging my first point of connection.

This is most likely largely because of the faster upload. Since then TCP control frames have more bandwidth in the upstream connecting, making the connections not having to retransmit alot of data becase control frames getting lost in the stream due to congestion.

The Y-Cable was needed to get this good connection, i only had half the download and upload speeds when i did not use the Y-cable.

Also when using the Y-cable with any kind of laptop is the fact that you might need to connect to two USB ports at opposite side of the board, if the USB ports are too close they might be sharing power from the same hub.

I will update with more information later.

Cadcomm is delivering 3G in Cambodia.

For now they are delivering the WCDMA based HSDPA technology on the 2100mhz band.

HSDPA delivers broadband download, and basic upload speeds.

Sometime later they plan on delivering HSUPA wich will provide users with true broadband speed upload, aswell as faster downloads.

Here is the link for more information: 3G Cambodia

This also means that if you have a 3G capable Iphone (current release as of writing.) which is not locked down to a specific telecom provider you could use it in Cambodia.

Though in 2006 the Cambodian Prime minister and his wife supposedly wanted to ban 3G, because of morality and pornography concerns, i guess they have changed their minds since that time.

More on this here: Cambodia to ban 3G

The above article might not be 100% correct, the 3G service has now been launced, but there are limitations to video services.

This is something that will be next to impossible for them to control and stop anyways.
But when it comes to pleasing their wives i guess its the thought that counts for the said Ministers and their wives behind this.

Someone informed me that the better speeds of CDMA2000-EVDO rev. A will be provided by a firmware upgrade to the CCU-650 USB modem, and not by the CCU-680 as believed before.

I have not heard anymore information from that side.

In the meantime the CCU-680 is now available from CAT telecom.

Thank you Matt for providing me with this information: matthewfong.com

Some valuable information from a subscriber of CAT telecom further down in the comments:

The CCU-680 is available NOW in Phuket @ 10,999 baht. The monthly subscription is 840 Baht. I believe all prices are plus VAT (7%).
Strangely, since the service started I’ve noticed an increase in speed with my old 580 aircard - perhaps there’s less subscribers to it now

———end comment——–

This card will work on MacosX 10.4 and 10.5.

Aswell as Linux and most Windows flavors.

The installation routine and troubleshooting procedures should be the same as this comparable model:

CCU-680 / CDU-680 /CNU-680 installation and troubleshooting issues.

The installation is pretty straightforward, all instructions and drivers are contained on a flashdrive within the card itself.

You will most certainly need a Y-cable sucking the juice from two USB ports each delivering 5 volts rather than just 1 port of 5 volt for these revision A cards.
I am pretty sure the CCU-680 card will be delivered with a USB Y-cable.

Phuket and Chon Buri will be the first provinces to receive HSDPA/HSPA access from DTAC-CAT telecom joint venture.

–

DTAC to Launch 3G in Two Provinces

DTAC, the country’s second-largest mobile operator, is preparing to introduce high-speed packet access (HSPA) commercial services in Phuket and Chon Buri as part of its five billion baht third-generation (3G) investment plan.

A nationwide offering is expected in 2009 in line with the wider availability of HSPA devices, including mobile handsets, laptop computers and data cards, said Sigve Brekke, the chief executive officer of DTAC.

Mr Brekke said that DTAC today would submit a letter to the National Telecommunications Commission requesting approval to upgrade its analogue 850 Megahertz frequency to HSPA.

DTAC has been in talks with CAT Telecom to form a joint-venture firm to provide 3G services on the 850 MHz frequency. The NTC has also given approval to DTAC’s larger rival, Advanced Info Service (AIS) to upgrade 30 base stations to HSPA in a programme expected to cost $20 million.

“If the NTC gives us approval shortly, we can start providing HSPA commercial services by the end of this year,” Mr Brekke said. “Phuket and Chon Buri will be the first two commercial provinces for HSPA.”

He said DTAC selected Phuket and Chon Buri as they were small areas with high data communication usage and potential demand. Target customers in Phuket would be foreigners, and in Chon Buri they would be factory owners and workers. He said DTAC would provide customers a simple package concept with a possible monthly fee of 450 baht and no limit on data volume usage.

DTAC will need to install additional 1,800 HSPA base stations for nationwide services.

The company currently has 9,000 2G base stations.

Mr Brekke said DTAC planned to introduce HSPA services on a development platform consisting of network, content and handsets. Data communications services would be designed for laptop users while music, television and video streaming would be for handset customers.

He said the 850 MHz frequency offered a great advantage over others including 900 MHz due to its wider coverage and ability to work with a variety of devices.

In comparison, Mr Brekke said, WiMax on top of the 900 frequency would not work with handsets, but only laptop computers.

“I don’t understand why other operators are moving to WiMax instead of HSPA even though it can provide services on both laptops and the popular handsets,” he said.

DTAC, he added, would not wait for 3G licences from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) due to the unclear policy.

“We are definitely moving into HSPA where the technology doesn’t need a new licence, as it can be operated under the existing concession,” he said.

Source: redOrbit Technology News - 02 April 2008

This article is also valid for installation and troubleshooting for CCU-680 card provided by CAT telecom in Thailand.

For a while i have been a customer of “Nordisk Mobiltelefon/ICE” through their 3G service utilizing the CDMA2000 EVDO rev 0 technology in Norway.

Since i had been in Thailand for a while i had not used it much, when i arrived home they had a booth selling their new rev A service, so i naturally upgraded.

They provided me a CDMA2000 EVDO rev. A card for 450MHz band, they had branded it D-50, but if you look for this card on the pages of C-motech you will find it is branded CNU-680.

It is a card provided by a company very well known to me, by the name of C-motech.

C-motech is also provider of the CCU-650 and CCU-680 cards  which provides great flexibility aswell as mobility for mobile workers which needs to access the internet in Thailand.

I have tried the CNU-680 on my installation of MacosX 10.5 Leopard, i had a couple off issues with this in the beginning, but now it appears to be smooth sailing.

The documentation provided is written for MacosX 10.4, the 10.4 based documentation which is provided on files on memory within the card itself states that you should use “WWAN support” choice as the driver, if you are using 10.5 you will be using the “Franklin” driver.

I stated before that i had some issues at first, i resolved that by first deleting all of my connections for the CNU-680 card, and then i downloaded and installed

Franklin connection manager
Then rebooted, and then i ran the SwitchDriver.sh script.

Then i created the connection using the “Franklin” driver.

This connection creation will be similar to the connection showed here.

For the Scandinavian ICE/Nordisk mobiletelefon connection you will need these extra details:

dial: #777

username: cdma

password: cdma

You might or might not run into these difficulties, i have not updated my MacosX installation for a while due to poor bandwidth, and the driver upgrade provided in “Franklin connection manager” installation package might already be upstream.

Before i did those things in that order i always needed to run that SwitchDriver.sh script everytime i needed to reconnect, and it would disconnect after a short time.

There seems to be at least one company offering this very same card (CNU-680.) in another country on the same frequency in Russia, they also have branded their card D-50.

The name of the Russian company providing this service is “Sky Link”

I also notice that this company ships their USB EVDO CDMA d-50/CNU-680 card with the same way of installing it through the SwitchDriver.sh script.

This card also has a slot for a sim card, but on my card the sim card is not present.

With the service of “Nordisk Mobiltelefon” you should be able to surf all over Scandinavia with your subscription in any of these countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark).

Also i might add that “Nordisk Mobiltelefon” providing this service also was kind enough to put a freeze on my subscription while i was away in Thailand, only a quick call away.

Norwegian website for “ICE/Nordisk Mobiltelefon” is ICE - Nordisk Mobiltelefon.

Their website is sadly not in English, so if you do not speak Norwegian i do suggest you give them a call, most Norwegians are good at English.

The card is available at a Monthly subscription fee of 399,- NOK (Norwegian kroner.)

The price of the card depending on wether you will accept a one year binding subscription is either 1495,- without a binding subscription/contract or 495,- with such a bond.

A binding subscription is when you get a lower price for some hardware, but agree to a certain minimum term of using their service in return for that lower price.

In this case that term is one year.

The CNU-650 comes with an USB Y-cable for extra USB power, in my case this one was not long enough, since i only have 2 USB connectors on my laptop and they are located on opposite side of the chassis, so i had to buy a one metre extension to be able to fit it to one of the sides, but it did appear to work just aswell without this Y-Cable.

But just in case i will run into any problems if i bring it with me on the bus or the train, and if in that case it will need any extra power to respond to a faint signal or would do alot some extra computation when changing between towers, then it should have enough juice for the job.

I also saw someplace that they might offer service in Iceland and Ireland.

I might look more into that at a later time.

Latency appears to be much improved with CDMA2000 EVDOrev A compared to the former Rev. 0.

Also perhaps more on that either in this post or a later post.

Related links:
EVDO - Wireless on Bus Krabi<->Had Yai

EVDO - Wireless on Bus Phuket<->Krabi

Going back from a Visa run to Khota Baru in Malaysia and after staying a couple of days in Sungai Golok in Naratiwat.

On the train from Sungai Golok to Had Yai .

Using a connection with the CCU-650 and CAT telecom CDMA2000-EVDO network, performance is fine for some of the way, but so far it seems that you might be better off having a booster antenna, it seems the coverage is abit patchy on this stretch for upto 15-20 minutes at a time in travel time with no connection.

I just had a patch with no connection just before arriving at Ru So, Naratiwat.

Which lasted about 15-20 minutes in travel time.

Towards Yala it worked better than towards Ru so.

On Yala station it works great.

This would come as no surprise, usually mobile networks like this will be built around major roads, usually the railway are not included in such plans, so if you are putting in alot of time on the train and want to get some work done, you will probably need some amplifier or booster antenna for your CDMA card to be connected without interruption.

But you would probably still be able to get some work done, but be prepared to do a fair share of redialing if you are not equipped with a booster or amplifier for your CDMA2000 card.

The view is nice though, and a good break from any work related tasks.

You should get a similar experience with the Sierra Aircard 580, or when the new CCU-680 becomes available delivering revision A of the CDMA-2000-EVDO technology.

Additional perhaps useful information:

Sungai Golok also has at least TT&T provided internet from Maxnet, i tried this one in an internet cafeteria down there, it worked well and was responsive.

Okay boys and girls, its conspiracy time!

We have a great service in Thailand which goes by the name of CDMA2000-EVDO.

Some of the hardware provided for this network is provided by Huawei of China.

Deplyoing such a network requires licensing cost, some of the licenses for CDMA technology are owned by Qualcomm.

CDMA2000 has had a competing technology which sprung out from GSM technology, and this is generally refered to as WCDMA-UMTS.

It now appears that UMTS is winning, perhaps not such a big loss for Qualcomm though, since they also has some licensing ownership inside the UMTS technology.

I do know that CAT telecom and Huawei had some issues on the deployment of this, could this has been related to licenses which Huawei or CAT telecom needs to pay to Qualcomm?

And more importantly, is Qualcomm having an unfair advantage in owning parts of two technologies which are competing?

Huawei is an emerging player in the global market, and it is Chinese, could Qualcomm because of this have any agenda to try to damage the position of Huawei in the market?

Could it have a vested interest in halting the growth of Huawei thus favoring the two competing companies in which they are culturally more adapted to (Cisco, Juniper.)

Could it be that to this end Qualcomm obfuscated licensing issues, or raised the price unfairly to create slowdowns in deployement?

I do wonder if we will ever know the answer to this.

Or could it just be that everyone is fed up with Qualcomm, and WCDMA-UMTS is the lesser of all evils, giving Qualcomm a smaller piece of the pie.

I am sure that official correspondance would show the normal corporate cloudtalk.

Lawsuits seems to be part of corporate life.

Specifically this following one is interesting, and is in some way almost directly related to what i am talking about above:

Broadcom vs Qualcomm - unfair CDMA monopoly

Some other general ones aswell:

Broadcom vs Qualcomm 2

Nokia vs Qualcomm

Qualcomm is otherwise known as creator of the nifty e-mail program Eudora, with which i started my Internet communicating days.

Currently i am in the province of Naratiwat south in Thailand.

Been around town in Sunghai Kolok and testing CCU-650 on the CAT telecom CDMA2000-EVDO network has been a smooth experience.

This will also be true later when hopefully the CCU-680 EVDO USB card will be made available to us and then delivering revision A of EVDO.

I am also tinkering abit with the possiblity of bundling several EVDO/3G cards together and creating a faster link without having to have CAT telecom adding a multilink possibility on their service, and not only loadbalancing, but a true doubling of the bandwidth when using 2 cards.

Some keywords here, local multilink operating system capability, 3rd part site vpn server, vpn connection from local machine to 3rd party vpn multilink capable server.

On another note it is a real shame that CAT telecom will turn off this service, it really seems to cover alot of geographic area, more than in most other countries, many networks like this also seem to have alot of problems when delivering 3G to concrete buildings, but this does not seem to be true as much for CDMA2000-EVDO network in Thailand, though others might have made other observations in this regard.

But i can understand that they do it because customer support has been lukewarm, and also current development might be more narrowed into the UMTS-HSDPA path.

Specifically the turning towards UMTS-HSDPA is also more tuned into delivering service to urban areas with many users.

The physical infrastructure is already there though, and with their proposed joint-venture delivering UMTS-HSDPA together with DTAC will probably take advantage of the already existing towers and power cables.

Also this infrastructure will be a huge advantage when later building a WIMAX network, if there will be a WIMAX in the future of the Thai wireless experience.

They might have lost alot of money on this for now, but the investment should still hold for the wireless future, for quite some time.

The evolution of UMTS-HSDPA-HSUPA is called LTE, LTE is capable of delivering 100Mbps of download, this technology will be available to providers sometime in 2010.

UMB is an evolution of CDMA2000-EVDO and is the competitor of LTE, UMB technology is promising to deliver upto 280Mbps of download speed, but it seems to have lost market share, and providers now seem to be abit scared to going with this technology, which now seems to be a losing technology, which we are also seeing here in Thailand, with the fact that CAT telecom appears to be moving away from this technology.

UMB will however be available to customers already sometime in 2009, and Qualcomm might still turn their marketing machine around making this technology the winner, the future will be interesting indeed.

There are additional considerations aswell, one such consideration is the licensing of the technology, as per this date the WIMAX licensing is much cheaper than both LTE and UMB.

But wether or not this pays dividends for the developer remains to be seen, to keep up with development costs of future revisions might force the developers of WIMAX to raise their licensing costs for those future revisions.

Last Sunday i was fortunate enough to attend one of the meetings held every week by Phuket computer club.

There are some very capable computer enthusiasts attending this event every week in Phuket.

Holding information speeches about things happening in the computer world, aswell as training sessions on specific products and platforms.

Chances are that if you are wondering about something, you might find the answer or someone that can help you here.

Information about next meeting and its location can be found here:

Phuket computer meetings.

Look for “PC group therapy”.

There is a forum for the most active members found here:

Phuket computer club
Anyone can join the discussion and ask questions.

Last week at this meeting, information included the belated CCU-680 EVDO rev A from CAT telecom, and also there was a Photoshop training session.

Earlier i wrote an article about future of 3G like connections in Thailand, that original article can be found here:

Earlier 3G thailand article

Here comes some more specific information:

WCDMA/UMTS/HSDPA are terms used interchangebly within the following article.

WCDMA is the base technology used, UMTS can be seen as a revision upgrade and HSDPA is the step up from that again.

There is an additional extension called HSUPA = high speed uplink packet access, work is being done on this one to add it to UMTS for a faster upload experience.

HSDPA = high speed downlink packet access

3G is a term used to describe a fast wireless connection based on some cellular technology.

There are also other terms like 2G,2.5G,2.75G, 3.5 and 4G, but explaining the specifics of how attaining that “title” to your technology is outside the boundaries of this article, but basically 4G is faster than 2G, and 3G will be somewhere in between.

A service defined as wireless broadband would probably be labeled 3G.

Currently the GPRS and EDGE systems should not be considered either broadband or wireless broadband.

A broadband experience comes later once the providers delivers UMTS with the HSDPA extension to the technology.

Users of the 3G like service in Thailand has for a while now been stuck with revision 0 of the EVDO technology.

This service has been labelled 2.75G and by some 3G, it is borderline broadband, in a real world environment and in its revision 0 state it will give you about 1mbit download, and anywhere between 40kbps and 100kbps upload.

If you have been a CAT telecom customer, this have been delivered through either Aircard 580 from Sierra wireless, or the CCU-650 card from C-motech of South Korea.

The CCU-680 card from CAT that would deliver revision A of the EVDO technology which some of us were informed might be delivered to us in April has been postphoned untill the middle of 2008.

CAT telecom will turn off its CDMA network in due time, they are currently working in partnership with DTAC to deliver an UMTS - HSDPA service based on the WCDMA technology.

Link for joint venture details DTAC CAT telecom 3G 850MHz.

It looks like DTAC will either deliver 3G on the 850MHz band together with CAT telecom, or they will upgrade their already existing 1800MHz network to 3G.

CAT telecom will most likely keep existing EVDO service on the 800MHz band running untill the 850MHz network is up and running.

AIS on its side might deliver a 3G service of its own, on the 900MHz band.

AIS 3G 900MHz

Both providers will use WCDMA/UMTS/HSDPA as the delivering technology, this technology is incompatible with CDMA, but quite similar in design.
The most important aspect might be the fact that WCDMA can handle delivery of service to more densely populated areas than CDMA2000-EVDO.

Also a third provider “Truemove” has just received permission to do 3G testing in the band which CAT telecom are already running their CDMA2000-EVDO service.

Delivering UMTS/HSDPA in the 2100, 1900, 850 bands are the standard approach, and this also makes it easier for users to gain hardware for their roaming/connection challenges.

This is the 800MHz band though, and as AIS Truemove will use a non standard band for WCDMA/UMTS/HSDPA, which might have some limitations when it comes to roaming and hardware.

So neither AIS or Truemove at the time of writing this appears to have been able to obtain a band which is supported by “standard” equipment when it comes to the computer hardware world, but you would still be able to use 3G from these providers through a bluetooth connection on your telephone or similar, but not by way of putting a simcard into your PCMCIA or Expresscard and entering such a device into your computer.

This might in the long run not be such a big problem, i suspect we will later see older EDGE/GPRS decommisioned, and some 3G technology will probably be running on those frequencies aswell.

And we might have a more variety of expresscards and PC cards supporting various technologies on different frequencies.

Aswell as having 3G/Wimax hybrid cards.

Truemove and other 3G details for the future of Wireless internet in Thailand

As of writing this i know some shops are bundling expresscards capable of operating on all three bands of UMTS (2100, 1900, 850) with new computers, you might want to be on the lookout for these, today these cards will deliver EDGE/GPRS technology and requires a simcard inside.

Novatel Merlin XU870 is an example of such a card.

This will give you a download of somewhere around 150 kbps, and an upload of about 50kbps when using EDGE/GPRS.

Next year such a product would deliver at 3G connection at least through DTAC.

But only broadband from DTAC if using one such external card, since at the time of writing it appears that only DTAC will be in one of the standard bands of UMTS which are provided by these cards.

You will still be able to get a broadband connection through your phone, if your phone is UMTS capable and then bluetooth, but usually a dedicated card for a data connection will have a stronger connection and deliver faster data rates than your phone.

There is however no real clear playing field, and non standard networks and equipment which uses frequencies and hardware that is not in use in other parts of the world is popping up everywhere.

The prices for these hardware cards which you can conenct to your PC are usually not much more than 10.000 baht as of writing this.

And the subscription fee for wireless access and unlimited download on DTAC with EDGE/GPRS is 999 baht per month.

What their 3G fee will be is unknown.

UMTS with HSDPA claims maximum download speeds of 7.2mbps, but in a real world scenario we might see half of that.

Currently the upload i have seen is not that strong with UMTS and HSDPA, the upload is around 300kbps and slower, but there is another extension to UMTS that might arrive later, this is called HSUPA, this extension will add “broadband” upload capabilities.