Austria: Orange's Datenpaket

[mkubo]

I am planning to visit Vienna on October. I need data prepaid and think Orange's Datenpaket L would be convenient for me.

I have W-CDMA 1800/2100 Wi-Fi router (unlocked) and would like to use it if Datenpaket L supports W-CDMA. Would anyone else here advise me whether I can use my router or not?

In addition, I would like to buy Orange's and eety's SIM at Vienna International Airport upon arrival. Does anyone know where can I buy these?

I have been searching useful info for a while and finally found PrePaidGSM; a great site for me

[norbi]

Hello , we have no W-CDMA in Austria sorry... For data i think you can use

from 3 internet to go....

www.drei.at - Tarife - Internet ToGo

or

Ge-org from MediaMarkt

and for international phonecalls

wowww.at - WOWWW!

eety.at

or www.yooopi.at

[inquisitor]

Of course there's WCDMA (also called UMTS or 3G) in Austria and all four operators support it at 2100 MHz. As of the 1800 MHz-band allthough it has been specified as UMTS frequency band III I've never heard of any operator on this planet running a UMTS-network at 1800 MHz nor have I ever seen compatible user equipment. That's why I assume that your router supports GSM (GPRS/EDGE) at 1800 MHz but not UMTS. In Austria besides UMTS at 2100 MHz, they have widespread GSM networks running at 900 and 1800 MHz.
Anyway GSM is a 2G network technology with modest bandwidth (max. 236 KBit/s through EDGE), so GSM is only of interest if you move outside 3G-coverage. In this case it would be better if your device supported GSM at 900 MHz than 1800 MHz, which provides further range and indoor penetration due to the physical properties of lower frequencies.

[mkubo]

Hello norbi,

I found a coverage map. According to this info, as inquisitor says, Orange and other major operators offer WCDM/2100. As I will visit Vienna and its suburbs, as long as Datenpaket supports both WCDMA and GSM, it will be fine for me.

Hello inquisitor,

First of all, "1800" was my typo. I checked again and its "800" as you pointed out.

Do you know Orange (and other operators) support both WCDMA and GSM with single SIM?

Because there is no operataor in Japan that supports WCDMA and GSM, I am afraid whether I can use my wifi router in service area of WCDMA.

[mkubo]

Thank norbi and inquisitor,

'1800' was typo and correct value is '800' (Band VI).

I found this and confirmed my router may be used.

Japan is a very strange company, as you know. There is no GSM based service. So I would like to know Orange's SIM supports both WCDMA and GSM or there are several types of SIMs; one for WCDMA and another for GSM. This may be stupid question but could anyone tell me about this?

Thanks in advance.

[inquisitor]

I see. The 800MHz band isn't used in Europe for cellular networks at all, neither for GSM nor UTMS, so the 2100MHz band is the only one useful for Europe.

UMTS is derived from GSM and so there's only a single SIM for both networks, so you will be able to use your 3G-router flawlessly.
Actually GSM and UMTS networks are pretty much integrated and as a result a GSM/UMTS-compatible phone will seamlessly jump (without calls or data sessions dropping) from GSM to UMTS networks and vice versa depending on which network is available.

Since in Europe we have historically established widespread GSM coverage and all UMTS phones sold here are also GSM-compatible, network operators do not provide a 100%-coverage with UMTS. UMTS is rather used as an overlay on GSM-coverage in urban areas. While in Japan UMTS networks are designed to cover the whole country because the 2G "PDC"-network has been switched off this year, in Europe we still keep our 2G GSM networks alive and so network planners still leave places only covered by GSM here and there. Such (small) places (especially indoors) may even occur in urban areas where it's uneconomical to install a UMTS basestation while GSM-coverage suffices. So e.g. you may have only GSM coverage at your hotel room or in the metro.
That's why you should expect dead zones when using a UMTS-only device in Europe. In Austria there's one exception and that's the network operator "3", who as the only Austrian operator does operate only a UMTS network but no GSM network - they probably have less dead zones in urban areas than other operators may have.
But perhaps your 3G-router is GSM-compatible (like more and more Japanese phones become). If you told us the make and model we could check this out.

[kuba.g]

I have yet to find a place without KPN 3G coverage in The Netherlands Even on the train it always works. (I normally keep my phone on 'force WCDMA' and I only loose my signal in tunnels).

The same story applies to Sweden with their superior Sweden3G network.

[inquisitor]

The Netherlands are flat as a pannekoek and densely populated, which makes it easy and economical to cover the whole country and in Sweden they have UMTS running also at 900MHz, which provides up to four times higher signal range (and in terms of covered area you have an even stronger effect as the covered area results from the range (r) squared and multiplied by π resulting in a roughly 16 times larger area covered; covered surface = πr²) than UMTS at 2100 MHz and so makes it pretty easy and cost-efficient to provide nationwide UMTS coverage, since you theoretically need only one-sxiteenth of basestations to cover the same area.
But of course Austria has traditionally been a leading nation in cellular technology and were one of the first to roll out UMTS, later HSPA and then HSPA+, so my objections of UMTS-dead zones may be exaggerated.

[norbi]

I think nobody use orange in Austria for data the best one is 3 www.drei.at - Weiterleitung zur Startseite .........

[eberg]

My unlocked Nexus S is U.S. based, but I have need of a prepaid card in Austria 2-3 months at a time. Considering both data and flexibility (including European roaming), is there an obvious best choice for me to consider?

Thanks