Broadband DiGi Internet by DiGi Telecommunications offers Internet surfers even more choice of wireless broadband connectivity while on the road, in the office or at home and we recently got hold of the Extreme package to try out.

The Extreme package is DiGi Broadband Internet's fastest, with advertised average speeds of 2Mbps download and 500Kbps upload speeds but for a rather hefty price of RM188 month for the privilege, though you get an RM20 discount per month if you buy your own modem.

The package has a monthly data volume transaction limit of 20GB with no additional charges beyond that, though DiGi's website says “a fair use policy applies,” which could mean that your speeds beyond the 20GB limit could be slower during the rest of the month. However, we believe that we more than exceeded the limit in our tests but noticed no slowdown.

It comes with a Huawei E230 HSPA-USB (High Speed Packet Access) modem of up to 7.2Mbps maximum download speed and up to 4.5 Mbps maximum upload speed. Unlike other operators which only offer HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) with high download speeds, the DiGi's Extreme package also supports high upload speeds over DiGi's network which also includes High Speed Upload Packet Access (HSUPA)

The modem driver and dialler software for Windows 2000, XP & Vista, as well as for the Apple Mac OS come within the modem and the installation process begins when you plug it into your PC for the first time.

The modem also has a microSD card slot supporting up to 8GB, so it can also serve as a USB drive.

Besides connecting to the Internet, this utility also shows you details of signal strength and other parameters such as RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) readings and so on. We only used this utility on a PC running Windows XP and not an Apple Mac, so we can't comment about how it works with a Mac.

However, while the modem does not have drivers for Linux, the good news for Linux and open source users is that several of the latest version of Linux, such as Ubuntu 9.04, Fedora 10 and OpenSuSE 11 come with the drivers for it and other makes and models of cellular broadband modems as well, such as Blue Cube and Vodaphone modems from Celcom.

We also installed its Windows drivers and the utility using the Windows emulator Wine on a notebook running PC BSD based on the Unix-like FreeBSD and while the utility ran, we faced some problems connecting in the Berjaya Times Square Hotel and Convention Centre, though at that time we also had problems connecting with Ubuntu.

The proof of the pudding

Our download and upload tests were conducted on a notebook PC running Ubuntu Linux 9.04, which recognised the modem when we plugged it in and all we had to do was to right click on the signal strength icon at the top right of the screen and select the service provider DiGi, then change its APN (access point name) from “diginet” which is for DiGi's EDGE network to “3gdgnet” for Broadband DiGi Internet. The dial string remains as “*99#”, all without the quotation marks.

The results when within Broadband DiGi Internet coverage was mind blowing. We then downloaded and installed several additional packages for Ubuntu 9.04 at speeds of up to 794 KiB/s (kibibytes per second) according Linux's System Monitor utility in my home in Section 14, Petaling Jaya. We also did an FTP upload of a 300MB video file to our company's FTP server at 102.5 KiB/s and our later on our colleague Bernard Yeoh protested that the FTP server was almost full.

Kibibytes (KiB) is one of a set of units introduced in 1999 by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to describe binary quantities and 1 KiB = 1,024 bytes to avoid confusion with the term kilo (representing 1,000) used to describe decimal quantities and it was borrowed by the computer fraternity to describe binary quantities.

Trivia: How many ancestors ten generations removed does each of us have?

Answer: 2¹⁰ (2 multiplied by itself 10 times) ancestors or 1,024. So each of us has one "kibi-ancestors" ten generations removed. Go figure -- two parents, four grandparents, eight great grand parents and so on, so binary quantities aren't all that mysterious after all, and since computers work in ones and zeros, on and off, they too work in binary quantities.

Anyway, in computer terminology, the decimal term kilo is understood to mean 1,024 anyway, so in this case, KiB/s and KB/s mean the same thing.

So multiplying by 8, the above speeds translate into 6.352 Mb/s download and 820 Kb/s upload respectively, which exceeds the Extreme packages average advertised speeds by far, which we got most probably because we were the only user on DiGi's broadband Internet network at the time.

Similar tests on a Windows PC in Section 14, Petaling Jaya achieved similar high speeds.

We later did an FTP download from our server in the Kopi Oh Cafe in Petaling Jaya New Town Centre (PJ State) and achieved a more modest download speed of up to 231.2 KiB/s (1.849 Mb/s) and 84.4 KiB/s (675.2 Kb/s) upload.

While those speeds aren't as spectacular as what we achieved, they are still faster than the package's stated averages.

Outside of Broadband DiGi Internet coverage, we achieved EDGE speeds, such as 27.8 KiB/s (222.4 Kb/s) in the car park of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission's (MCMC's) headquarters in Cyberjaya, 26.5 KiB/s (212 Kb/s) at the entrance to the the North-South Expressway Central Link (ELITE) highway from Cyberjaya and an FTP download speed of up to130.5 KiB (1.04 Mb/s) at the USJ Rest and Recreational area car park along the ELITE highway.

The modem maintained connection throughout most of our journey from Cyberjaya to DiGi's headquarters, D'House in the Subang Hi-Tech Park in Shah Alam. However, that could partly be because Ubuntu Linux was configured to automatically reconnect and it did whenever it could -- ie. whenever the modem was within network coverage.

At D'House, we achieved 739.1 KiB/s (5.91 Mb/s) download, 105.8 KiB/s (846 Kb/s) upload and 162.0 and 61.0 KiB/s (1.29 Mb/s and 488 Kb/s) simultaneous package download and FTP upload.

Later back at our Comm & Tech Asia office in Wangsa Maju we achieved 17.6 KiB/s (104.8 Kb/s) package download.

However, please note that Broadband DiGi Internet is not available everywhere right now, so you best check your area for coverage through its website at www.digi.com.my/broadband/coverage.html. However, the good thing about it is that you can still fall back on DiGi's extensive EDGE network when beyond broadband coverage.

If the Extreme package is beyond your budget, you can opt for the Explore or Discover packages which offer 700 Kbps and 200 Kbps likely average download speeds respectively for RM108 and RM58 per month respectively. While their speeds are the same, these two packages have 3 GB and 10 GB monthly transaction limits respectively, after which you pay 5 sen and 15 sen per additional 10 MB, both of which are capped at RM138 in a given month.

The Extreme package comes with the E230 modem, a short and a long extension USB cable, miniUSB-to-USB adaptor if you prefer to plug the modem directly into your USB port, a clip for holding the modem and user guide and manual.

Just another point to note is that the E230 modem did not work with all USB ports. For example, when we first plugged it into one of the USB ports on our desktop PC running Windows XP, it installed the drivers and utility OK, it recognised the modem OK, the utility also ran OK and we could view the various signal strength readings and access other features.

However, when we clicked the big dial button to go online it reported that the modem was not connected. However, it successfully connected when we plugged it into another USB port on the same PC, which suggests it's most likely not a driver incompatibility problem.

Upon closer inspection, we noticed that the USB port with which it had connection problems was on a plug-in PCI card, while the port with which it worked was one of the two on the motherboard itself.

So we suspect that the USB port on the plug-in card did not have sufficient power to support the modem when it attempts to connect or is connected based on a similar past experience with a slimline flatbed scanner which draws its power exclusively from the PC's USB port.

A technician with the scanner's supplier advised us to connect the scanner to the PC via a powered USB hub and the scanner worked fine after that, since it now drew its power from the hub's power supply and not the PC's as the hub's supply had enough power to support the scanner while in was in operation.

One of our colleagues reported a similar type of problem with the same modem on his NetBook, which could be due to the same reason.

So PC or Netbook users who encounter such a problem with the E230 may want to try connecting it via a powered USB hub and see if that solves the problem.

Also, Huawei should also look into this issue.