To recap, their technical team called me up to "explain" that there's a difference between indoor reception and outdoor reception, and that I best use 3G outdoors. Of course, I know that outdoor reception will be superior to indoor reception! But can they please explain why Maxis dropped my calls while I was OUTDOORS looking for the ambulance??!!! Amongst their more recent recommendations include turning off 3G, changing my mobile phone and for iPhone users, upgrading the firmware. They have yet to accept my personal recommendation that they UPGRADE their bloody network! Anyway, I finally received my iPhone and promptly tested the call and signal quality. Surprisingly, the iPhone was LESS sensitive than my Dopod 595. Signal levels were consistently lower, and it had the same tendency to go offline into the "No Service" mode. As for 3G, it would keep dropping the signal. The good news is the iPhone is less likely to drop the network entirely. I can see it switch from 3G to Edge all the time. Obviously, the Maxis 3G network is VERY unstable. I turned off 3G on the iPhone as I can't seem to get a reliable 3G signal anyway, and the iPhone's 3G chip guzzles power. Plus didn't Maxis' staff say that all my problems would go away once I disable 3G? Lo behold... even after disabling 3G, I still get dropped calls!!! Okay, to be fair to Maxis, it's a LOT less frequent than with my Dopod 595. However, I believe that is because I forced the iPhone to turn off 3G support. The Dopod 595 doesn't allow that. I called up Maxis to report this. Guess what they said. First, they blamed it on the firmware. But when I triumphantly told them I already upgraded it, they told me that I must have set the wrong settings in my iPhone and that I should bring it to the nearest Maxis Centre to have it properly set up!!! Anyone using the iPhone can tell you - there is NOTHING you can set in the iPhone that will cause dropped calls! Bloody Ananda Krishnan is making tons of money off us, and he can't even spare 1% to upgrade his lousy 3G network???? Why can't Apple find a BETTER partner than Maxis????
Maxis' 3G network is utterly USELESS, not even usable for Internet tethering! Maxis' 3G network is utterly USELESS, not even usable for Internet tethering! Since I had to accompany Jenny at the hospital, I thought I would try my Apple iPhone's Internet tethering feature. Hooked it up to my notebook and I'm instantly online! Yay! But funny thing is... some sites like Tech ARP and even CNN wouldn't load properly! They would load sometimes and often just time out. So I tried a local site - thestar.com.my but it wouldn't load at all! After strugging with the problem for over 2 hours (and burning about 75 MB of bandwidth), I got fed up and tried turning off 3G so the phone would revert to EDGE. Guess what... problem solved!!!! Tech ARP and every website I tried loaded up instantly!!! Verdict - Maxis' 3G network sucks YET AGAIN. PS. If you are wondering, the 3G signal strength was high at 5 bars (maximum). In addition, I earlier thought it was a DNS issue and even tried different DNS servers (including Maxis' own DNS servers) to no avail.
having to resort to DNS change to troubleshoot is bad. I don't face such problem with C3G. It's a YES or NO thing, and most often it actually works. I've been using C3G for the past 2 years and I must say I'm satisfied with it.
don't know how the iphone works, I use Nokia N86. what I notice is that it will go from 3.5G to 3G and even down to Edge if necessary, based on whatever is available. often it's working when the indicator says 3.5G. the reason why i use Celcom because it's under TM............. you know what are the underlying reasons la.
Well, when I tether to Maxis 3G, the signal strength at the hospital was good - full bar, so it would remain in 3G mode all the time. However, many sites wouldn't load properly. At first I thought it was a DNS problem. It wasn't. If I was a DNS problem, I would be able to ping the IP directly. That didn't work. And to confirm that the DNS server was working right, I pinged the domain itself which the DNS server resolved into the proper IP. The funny thing is everything worked properly once I force the iPhone to use EDGE.
