I’m a geek, facinated with the latest tech. While listening to The Tech Guy, I heard of the Cradlepoint, which takes broadband (read EVDO) enabled phones, and create a wifi hotspot. How cool is that? You can create (and share) a wifi hotspot anywhere you can get EVDO. The caveat is, EVDO is a US only service.
Now Celcom offers the same concept, but using a 3GX (3.5G to us peons), 3G, EDGE or GPRS SIM card. Imagine the possibilities:
- Kerteh airport can get wifi without the hassle of getting a landline.
- Heck, forget Kerteh, your house can have broadband wifi without a landline (I hear Streamyx squirming in the background).
- Start a personal hotspot whenever you want to get online, make the spot public, and have a splash page advertising your services.
- SME opportunities: micro Internet cafe? Roadshow internet access?
One problem is that you will be tethered to a power socket until you can figure out a portable power source.
I have been informed that there is a phone socket on the machine, so that you will be able to receive and make calls while it uses your SIM card.
Will you be able to use other service providers with this piece of equiptment? Unknown, I haven’t been given a test unit (you can tell I’m low on the food chain).
Contact Rizal at rizaldee@celcom.com.my or +60196201771.
Wata - Malaysian Oil and Gas Engineer 
That’s really good…what are the costs like?
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To sohas: the unit currently costs RM799, with or without a plan. The plan is extra. For comparison, the cheapest ADSL modem wifi router I’ve seen is around RM170. ‘Course, you are still tether by the phone line.
well, at the beginning stage, you do expect it to be on the higher end!
In indonesia, you are better off with a mobile than land line. That’s because no infrastructure is in place.
Almost all prepaid mobile phone card support 3.5G. Even Jabba has a wireless internet connection at home, as jabba can’t get a landline at home. Expensive in Indonesia.
Jabba: buy one of these boxes, and test it out there. Even better, buy one for me and I’ll test it out there.
my dad used one of celcom’s 3g – the throughput is slower than that of the modem. seems like a user is sharing IPs with many.
there’s still a bottleneck in the infrastructure. i heard this from a few big IT/telco guns a couple of weeks ago.
A competitor to Celcom’s product is available. Check it out here.
[…] Toy – EVDO Mifi I talked about 3G to Wifi conversion devices before. I really like Mifi device reviewed here. When does it come to our shores? They need to come out […]