Last week I had the opportunity of test-running Orange Armenia’s new Internet Now 4 broadband modem which boasts supporting up to 42 Mb/sec speed.
With the Internet Now 4 modem watching 480p YouTube videos finally became a pleasure from pain it has been on regular 3G modems. Going HD still involves pausing a little and waiting the video to buffer before going ahead.
The real speeds I got during the 2 days of testing in central Yerevan and Erebuni district, was an average of 6-8 mbps. On one or two occasions my speed jumped as high as 12 mbps in downtown Yerevan.
This product announcement by Orange Armenia came less than one month after Armenia’s largest mobile phone operator VivaCell-MTS announced the launch of its 4G internet offering – Internet Express, with a speed limitation of 6mbps. Orange Armenia’s 3G+ offering is designed to compete with VivaCell-MTS’s 4G and to beat it on price and speed.
The price for Orange’s Internet Hima 4 starts from 11,000 AMD per month contract with an additional cost of 39,000 AMD for the modem, which totals to 171,000 for a year or 456 USD. The least expensive variation of VivaCell’s Internet Express will cost 15,000 per month with no fee for the modem itself. But on the totals the price is nearly the same – 180,000 AMD or 480 USD.
So, to conclude, if you’re looking for faster mobile internet options, Orange’s Internet Hima 4 seems like the slightly better choice.
However, consider the fact, that there are much cheaper 3G options. You could get 2-3 mbps speeds at the cost of around 6,000 AMD per month or 80,000 AMD per year (200 USD). In this light, both VivaCell’s or Orange’s fast new offerings don’t seem to make much sense just yet.
Artur Papyan
Journalist, blogger, digital security and media consultant
3 Comments
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I pay $55/mo. for high speed broadband (cable model) internet at home, which in itself is expensive for personal residential use, I get at best up to 7megs down and 0.50-0.75megs up thru my connection. however, I just upgraded my wireless router to the top of the line cisco linksys router e4200 v2 (version2) costing me $250 in the end.
now supposedly this new router is compatible with the new internet infrastructure that will be applied in next 1-5 years via fiber optic cabling upgrades in america (they trying to phase out the old school copper cable that has been around for over 70 years). this new router is suppose to give me 450 + 450mbps….which means on either 2ghz channel 450mbps ota (over-the-air) download or on 5ghz. either way, I do see a slight difference in downloading/viewing HD vids via YT and faster downloads for 720p HD and above. also, having the most recent newest Apple macbook air doesn’t hurt, which works very fast and well with newest wireless router networks via residential or commerical
but paying $450-500 for internet in Hayastan is F***ING EXPENSIVE….what the hell is wrong with these greedy mafiya owned & controlled IT companies. then again, you can always screw them and steal their internet if you know how to hack them and fix it so that you don’t have to pay. the rich steal from the poor, so the poor needs to steal back from the rich every now and then….thats tid bit of advice of life
The $450-500 figure is for the whole year including the costs for the device. So its like $40 per month, which is less than what you’re paying.
Hi! Thanks for the article. I saw the 4G being offered on Orange’s site the other day. I used Orange’s 3G in Gyumri and Yerevan back in October-November 2010 and in April to July 2011. I was getting around 7Mbps consistently probably 90% of the time. The lowest I got was around 4Mbps consistently but that was when they were doing upgrades.
Can you go to http://speedtest.net and post a link to what speeds you get? I’d be interested to see. 🙂 Plus it’s a great way to compare your internet speeds to the rest of the world.
I live in Zimbabwe, which is statisically the slowest and most expensive country in the world for internet. I write an article on my blog about it. Our so-called 3G (it’s actually 2.75G) is rubbish; the fastest I tested recently was:
Download – 0.49Mbps
Upload – 0.12Mbps
Ping – 258ms
And we pay US$50 a month with unlimited usage. And that’s the cheapest. Other services charge from US$90 per GB for so-called 3G. They claim to have 4G but you’ll get at most 1Mbps (if it’s working) and that’s about US$100 a month for 2GB.
Don’t even ask about hardware costs… 🙁