Optus UMTS/HSPA is a pile of crap

I have posted previously about how I moved over from Three to PennySIM (from Pennytel) for my mobile service. PennySIM is outstanding - although I am using an application to make calls it works easily, and the resultant lack of virtually any expense means that I am now on the phone all the time. Trips to work are now a pleasure as I am calling you people in the US on the way to work, and people in Australia and the UK on the way home, talking for periods of up to 90 minutes! For all that, my mobile bill is less than AU$15.

There is one downside on it though - the mobile network is provided by Optus and after a month on this, I think I can safely say this: in Western Sydney, Optus 3G (UMTS 2100 MHz/HSPA) is terrible. You can get some form of 3G signal outdoors, but the moment you set foot in any major building, it drops back from 3G to GSM, which is fine for voice and SMS messaging, but for data, GPRS is painful. It can take upwards of 90 seconds to check one of my mail accounts via IMAP at work.

It was not this bad on Three. I used to get 3G signals in most buildings in Western Sydney, although admittedly I didn't use it for data.

Of course, it won't stop me from using them (cheap extended international phone calls are hard to beat!), but it will irritate me.