huawei e353

We used a regular Globe Prepaid SIM running on SuperSurf 50 inserted into a Huawei E353 (this is the Smart Bro Rocket actually, which is open line). I finally found the HSPA+ signal -- it was very sneaky because the Huawei E353 was only able to detect it in a very small area (along Batangas Road, between Rockefeller and Zanzibar St.) with a span of around 20 meters. My usual Globe Tattoo speed tests would not give me anything near 2Mbps but with the Huawei E353, I am able to get pretty decent to good results. However, my own test with a Globe Prepaid SIM card and the Huawei E353 barely got me past 10KB/s (so I guess the prepaid is throttled). When I first saw the Huawei E353 HSPA+ USB dongle a couple of weeks ago, I immediately asked our contacts close to the company if there are available open-line units of this model and was told it was directly imported from China by the telcos. The Smart Bro Rocket Plug-It is a Huawei E353 modem. It turns out this model was only commercially launched in China last August 4 (per Huawei's release). Huawei also claims it's got the fastest connection time of under 15 seconds (from plug to live signal connection) which is actually true based on my initial tests (the old dongles takes a while to activate after you plug them in). Read more in our articles including "The Hunt for a Globe HSPA+ Cell Site" and "Huawei launches the E353 HiLink HSPA+ modem".