Thursday, January 26, 2012

smart bro share it with smart bro prepaid sim


Remember the smart bro share it? If you don't remember, well, the share it modem is essentially a myfi device which has no battery and is powered by a 220v adaptor. It's a combo 3.5g modem and wifi router. It has a sim card slot and it gets 3.5g signal from the smart cellsite and Pc's can connect to it via LAN cable  or wifi (I thing its wifi-G but not sure).



There are some drawbacks compared to smart's current myfi device (see pic above).
  • Larger
  • Needs a 220v mains power supply
  • Only uses one frequency, 850mhz while other more advanced devices can use HSPA+/HSPA/UMTS 2100/1900/900/850 MHz. This is a theoretical limitation since some areas may have congestion. Smart uses 850 and 2100mhz so if the 850mhz band is congested the smart bro modem-router cannot switch to the uncongested 2100mhz band
  • This is region locked. However I don't know if the lock is done via the sim card that comes with the device or the device itself. Busted! The device works in my province and metro manila.
  • Being an old model (up to 3.5g only) which is incompatible with HSPA+ (sometimes known as 3.75g), the max speed is only probably 2-3 mbps
Advantages:
  • Has a connection for an external antenna
  • Being physically larger than a usb plugit, the internal antenna is much better. During tests, I could get a 5 bar signal versus a 2 bar signal with my smart bro power plugit (zte mf190).
  • Has a LAN port

I used to have one, and the speeds were variable. 500kbps-1400kbps depending on the local congestion level. I had it cut and it was gathering dust in my closet. The original sim doesn't work anymore, so I tried to use it with my smart bro power plugit prepaid sim and, guess what, it worked! Speeds were modest since my area was congested. I was getting around 500-700 kbps but around 1 am on the days when there is no congestion, I was bursting to 1.8 mbps. So in my area its quite rare to get over 1.5 mbps. I tested using a combination of direct downloads, torrents and Steam.

So if you need wifi sharing and can't afford a myfi device, then reusing this is an option.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey, can i use this as a router? since my friend didn't use this share it and i want to get a wifi on my house. I have a line on smart bro, but when i connect my line into the share it and my laptop want to connect to wifi, the smart bro portal open and asking for reference no. then after that my laptop connected. but here the problem. my android fone find the wifi called smart bro, but can't browse after it connected. T_T pls help.... tnx..

Vince said...

I'm not sure. It might be easier to just use your smart bro simmcard in a myfi device or buy a router which has a usb port. Cdrking now has a myfi device of unknown quality

try asking here

http://www.tipidpc.com/viewtopic.php?tid=191848

Anonymous said...

Hi. I would just like to ask if you did some configurations. I tried to replace my old postpaid sim which is not working with a prepaid sim. My device could detect the smartbro router but I could not connect with the internet.

Anonymous said...

Hello. I also have this device which is not being used for quite sometime. And I am planning to restore it using a prepaid smartbro sim card. After replacing the old postpaid sim with a prepaid one, I could not connect with the internet but my tab could detect the device. Please help me on what did you do to be able to connect with the internet. Thank you.

Vince said...

i didnt do anything. just placed the sim card and plugged it in

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