Rogers went live with their 21 Mbps HSPA+ network a few weeks back in the following cities: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. The first product to be available is the ZTE MF668 USB Modem, otherwise known to Rogers as the new Rocket Stick.
We got hold of one of these and will give it a good test for its money. You can get this for $74.99 on a 3-year contract or $199.99 with no contract. My first impressions of the HSPA+ Rocket stick are good: It looks nicer with a metallic red shine and weighs in at 30 grams… this is 10 grams less the 7.2Mbps Rocket Stick. Overall dimensions are 77x28x12mm and one of the key benefits of the design is the USB slider (check out the video for demo of this). This eliminates the missing cap issue from the previous model.
Not only is the HSPA+ Rocket Stick faster, lighter, more expensive but it also can hold up to 8GB with a microSD card (previous Rocket Stick could only hold 4GB). I’m currently in Toronto and will see if I can get to the other locations where the HSPA+ network launched to test the consistency of speeds. If you do purchase this and are not in one of the HSPA+ areas you’ll get routed to the network speeds in your specific area, most likely to the 7.2 Mbps HSPA speeds. For now… here is the first round of test using the HSPA+ Rocket Stick. To test the speeds I used Speedtest.net and the Rogers Speed Check.
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