[8525, TyTN, MDA Vario II, JasJam General] christopherwoods:
I've already used MSN Messenger on my Vario 2 successfully :D I just can't be bothered to have it open all the time, I don't WANT to be IMed while I'm in Uni lectures ;)

I've also got Skype connected to the servers, and made a call to the skype call testing service (echo123), but unfortunately Skype doesn't recognise the camera on the back of the phone, shame that as cross-network video calls cost 50p a minute or 15p to another T-Mobile user (Three users get em free, but it sounds like they have awful customer service so I'm still happier with what I have!) I've streamed video, radio and shoutcast over my connection both on GPRS and 3G (it struggles with audio on GPRS but it gets there at lower bitrates, but on 3G it's flawless once it's connected) but I don't do it all the time, only occasionally. Watching Newsnight or the Politics show while I'm on the bus in the morning is VERY cool (and I've had a few jealous looks!)

All this on the £7.50 a month WnW. I'm SURE they can track your usage, but they won't bother unless you're racking up gigs a month. So far I've done about 35/40mb, which is nothing really, I still use wifi when I can as it's just that bit nippier (3G reception around Birmingham is oddly borderline sometimes, too many high buildings close together methinks).

The way HSDPA works is a bit unusual, in terms of topology, think of it like a meshed wifi network. The way I understand it, with GSM your phone is usually connected to four masts - these form the cell you're in, and it's how you can be geolocated (via triangulation using your signal strength on three or more of the masts). HSDPA relies on the fact that there's several masts fairly near to you at all times to give you the higher data rates - your phone simultaneously connects to multiple masts and receives chunks of the data you've requested, sending them to your phone all together - multiple routes for the data to travel to one place, that way if one route is bottlenecked or has a higher contention, the other data packets can still take faster routes. This is basic packeted networking theory, just applied in a mobile context.

So, if you don't have the best GPRS signal, you won't have a very good HSDPA downlink speed - but it's very temperamental, as it's wholly dependent on the quality (and therefore strength) of the GPRS signal. For instance, in my room (in the centre of Birmingham!) if I hold my phone half a foot further to the left from where I normally sit at my desk, I can get almost 1mb/sec download speeds (according to bandwidthplace.com's speed test). If I hold my phone by my desk, I get around half a megabit. This must be due to the amount of EM interference my PC, speakers, monitors (etc) generate, but I'm sure it's because there's a window a foot to my left too ;) it's a matter of finding the sweet spots.

Sorry if any of this came over as condescending or anything, not sure how much bout mesh networking you understand. What I've written about is pretty much what I was told about HSDPA's functionality by the T-Mobile techie I spoke to when I rang to get HSDPA enabled on my account. He told me he'd activate it, and then around the 'o clock mark (which was about 15 minutes from the time I was talking to him) he just told me to reboot the phone, which would then see the change to the QoS (Quality of Service) settings for my account and automatically enable HSDPA, no settings changes required on my part. Therefore, I can only assume T-Mobile's Hermes come with HSDPA automatically enabled, and they just have to enable it on their side :)

...So, unless T-Mobile have specifically told you that they're throttling your connection for being a naughty boy and using their network bandwidth too voraciously, you will be getting full speed (at least at their end) - it's all dependent on your location and distance from their masts.