Libyana is a libyan mobile phone company established in 2004; It is one of two mobile phone operators owned by the General Post and Telecommunication Company (GPTC) - 
It provides GSM 900 and GSM 1800 alongside 3G coverage.
A new service would be provided for the 1st time in Libya in Q3 2009, which is the 3G HSDPA coverage that is represented by the Libyana Net USB Modem.
At the time of this review, it’s not commercially rolled up yet, we’ve got our hands on one of these units and here is our verdict.
Price
Undetermined, rumors say that it’d be more than LYD300 for the personal use and higher for the business use.
What's Hot
USB means flexibility, Good software, Ease of use and straight forward fluid setup, works like ADSL in many areas.
What's Not
Slow in many standard 3G or GSM coverage area, limited and unknown full HSDPA coverage, bulky and the cover can be simply lost, it’s Expensive
The Final Word
The Libyana Net HSDPA USB Modem is flexible and works well if you are in HSDPA coverage. Unfortunately, it's limited to 5GB per month and its performance in regular GSM coverage areas isn't reliable for anything more than web browsing and email.
Detail
The Modem is a bit bulky for the 1st time you grab it, it contains a MicroSD card reader so that you can use it as your USB Pen Drive, and it has another slot for the currently only Data SIM Card, where you can download 5 Gigs of data monthly and use the LYD1 balance that you can charge later on.
As soon as you plug the USB drive, given that you have the auto-run for removable USB Storage device – which I don’t recommend any way, you’ll have the following prompt screen.
It’s one of the easiest setup for devices I have ever seen in my life if not the most, no single line of text or input is needed, my young brother could do that by him self, and I bet my grand mom can do that as well.
The setup will give you the option for Arabic or English installation.
Once you finish the series of “Nexts” you’ll have the application launched with a beautiful GUI.
The interface is providing a nice glance on the Transport Rate, Receive Rate, Amount of transported and received data, and finally the connection duration.
Smoke Test
My fist test was with an MP3 file that is 62M size, and here are the results:
- Initial Transfer Rate: 51 kB/s
- Available Bandwidth: 374.90 kbps
- Lowest Transfer Rate: 27.3 kB/s
- Average Transfer Rate: 31.4 kBs
Needless to say, this is the same performance of ADSL + the portability and the no need for a telephone line.
However, since the performance is based on coverage, we’ve done our sampling test on three areas:
- Dhat Al-Imad Complex: Quite a poor signal by 08:30 AM, download rate is a bit better than the Dial-up connection, you tube streaming is a bit miserable .
- Ben Ashour, Near Al-Mokhtar clinic, a decent connection, makes it possible to work.
- Tajoura, the best performance near the tourist village of Andalusi, smooth audio streaming and YouTube performance, the test was done also indoors.
- Zawia, since there is no 3G coverage in the city suburbs, the connection was nevertheless a better than all of the available means out there, that is, a bit better than the dial-up.
Now that this review is done, please let me know about your experience with this device as soon as you put your hands on.
Review Date
Tuesday, 07th of July, 2009
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