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Poor performance In Europe with Telstar 790S can firmware be changed?

izzzzzz6
Aspirant

Poor performance In Europe with Telstar 790S can firmware be changed?

Hi everyone. Recently i purchased a used Aircard the Telstra AC790s.
  I read the specs for the 790S and it looks like it can work on European bands however i have a feeling that tis is a bigpond telstra specific unit and only works well in Australia.
  It is working for me but speeds are lower than 1Mbs so video is pretty much out of the question but it did work a bit faster on a few occasions so far.
  Does anyone know if i can change the firmware to one that will configure the Aircard for the European bands?
  I've been trying external antennas but no real luck so far. It's super slow and i think i need different firmware.
 Can anyone help?
Thanks.
James

Model: AirCard 790S|BigPond/Telstra Wi-Fi 4G Advanced II
Message 1 of 3
DarrenM
Sr. NETGEAR Moderator

Re: Poor performance In Europe with Telstar 790S can firmware be changed?

no sorry only the Australian firmware would work for that card.

 

DarrenM

Message 2 of 3
izzzzzz6
Aspirant

Re: Poor performance In Europe with Telstar 790S can firmware be changed?

Thanks for the reply guys. It certainly looks like i can not upgrade the firmware from here but it could probably be done from Australia but those would still be the wrong settings for europe (if it's even a firmware solvable issue).
  Looks like the 800Mhz band might be missing on this model. 
Also i suspect my network provider (Free) who i think are partnered with Orange. Are giving me a very narrow bandwidth on 2100Mhz. The seller of the Aircard suggested that due to the above issues the Aircard was not working well for me. 
  I could only get slim sucsess when the card roams to an orange connection and would work with limited results on 900Mhz and sometimes on 2100Mhz. 
  I am considering constructing a high gain Yagi for 900Mhz or both 900Mhz & 2100Mhz.
I am dissapointed in the customer service from Netgear and surprised that there is no way to resolve the issue. If an Australian had come to europe and was relying on his or her hotspot what would they do? 
  This information was not easy to find and i feel i have wasted 20-30hrs reasearching, building, tuning and positioning antenna, writing on forums, contacting various people etc.
  I have now purchased a Huawei Speedport and i will see if it fares any better with the current sim card. Guys i've seriously played with a tonne of settings and i can't ever get a 4G signal from here, 3G flicks off and i'm always left in H mode which i think is equivalent to 2G.
  I tried to reset to factory settings but that is not possible as the device can't connect to a telstra bigpond network from europe (another lame missing feature). Perhaps someone could have either thought of a solution to this problem, for example an exchange for a similar deal by pairing with the main foreign network providers or at least they could have warned the people that their device would have had very limited functionality in some other countries. The roaming feature is not really that useful in this type of situation.
  Who knows, perhaps people are usually warned before buying. I am perhaps asking too much or perhaps have not found the right solution. 
  The seller has offered to reimburse me however i will have to fork out a fairly hefty fee for shipping from France.
  Anyway i'm hoping for better results from the competitors deice. I'll keep you posted.
Ps. It would be interesting to know if a european version of the same device would also suffer from the same pitfalls down under.
  

Model: AirCard 790S|BigPond/Telstra Wi-Fi 4G Advanced II
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