Attention Kara-Suu Bazaar shoppers. I have some exciting news… Osh now has 4G LTE cell data service from 2 of Kyrgyzstan’s 3 cell service providers. LTE. In my Peace Corps site. WHAAAAAAT?!
Now, a lot of you probably are asking yourselves “what’s LTE and why should I care?” To answer this question, I’m going to explain the state of my internet before this glorious event took place.
There’s basically no Wi-Fi in most of Kyrgyzstan. In Osh, there’s only a few cafes with Wi-Fi, and that gets expensive pretty fast. So, we pay for cell data plans and use our phones’ hotspot mode to get internet on our computers. Most volunteers pay about 1000 som per month for “Unlimited Internet” (on MegaCom, this means 200MB a day. On Beeline, its 150MB a day. On O! it’s 1.5GB and unlimited calling and texting, but it only works in like 5 places. Take a wild guess which is the preferred carrier where they have service.).
Now cell data is explained by what generation of technology it uses. 2G (also known as “Edge”) is the 2nd generation mobile data (if you used an original iPhone, this was the technology it used). 3G is the third generation (and used to be the huge selling point for the iPhone 3G), and 4G came out about 5 or so years ago, followed by 4G LTE, which is kind of a 4.5G technology.
2G networks are all that’s available in most of Kyrgyzstan. These generally are only fast enough to run basic messenger apps, and you can’t usually make VoIP internet calls with them, such as over Skype or FaceTime Audio. Think dial-up as far as speeds are concerned.
3G is available in most major cities, although the South used to only have it from 2 of the three carriers. On MegaCom’s 3G network, it was a good day if I was getting 300 kbps internet speed (twice dial-up), while on Beeline’s network, it was a good day if I got 3mbps speed. Think needing a few seconds for pages to load and needing to let most YouTube buffer for a minute before watching.
And then O! came. O! is the third carrier in Kyrgyzstan which is kind of like a clone of T-Mobile… they’re AMAZING in the cities, lol wut in the countryside, but have the cheapest and best plans if you’re in one of their strongholds. Until recently, they were the only LTE provider in Kyrgyzstan, with speeds in Bishkek of almost 90mbps (that’s almost twice as fast as my old broadband in New York City). Well, in March, they flipped the switch on 3G and 4G LTE in Osh.
Well, the LTE isn’t 90mbps. But the 3G is 20mbps, which means I now have 10x as fast internet without any data caps for half the price, with better coverage in my house than any other network. Obviously I switched as soon as my old plan ran out!
Now I’m gonna talk about what this means for me. I can now Netflix without limits (Kimmy Schmidt comes out Friday!). I can now video chat without worrying about data caps (I’m now accepting invitations for Skype dates!). I can now stream NPR every day during my commute (Holla Linda Wertheimer!). It’s not anything I need, but boy is it nice to have!
And the added bonus of having 5 bars of service everywhere? My phone battery might finally make it past 1 in the afternoon. That’s the real struggle bus from which I am alighting.