On an early trip to Albania I picked up a local SIM just to test how their internet handled 3G speed on a phone, the kind of thing that satisfies curiosity more than any real need. Back in Pristina, I started watching how long my battery lasted with 3G left switched on, half expecting nothing.
Before I’d even finished measuring the battery drain, I noticed my phone occasionally flipping from EDGE to a 3G icon on its own and browsing noticeably faster when it did. Nothing official from IPKO confirmed it, but something was clearly rolling out. I tried to benchmark it with a SpeedTest app, but by the time it finished downloading I’d moved out of range and couldn’t reconnect to run the test properly.
For anyone not following the tech closely: 3G is the third generation of mobile network technology, built around a single international standard for cellular communication. It meaningfully improves multimedia streaming and downloads, faster mobile internet generally, video calling, mobile TV and fast email attachment downloads, on top of the calls, SMS and MMS you already had.
If you want to try enabling it yourself before IPKO says anything official: under Cellular Data, set the APN to IPKO with the username and password left blank. Do the same for MMS, with MMSC set to http://mms.ipko.net and the MMS proxy at 213.229.249.40:8080. Worth a shot and worth comparing notes with anyone else who tries it.
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