Mobile broadband anyone?

Off-topic
1

Looking to get a Mobile Broadband package but no idea which ones are good. Had a look and most give you 3GB at £15, Vodafone is only one that says up to 7.5Mb, Three has 5GB at £15 but only up to 2.4Mb… and the rest in between.

Now I am asking as I assume some have tried them, so you can give me an unbiased reply. Frankly if Three gives me 2Mb at 5GB a month… that’s not bad, on other had Vodafone has up to 7+Mb??? but do they even reach close to that?

Cheers for any advice:):slight_smile:

2

I have a T-Mobile phone which I added the unlimited Web’n’Walk service to (fiver a month). This gives me broadband on my handset, I then use the phone’s 3G data connection as a network for my laptop. How you achieve this will depend on your handset. It works great and is a cheap option if you have a 3G phone and a computer that can use it.

My coverage experence is:

  • at home in a brick house fifteen miles north of Piccadilly Circus, GPRS only, useless for any practical purpose.
  • at Bracknell on the 1st floor of an ofice building with lots of glass, good strength HSDPA, fast web browsing, uninterrupted instant messaging, fine for downloading large email attachments, not good enough for iPlayer or YouTube.
  • Street level in London, 4 HSDPA bars out of 4, still no good for streaming though.
  • On trains, mostly usable but very uneven, OK for email and light web browsing most of the time.
  • Leeds and Manchester centres outdoors or street level, HSDPA mostly.
  • Skipton, Burnley, almost nothing. GPRS only and very slow.
  • North Wales, lucky to get any signal at all.
  • Any time you’re much above ground level (office block, hotel, etc.) or in a building without huge windows, rubbish.

So basically it’s all down to location…

Good luck,
Duncan

3

Depends on where you want to use it?

BT Openzone is good, and you PAYG with it, so no monthly fees.

However if you want always on, then that is a different matter

4

very true, where I live and around here t-mobile is awful up and down like a whores drawers, at my site its great as they have the mast on my land…3g is good if you get clear signal…its all about that really…

5

I was looking at Web n walk. They have a fair usage limit of 1GB a month so not much use for mobile broadband. Probably just good for checking news, forums etc. I don’t know how much 3G is going to cost on something like an iPhone/N96 ect, which is what I want to find out, so might have to take a trip to the shops. I know 02 were doing a £1 a day cap, so if you are a heavy user you don’t spend more then a pound, but then it’s only £15 a month for a USB modem and you probably want to use it on a laptop rather then a handset anyway.

6

I’ve never had any kind of notice from T-Mobile that I am exceeding 1gb. 1gb is an awful lot of data if you’re not downloading lots of software, music, video, doing Skype voice or video chats etc. I doubt I get anywhere near 1gb even though I’m on half a dozen different news sites and a couple of forums all day every day, aggregate about 120 RSS feeds and am permanently connected to my Exchange server, MSN and Skype.

I believe the iPhone tariff is different to ordinary O2 mobile internet, it’s an unlimited data tariff. However, the iPhone CANNOT BE USED AS A MODEM for a PC or Mac. The G1 is the same - no modem usage. Some providers remove the Internet Sharing app from Windows Mobile too - all stuff worth checking out that the stores won’t be too keen to tell you about…

I just remembered that I had a flyer from Vodafone the other day, they have a deal which provides you with a Dell netbook with built in mobile broadband for £25 a month. Dunno what the usage allowance is but you get a Dell chucked in with it.

Cheers,
Duncan

7

Well the usage will be for browsing the net, checking e-mails, research, nothing major such as gaming or youtube. So as a normal BB line…

Hence why I am wondering which one is the best to go for… reception wise and speed. So far Vodafone seems to be best choice, of course I have no idea how good it is, only what they say on their websire, £15 for 7.2Mb and 3GB usage.