Anyone use mobile broadband with their laptop?

[elsiegee40]

I'm looking at this for an XP machine and so far have found it clear as mud...

 

Has anyone any experience of doing this? Do the providers require you to have a mobile phone contract with them?

 

thanks for any help

 

Lin

Edited February 13, 2008 by elsiegee40
Spelling 0/10 :(

[petectid]

O2 do a 3G connection that uses a USB dongle modem, this connects you to their network. Coverage is improving for their service with the best connections gained around the larger of our cities noticibly London. I think they charge around £35 a month for the contract, I'm not sure whether you can also purchase this with a phone contract which if available could make having both services with them cheaper? You'll need to check out their web site.

[FN-GM]

What speed is the connection?

 

Z

[markcuk]

you can get pay as you go ones from three.t-mobile do one so do vodafone

[Joedetic]

I've not used it myself because I have an unlimited EDGE connection on my mobile (slower than 3G but still great for e-mail), but I've heard that this is quite a reliable choice.

 

http://www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/mobile_broadband_/index.omp

[Sylv3r]

We have a Vodafone card here that costs a couple of quid a month then £x per gig after that. I can't remember exact costs). And the head has a t-mobile device installed into her toshiba tablet and this costs about £30 per month for unlimted use.

[Martin]

I've got the Three USB dongle mobile broadband thingy - a tenner a month for up to a gigabyte download (which sadly you can't carry over).

 

You get up to 2.8Mb/sec, depending on where you are. I was Google Earthing quite happily in the Ribble Valley over the Christmas break, and 'cos it is based on data and not time, you can stay connected without worrying about excessive costs.

 

Brilliant as a backup at work in case the wired connection goes down, but i have yet to try it out on a train (thus moving between cells).

 

Info and costs here.

 

mb

[powdarrmonkey]

I use the 3 dongle, but PAYG not contract because I needed the flexibility, so it cost me £100 outright. The rate is reasonable but not great, but it's worth the trade-off. You can't carry the data from month to month, but you do carry the time limit, so if you top up again after ten days you don't get penalised for the 21 that are left. Coverage is pretty good but with 3 of course you can't just stick the SIM in a handset as I imagine you could with T-mobile or Vodafone. It does HSDPA though, just not round here

[iatkinson]

The computers for pupils we were supplied with all came with the T-Mobile package and usb dongle. Speed wise seems ok for browsing though haven't tried downloading anything. According to the kids you can stick the sim in your phone and make calls though haven't tested this.

[torledo]

does anyone know....

 

if you get a hsdpa modem i.e a huawei expresscard or usb device, what are you're options for getting a hsdpa service - either PAYG or contract. Excuse my ignorance but Where does the sim card go if you go with provider neutral hardware ?

[apoth0r]

Vodafone - £40-£50 for the dongle then £15 a month on an 18 month contract. 3meg conn. Neh bad

[elsiegee40]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Regretably coverage in the part of Kent where this is most likely to be used with T Mobile and 3 is non-existent.

 

The best is Vodafone's coverage which looks patchy; we'll have to research that a bit more

[dancingdruid]

I've tried my Nokia 6120 classic as a HSDPA modem and there was no obvious difference at home between that and my broadband connection (although the 3 mast is at the end of my street!). Was nearly as fast at school although it did suffer from the odd lock up. This was on Three.

 

When you add the internet package to a phone on Three, you can use the data in your package either from the handset or your laptop connected through the mobile.

 

The downside of this technique is the way it gobbles your battery.

 

I'm guessing the speed will not be as nippy now that they have really started to market the service - I tried it months ago - although I would still recommend it on that basis.

 

(I've also got a 3G vodafone card modem somewhere but I never managed to get 3g reception here - and gprs was painfully slow.). Check out sim-free kit at Expansys.