Mobile Broadband from 3 - anyone got experience?

[Corabar Entertainment]

3 have got some good deals going on mobile broadband at the mo.

Has anyone had any experience with their mobile braodband and good points / bad points.

It's not something we would use for major web-surfing, but just handy to use from time-to-time for short periods.

[sted]

i have a dongle you can have if you want as i dont use mine anymore.

it has the split wire also so you can join it to two laptops at the same time so they both get internet

[visualdjmax]

I'd be up for any info on this as well, mainly for when I am at gigs etc!

[Chris1984]

i brought a pay as you go job about 18onths ago to use n festival sites, so far the only place its not worked that well was in the breacon beacons and a remote bit of north yokshire.

It has been great and really usefull.

Bad point - you have to register you card which them for remote top ups and it take about 3 days to set up which is dull if you need to top up right now and havent set it up!

[Booche]

i used 3mobile, while i worked at pc world ( no hate mail please ) lol and to be honest mate its crap and i mean crap if you visit a page which has got flashing images or the page loads up music etc etc it takes it off what you monthly allowence is, also if you have got the white simcard type usb dongle they are known for breaking and then 3 will not send a replacement and you are stuck with a bill every month for a mobile service which doesnt work, my advice stay well away from it mate and im being honest its rubbish i still have the mobile unit and wil take some pics of what happens to then when you try and use, i used to use it for purely if i didnt have acertain request etc but signal etc etc etc is rubbish, sorry to rant and rave about them but again my advice stay well away save yourself having a letter fromt them demanding payment etc ( i have but went to court and won ).....................

Edit: mine was a £xxx amount per month dongle not a PAYG

[Corabar Entertainment]

Thanks for the replies so far and for the offer Sted (corresponded via PM)

Just for the record: looking at a contract with netbook included, and don't intend to use it for downloading music, etc, just really for back-up and for some occasional general surfing away from base.

Booche: you say it's crap, but do you have experience of other mobile braodband providers? ie - are your comments specific to 3 or mobile broadband in general?

[sted]

i found the 3 network very good. never really had a problem with it.

[Booche]

Thanks for the replies so far and for the offer Sted (corresponded via PM)

Just for the record: looking at a contract with netbook included, and don't intend to use it for downloading music, etc, just really for back-up and for some occasional general surfing away from base.

Booche: you say it's crap, but do you have experience of other mobile braodband providers? ie - are your comments specific to 3 or mobile broadband in general?


Just 3 ive used a orange usb dongle and it worked a treat but since ive swapped to o2 ive had nothin but excellent service no matter were i go :)

[Corabar Entertainment]

...but since ive swapped to o2 ive had nothin but excellent service no matter were i go :)Must be a damn sight better than their phone service then! Never had so much troube with any company providing any service as we had with O2! LOL! (Would never give them another penny if there is any was on earth to avoid it!)

The thing is, no matter what company you mention, there are always some people who have had problems with them, which is why I am hoping to get a selection of views from people who have used them. So far, we have 2 for and 1 against :D

I'll check back in on this thread again tomorrow to see if any other members have had experiences.

[DeckstarDeluxe]

I use a notebook with the 3 dongle for online accounting for the day job. It gets a pretty decent signal most of the time but as its just text based apps that im using its not really taxing. I did use it once at a gig to download a song and it did so fine.

By all accounts 3 provides the best coverage but havent looked into these claims.

the notebook i noticed does have a cd drive (didnt know til i got it) and its pretty poor spec but then again it was free.

[Excalibur]

Must be a damn sight better than their phone service then! Never had so much troube with any company providing any service as we had with O2! LOL! (Would never give them another penny if there is any was on earth to avoid it!)

The thing is, no matter what company you mention, there are always some people who have had problems with them, which is why I am hoping to get a selection of views from people who have used them. So far, we have 2 for and 1 against :D

I'll check back in on this thread again tomorrow to see if any other members have had experiences.

I've got a 3 monthly pay one. One gripe, one observation. Gripe, if you connect,and disconnect, it usually won't reconnect without totally restarting the PC. Observation, well network coverage. Sporadic would be the most accurate description. I'm supposed to be in a good area, yet a move to certain nearby areas results in loss of signal. I once used it in a quite remote area which was obviously fairly near a suitable mast, and it flew. :D More often than not, it gets minimum service, and works OK on that. It regularly won't get a signal. I'd suggest you do as much research as you can into reception in your area for all providers. My mobile and internet are with Orange, and I probably wish I'd got a dongle from them as well.

[DiscoPromotions]

3 have got some good deals going on mobile broadband at the mo.

Has anyone had any experience with their mobile broadband and good points / bad points.

It's not something we would use for major web-surfing, but just handy to use from time-to-time for short periods.

Best advise before buying any mobile broadband dongle on any network recommend that you do your homework first.

1. If possible buy pre-pay sim and check the coverage on actual device as what they predict the coverage to be may not be case.

2. Mobile broadband uses so much resources on base station receiver Mobile phone calls are given the highest priority. So if you there sitting on you Mobile broadband and someone makes a call; guess what going to happen to Mobile broadband connection?

3. Check local users feedback as if you are Potters Bar and I am at Finsbury Park the experience will be different.

The above tips come from working in mobile telecommunications engineering for last 6 years.

[Vectis]

I've had a prepay 3 dongle for about 18 months. Originally bought when I was travelling a lot and I wanted to make the most of the time I spent waiting for and sitting on the ferries.

Used with a mac, not Windoze (but I can't see why it should be any different) I found the coverage and speed to be excellent and this included in some very out-of-the-way places. I dabbled with using it for song downloads on-the-fly at gigs and it worked well for this.

The thing I like about the 3 product (and I have nothing to compare it with) is the way that it will try to establish an HSDPA connection, but if the signal isn't good enough will drop back progressively through plain old 3G, then GPRS ("2.5G") and GSM data so that you're pretty much guaranteed a signal of some kind. OK GSM data isn't very good, but it's fine for email in/out and it rarely gets that bad.

Not long after I had the 3 dongle (about 4/5 months) I got my first iphone which kinda negated the dongle as I could do everything I wanted from the phone although I have noted that 3's 3G coverage is significantly better than O2's, especially in my part of the world.

The dongle is now my home internet backup device and in the case of a serious outage like I had about 2 weeks ago (a whole 7 hours offline :eek: ) it coped beautifully in my house out in the sticks shared between about 4 or 5 devices.

My 'package' is the 1GB for £10 per month and to be honest I've got nowhere near 1GB in usage. I was initially apprehensive and avoided heavy footprint websites thinking I would blow the allowance quickly, but this wasn't the case. Used for typical surfing, emailing and limited downloading the most I ever taxed it with was about 750MB in one month - and that was with about 10 days straight out on the road.

So it's a +1 from me :)

[Booche]

Damn must just be me then who had bad experience from them lol, ive had the oppasite good things all round from o2 and bad from 3

[Corabar Entertainment]

OK, so feedback is pretty positive on the whole - with one notable exception LOL :D

[Jiggles]

another +1 for 3 here. Even in the area of no signal I get a half decent 3G signal. Never had a problem apart from the time I forgot to top up. :o

[Excalibur]

You can get aerials to boost the signal to the dongle. It costs around £30, and has mixed reviews.

[deltic]

i have a 3 pay monthly dongle (black one) works fine on my mac.