Broadband dongles - anybody tried one?

If you mean the mobile internet ones, I have tried T-Mobile, Vodafone, O2 and 3. They are all pretty bad. O2 is the best for speed and stability, the rest just drop the connection all the time.
 
yep, i'm on one now...i have one from work for when i am away from the office incase i can't find a wireless network anywhere. i can't comment on cost, since i don't pay for it...but i can comment on performance...

erm, variable is probably the best way of putting it. fourtunately i'm in central london at the mo, so most places i can get a proper 3g signal - which is surprisingly spritely it has to be said. however, there seem to be lots of blackspots where i can only get a gprs connection, which is...well...as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

in my opinion they are a really handy thing to have, but i wouldnt want to rely on one as my primary means of connection.
 
I have the fun of supporting the things, as a secondary connection they are great. Big factors are signal and current cell you are connected to.

The network quality varies greatly depending on the area, best coverage from what Ive seen is 3, Orange, TMobile, O2 then vodafone.

Expect 200KB/s+ in good areas, average speed is about 20-30KB/s and ~100ms latency (HSDPA, 3G, UMTS). The next gen devices promise upto 18Mb/s and sub 30ms latency which should be really cool. In poor signal areas expect sub dialup speeds (GPRS), moving around your house ie upstairs and close to window/away from electrical devices usually improves signal.

Most devices (3/TMobile) act as a dialup modem with software to monitor signal etc, the Orange devices install as a wireless adaptor with custom software to connect/disconnect/monitoring. The O2 ones mainly act as a dual WIFI/Mobile adaptor, which imo is pointless as most laptops produced the last 4 years have wireless built in, with a far better aerial that a USB adaptor would provide.

Any further Q's, feel free to ask :)
 
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Why is it that with a full 3G signal, I can rarely get above 30kB/s? I thought HSDPA was capable of 3.6Mbps? Or is this only realistic if you're sitting on a phone mast?
 
I use T-Mobile and am paying £30 per month for 10GB data cap. It's stable but really really slow. I have a full 5/5 bars of signal (I've set it to 3G only) in my area and I've never seen it go above ~380kbps. That's well outside of peak time too. I'm curious as to why this is, but the only response I could get from the helpline:

"well it says up to 4.5Mbps"
"but isn't less than a tenth of the advertised speed with full signal and outside peak time taking the mick a bit?"
"well mobile broadband just works differently to landlines"
"thanks a bunch"

Maybe Rabtech could shed some light on this?
 
Local congestion due to a poor data infrastructure. Its common on all networks, as with phone exchanges they only seem to upgrade the heavily congested areas first.

As per my post above, average speeds are 20-30KB/s with ~100ms latency. I've noticed the providers like to show Kb/s instead of KB/s to make it look like its faster than it actually is. Also as your on T-Mobile, can you upload pictures etc to Facebook - they've had a network issue for ages they seem to do nothing about.
 
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Rabtech said:
Local congestion due to a poor data infrastructure. Its common on all networks, as with phone exchanges they only seem to upgrade the heavily congested areas first.

As per my post above, average speeds are 20-30KB/s with ~100ms latency. I've noticed the providers like to show Kb/s instead of KB/s to make it look like its faster than it actually is. Also as your on T-Mobile, can you upload pictures etc to Facebook - they've had a network issue for ages they seem to do nothing about.
Click to expand...

I've not tried. I don't use facebook any more. :D

I can understand providers advertising speed in b rather than B - it's better marketing, even though using a different standard than everyone else is annoying.

So is it the tower I'm connecting to that's bottlenecking my connection then? Because ~380kbps seems to be a hard upper limit; I've often managed to max it out and it holds steady at that speed.
 
SlyReaper said:
So is it the tower I'm connecting to that's bottlenecking my connection then?
Click to expand...

More than likely, like most bad ISP's the dont really give two hoots about speeds - which imo is really annoying as the next gen mobile data standards sound very promising.
 
just got my virgin dongle. Its got better coverage here than orange and o2 :rolleyes:

mbbspeed.png


Its seems more than zippy enough with a decent signal. its not earth shattering but i wasnt expecting it to be :p That was just general browsing, im not going to do a speed test and rape my allowance just yet. ill give the dongle a go on the move later :)
 
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