Mobile Broadband

SCR Pedro

Hey,

Does anyone know much about this? I'm about to move into a flat w/o internet access, and I won't be needing a landline, so mobile broadband seems like it could be the way forward.

I watch a lot of cycling on the Eurosport Player, so I don't know how quickly that will take me over the limits of say 1GB per month. (quickly, I'm guessing.)

Does anyone use the tinterweb this way? Any alternatives I should consider?

Cheers
Pedro

OffTheBackAdam

I use T-Mobile's mobile BB. They have several packages, the more you pay, the greater the access.
It's not as fast as wired BB, but still streets ahead of dial up.

Aggieboy

You could -

get a Dongle on an appropriate tariff/paygo - http://www.internetdongle.com/pay-as-you-go-dongles/

tether with your mobile if you have enough usage,

buy an ipad etc with 3G wifi or,

sit in Starbucks all day with their wifi on your pc

oscar-j

i used to use a dongle through Orange.It was fine for web surfing,emails etc but videos would just eat away at it so quickly

SCR Pedro

Thanks guys. I forgot to add that I'm a stupidly skint student, so price is hugely important.

I'll be walking distance from campus, so I suppose I could just watch the cycling in the library. Hehe....

kettrinboy

I use a 3 Mobile dongle, 12 GB of preloaded data for 80 quid and just use it for 1-1.5 hrs a day to surf the net, go on forums , etc and that will use about 30-35 MB , so that means it will last roughly a year, but start downloading big files and videos and you could use 1 GB in a day or less if the download speed gets anywhere near its stated max which mine seldom does, so if i need to do that now and again i go on my mates pc as he,s got landline internet,coverage is still patchy as well in many areas for mobile internet.

kinesin

I use a Three mifi, have a 15GB for £15, 30 day rolling contract, however they now do all you can eat data** on payg for £15 and people seem to have no issue using it on mifi.
Three actually own their own network and seem to give data away, read hotukdeals and people coming off contracts are getting all you can eat for £8 a month
If you got an iphone4 or android smart phone you can use a three payg sim in that (if unlocked) and use it as wifi hotspot.
I replaced my virgin broadband with a mifi three months ago, and take my laptop to work download bigger files, it's not as fast at 3.26MB/s but actually has better upload!
** true unlimited

MattC59

A couple of the guys at work use dongles. One Orange, one Vodaphone. reports suggest that the Vodaphone service is better.
They pay a flat fee for unlimited downloads, about £20/month I think.

Having said that, I've just looked on the Vodaphone web site and there's a 2Gb / month option, with 4Gb/month over BT openzone wifi, so that might be worth a look ?

OffTheBackAdam

Ah, for poor student, it's a cuppa at MaccyD & free Wi-Fi all day!
I have to use that for my ebaying as I can't upload pictures well/ at all from my home dongle.
Weather also affects reception, kept on getting drop-outs yesterday, when it was raining heavily.

SCR Pedro

Thanks for the replies, guys. I'll check my options out.

Until then, free wi-fi and cheap cups of tea, haha!

Aggieboy

kinesin wrote:

I use a Three mifi, have a 15GB for £15, 30 day rolling contract, however they now do all you can eat data** on payg for £15 and people seem to have no issue using it on mifi.
Three actually own their own network and seem to give data away, read hotukdeals and people coming off contracts are getting all you can eat for £8 a month
If you got an iphone4 or android smart phone you can use a three payg sim in that (if unlocked) and use it as wifi hotspot.
I replaced my virgin broadband with a mifi three months ago, and take my laptop to work download bigger files, it's not as fast at 3.26MB/s but actually has better upload!
** true unlimited

Can you tether with those deals? I've noticed some deal adverts in which the small print states it's for the phone only.

kinesin

Their £15/15GB deal is tether legal, the payg all you can eat might not be - T&C says data must be used on the mobile device, but a mifi is a mobile device ;-)
But their smartphone 'one plan' is tether legal, which is where I will probably end up once the iphone5 is released.
It's all seems confused as every network tries to impose limits dependent on device source. See the comments from the mod here: http://blog.three.co.uk/2011/03/07/all-you-can-eat-data-comes-to-pay-as-you-go/
It's a shame really as data is data.. shouldn't matter what's the source.

BTW I was originally on the £15/5 mifi 30 day rolling contract, but phoned to cancel the 30day / ask for more data and got bumped to their standard £15/15GB.