Best deal for broadband connection away from base
Discussion
When working away I usually manage via hand-held but with a longer spell ahead a better connection is needed - I won't be paying the hourly wireless connection rate that hotels extort from guests. As this is new territory for me but old hat for PH techies, what's the best deal at the moment?
The vodafone 3g deal isnt too bad, especially if you have a pool of them, as you can share the bandwidth around the account (and let the sales monkeys use a couple of 100Mb, while you hog it for PH use).
In theory, a Web n Walk Tmobile package, and use the phone as a modem would work, but they do frown on you using it as a modem, and there are caps...
In theory, a Web n Walk Tmobile package, and use the phone as a modem would work, but they do frown on you using it as a modem, and there are caps...
simba1 said:
3G mobile broadband. Works really well and use able for emailing, surfing etc. They have pay as you go option, 3 gig limit for £15. Signal is mainly good 'cos 3 availabilty is almost nationwide currently.
It's hardly pay as you go though, as the minimum top-up you can convert to internet access is £10 worth for 1gb and that expires after 30 days. So if you are using it, it's £10 a month, just like a contract...What i'd really like after my contract is up is a true pay as you go option, where I buy a certain amount of data transfer and can use it as and when I like until it runs out, but I haven't seen anyone who actually does that.
I've just switched to 3, added on broadband plus (£15) to my phone package and I get 3GB a month and can use my phone as a modem, seems pretty quick too, getting around 800kb speed in a normal 3g area, turbo areas can get a fair bit more I thinks. Due to go turbo where I am in April.
I havent had any trouble so far but I do hear the odd person moan about 3's coverage, or lack of...
I havent had any trouble so far but I do hear the odd person moan about 3's coverage, or lack of...
I use a TMobile web-n-walk PCMCIA card wotsit. 18 month contract at about £30 a month ... no actual download limit, but a "taking the piss" clause at something like 3GB per month. Signed up to that a few months ago, and there seem to be even cheaper deals now. (At that time Orange were trying to stick you for over £100 a month, so TMob were very competitve.) Worth checking out "3". I didn't pay much attention as I'd committed to TMob for the forseeable, but they seemed to be offering a mobile broadband connection for something like £15 a month.
The performance is really pretty good. Latency can be a mild irritation, but once its hitched up its skirts, I've seen download speeds running at 1Mb for fairly sustained periods. I use it to remote computers back at the office, so they're sending large amounts of data in realtime back to the laptop, and it works fine. I'd previously used a BT wireless hotspot pay-as-you-go package, but this 3G stuff craps all over it from a great height. The actual bandwidth available is often a lot higher than you'll get at a hotspot, you don't have to try to convince the Little Chef burger flipper to bounce the wireless router which is never bloody working, plus if you download more than few MB, it's a lot cheaper.
The performance is really pretty good. Latency can be a mild irritation, but once its hitched up its skirts, I've seen download speeds running at 1Mb for fairly sustained periods. I use it to remote computers back at the office, so they're sending large amounts of data in realtime back to the laptop, and it works fine. I'd previously used a BT wireless hotspot pay-as-you-go package, but this 3G stuff craps all over it from a great height. The actual bandwidth available is often a lot higher than you'll get at a hotspot, you don't have to try to convince the Little Chef burger flipper to bounce the wireless router which is never bloody working, plus if you download more than few MB, it's a lot cheaper.
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