Mobile broadband in the UK

[bgowland]

Once again the wind here is gusting at over 35mph and once again my broadband connection is dropping out on a regular basis as my phone line swings like a skipping rope outside. Speak to my ISP and line providers??? Don't even go there - over the past few months they've been playing an impressive game of 'Pass the Buck' between them. :mad:

So...anyone in the UK got any experience of mobile broadband? Cost, reliability, speed etc.?

To be honest, I'm not too bothered about being mobile, just having a service which will work over a mobile phone connection so I can tell my telephone line provider and ISP where they can stick their services. Where the sun don't shine springs to mind.

Being just west of London, mobile phone coverage is pretty good and both my phones are showing max. signal strength here in my home office. If I can get a sensible speed at reasonable cost with good reliability, I'd be seriously tempted.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Brian

[stu8080]

Cable? Virgin plan to bring a 50mb connection speed soon, about the same time BT are pushing the new 24mb, plus from my experience speeds are more consistent.

I guess this isnt an option though - this might be a better bet: http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/mobil...y-monthly/

surprisingly reasonable prices! 1.8Mb speeds (should you be sat atop the mobile mast!) for about £20 a month, 3GB allowance, for a 24 month contract, or £100 for the usb mobile modem and £4 a day, no contract.

At least you could have the modem as a backup for when the connection through BT drops out.

[ACTCMS]

My first though would be cable too.

However, this is from last week's Computer Weekly http://www.vodafone.co.uk/stick

I don't have any experience of mobile though. My telephone wire is only about 8 meters long (local telegraph pole lives in my garden).

Alex

[AndiTails]

Actually, T-Mobile supports HSDPA through their USB modems, which is up to 7.6mbps...
I use one with work, and although its normally around 1mbps on "3G+", occasionally I get a good HSDPA signal and it fliiiiies.

And on PAYG its actually £1/day.
You can buy a dongle off ebay for around £80.

For cheapness, '3' offer the same service, but a bit cheaper.
Not a good coverage though.


I'm with 20mbit Virgin at home, and after some whinging to Customer Support, I've managed to get a good connection and regularly download at over 1.5MB/sec. Torrents are excellent too.. Roll on 50mbit!!

[bgowland]

Thanks guys. I did some research on one of those 'compare prices' type of web-sites.

Vodaphone seem to have the fastest possible speeds. This is relatively important for things like downloads of development tools and SDKs etc. (often 300-400MB+) and my wife downloads large documents regularly. I'm not sure if a 3GB allowance would be enough or not - I've never really thought about how much I download in a month (obviously a lot when new SDKs etc. get released but that isn't a regular thing).

I'll keep the mobile option in mind but I've also done some research into Virgin. I remembered my son-in-law works for them and he says they've fixed a lot of problems they had in the past and are making a big push to regain some of the market share they lost to BT and Sky. One tempting thing is they actually put fibre-optic into your house and an 8Mb broadband contract plus telephone is less per month than my current broadband plus BT line rental.

Hmmm - what to do, what to do...

Cheers,
Brian

[bgowland]

Actually, T-Mobile supports HSDPA through their USB modems, which is up to 7.6mbps...
I use one with work, and although its normally around 1mbps on "3G+", occasionally I get a good HSDPA signal and it fliiiiies.

And on PAYG its actually £1/day.
You can buy a dongle off ebay for around £80.

I missed your post before posting my reply (I started the reply then got sidetracked by the washing-up).

I may look into the PAYG option - it may be a good backup. I never actually lose my broadband connection permanently - what happens is that when my signal drops repeatedly (recovering within a minute or so), the ISP's automated QoS system starts to throttle back on my IP profile. My current settings according to the BT Speedtester...

IP profile for your line is - 135 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 5088 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 103 kbps

The 5088kbps downstream is what my BT exchange thinks my line can handle (now the wind has dropped) - the 135kbps IP profile is what has been adjusted by my ISP - the helpdesk guys at my ISP can't reset this manually and it'll probably take 36-48 hours before it re-adjusts itself. Great huh? I normally have an IP profile of 4000-4500kbps and can see actual throughput of 3.5-3.7 Mbps. At the moment I can't even listen to a 64kbps radio stream without it dropping out when I open a web page. :mad:

Cheers,
Brian

[stu8080]

If you can get cable - have that, its reliable and promises far faster speeds than BT can manage anytime soon. Plus its cheap and unlimited download.

I think you could get through 3gb in a weekend - think of flash websites and automatic updates and all the other downloads that go unnoticed.

[bgowland]

If you can get cable - have that, its reliable and promises far faster speeds than BT can manage anytime soon. Plus its cheap and unlimited download.

I've never had a cap on my downloads and it's something I want to avoid if I can help it.

The VirginMedia postcode checker says 'it looks like' I'm in their analogue area. I'm not sure what that means so I'll give their sales line a call tomorrow.

BTW when I said

an 8Mb broadband contract plus telephone is less per month than my current broadband plus BT line rental

that should've been 20MB broadband. Nice if I can get it.

Cheers,
Brian

[stu8080]

Just found out that Virgin plan to have the 50mb service available to all by end of 2008, but best of all, 4mb customers (me!) get upgraded to 10mb down and 512kb up for no extra cost, rolled out between Feb 08 and summer 08!

see here: http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/even-faster.php

[bgowland]

Well it looks like I'm stuck with my flakey service for a while longer (still at 0.1Mbs).

I'm quite set on Virgin cable now but I spoke to them today and they can only provide telephone and analogue TV to my area at the moment - no broadband except over a BT line. The sales guy had no timescale he could give but said it should be 'soon'.

My wife emailed our son-in-law to see if he could sort it out. I can just imagine the next progress meeting...

"We're putting this area on as a priority"
"Any particular reason?...
"Yes, my in-laws live there".



Cheers,
Brian