Has anyone experience of using mobile broadband in the uk How good was it and was the coverage good ?

Question

I have looked at 3G pay as you go or pay monthly and was wondering if it is a waste of money or not and what to expect , is it fast enough to play you tube videos etc .

Sorry to ask so many questions but I just don't know anyone who has used it Thanks

Answer 1

I'm using T-Mobile unlimited on a Samsung Z560 at the min, I can get anything from 2.4kb/s to 150kb/s on movie/music/software downloads depending on where I am in the house and a great speed at Starbucks or other hot-spots.

Also for image intensive sites, the image quality is reduced automatically which you can then choose to increase manually by pressing Shift+R when hovering over the image, or reload the whole page using CTRL+F5. This is ideal if you are downloading from wallpaper websites.

It all depends on the area and coverage were you live, if you can get a phone signal on specific tariffs (O2, T-Mob, 3 etc) then you are more than likely to get a decent speed on your mobile broadband.

Answer 2

I have had a 3G contract, although, because I am no longer mobile, I have a much more basic PAYG phone.

3G has good coverage in dense urban areas. However, at 3.4GHz, the cell density is very high. This means that rural coverage is virtually non-existent. This is not the fault of the system provider. It is a technical limitation of the technology.

Other limiters are built in to the Third Generation specification. Speed over ground is a safety consideration. This means that mobiles, calculated to be travelling at over 6kph, are blocked from video downloads. At (i seem to remember) speeds over 60kph, data streaming is blocked.

There is also the COST of downloads. Over mobile connections, you pay per Mbyte of download. THIS IS VERY EXPENSIVE! A typical ("cheap") download tariff is around 25p (45 cents) per megabyte.

That means streaming a long track could cost up to around TWENTY SQUIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!.......... Streaming a full album may come in at over £100.00 ($175.00).

Beware!

Answer 3

Hi sweetie. I have a 3g usb dongle for my laptop. And although i'm paying £40 for a 5GB 24 month contract, (5GB = 300 music tracks,150 internet surfing hours, sending 3,250 emails AND 150 music videos per month) it works well. The internet doesn't disconnect, and its pretty fast too. It downloads my music etc almost as well as my normal broadband. You can get cheaper deals and as pretty much every network does a usb dongle, and the market is so competitive, its not hard to shop around for the best deal for you. Just weigh up your useage, and decide whether you'd be better off with a pay as you go, or a pay monthly mobile internet dongle. A pay monthly may be the way to go though, as you can get rather a lot of useage for a relatively low monthly amount. A pay as you go dongle can work out to be rather more expensive if your useage is high.