Replacing Home Broadband with Mobile Broadband?

Im not a technophobe but after spending the last few hours online and
in town shopping about we've come to the conclusion that we may well be
better off getting rid of the home broadband which costs us £23 a
month(no that does not include line rental either)

Home broadband packages that offer fantastic savings are of course not
available in our area!!

So, we think some form of mobile package (with the advantage of it
being mobile) may be the way forward.

For example, 3 have a dongle at £15 a month, 5GB usage which I think
we'd reasonably comfortable come under, so there's a saving of about £8
a month and as I say the portability too when needed.

However, we have 2 laptops and I would want to make sure that if one
laptop had the dongle in, then the other computer should be able to
also connect via that, I am right in saying that aren't I?

My other thought is that my phone contract (with 3) is due, this is a
bit left field but I am assuming there's no phone out there that has
wifi ability that you could then connect to the tinternet through that,
at least not at a £15 a month? Im pretty sure that doesn't exist.

Of course, I know that there's plenty of free wifi hotspots about too,
and I could use them as and when but it's very tempting to have a
portable broadband package that I could also use at home and still save
a few quid.

Anyone doing something like this?
To be honest, if it wasn't for the sky package I would get rid of the
landline completely!

 

Do you mean Donegal or Bedford?

 

Colin Irvine said:

LOL, Bedford

 

Mobile broadband is slow and doesn't work at all 10% of the time in the
middle of cities and 25% of the time on train. Fine for browsing and
reading webmail. Broadband replacement it is not.

But...I use mine to remote access a workstation in my office from where I
can run things properly and on a decent connection, which works nicely. A
few people on the NG do same.

 

I did this.

I had a T mobile 3G contract which would, on occasion give me 400kb/s
measured download speed despite always claiming to connect at speeds
that would make Virgin optical broadband customers jealous. Then 3 came
out with a compelling offer.

Assured that 3 and T mob shared infrastructure, I moved to the 3 service
that offered speeds of upto 7.2Mb/s [1]. However, I occasionally got
speeds approaching 80kb/s, but 30-40 was far more typical.

This was in central London, not the back of beyond.

I gave in eventually and got a BT line and BT total broadband, which
typically gave measures download speeds comfortably above 10Mb/s.


[1] 1Gig a month for a fiver on the assurance that I could increase the
package at any point if I wanted to [2]
[2] which of course, when I tried to, I couldn't

 

In which case you can get reliable broadband for less than £23. I'm
paying £18 for IDNet Home Lite, for example. Or save even more with
someone like Plusnet, as Rob suggests.

 

I wouldn't, I really wouldn't.

I had a 3G connection for three years as the only BB I could get - ****
me, what a relief to get rid of it when real wired BB reached my house.
It NEVER reached anywhere near its claimed speed and things only got
worse big time when every fucker piled on to it as Vodafone pushed it
out to a mass market so that all the cunts locally could download dodgy
vids and send even dodgier ones to their pals from their mobys.
For the first year it was ok, but that was compared to ISDN - a dead
hamster sucking wet string would have been better than ISDN - mind you,
the ISDN line was dead solid and reliable, just slow.

 

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/SMBF says the Bedford exchange
has a choice of LLU broadband operators. You should be able to get a
package using a BT landline with a top-up for the broadband for about £20 a
month all in. Switch your phone line over to TalkTalk and you can bring the
cost down to about £18 a month, and that will include off peak phone calls
too. Some areas in Bedford have Virgin cable as an option too.

 

What Sir needs if he's going down this route, is a 'Mi-Fi' dongle -
wireless mobile broadband router that supports connectivity for up to
three devices, or at least the one 3 sell for around £50, does.

As for the 3 network - it's fine - the best of the mobile broadband
bunch so far from my experiences.

 

JackH said:

Hmmmm yes I did look at the MiFi doda thingy but now I've found the
plusnet site I think that I may well go down that route, save my money
and realise that mobile broadband seems like a poor cousin, that seems
the general concensus anyway.

Grand saying that 3 are the best of the mobile BB providers but the
cynic in me would compare that to Hitler being the best nazi, good, but
still a ****