Shit, Shittier and Shittiest :)

Ive tried 3, O2 and currently use T-Mob. They are all shit at a fixed location, and even shittier if you attempt to connect on the move.

3 are also the shittiest company on the planet.

Timing is everything

The problem is timing. The UK 3G operators are now over half way through licences that cost them all hundreds of billions between licence fees, infrastructure and subsidies.

3G is never going to make anyone a net profit. The technology arrived too soon, when people were still getting used to dialup and PDAs, let alone mobile broadband.

Now that people are ready for mobile broadband, the 3G implementations out there look dated already compared to other wireless experiences.

It's all reminiscent of DAB and digital TV, rolled out in the UK years before the rest of the world. The UK was the true pioneer of all that stuff. Unfortunately, such is the pace of digital progress that by the time the rest of the world 'caught up', they were rolling out DAB+, DMB and MPEG4 rather than the 80s technologies the UK made official in the early to mid 90s. And being 'official' means it's an absolute pig of a job to abandon them and catch up to what everyone else is doing today.

It really doesn't pay you to be the first to achieve something anymore. It's much better in the long run to sit back and adopt mature systems later on. 3G is a duck that died when companies like Symbian failed on their promises of delivering a billion smartphones to the cradling arms of the global population by 2003. It seems so long ago now. And, in retrospect, such a truely barmy expectation. Even the iPhone and iPad haven't reached anywhere near that level of adoption a decade on, and they're arguably the closest thing to it so far.

Semel insanivimus omnes. Colly Myers more than most.

wifi v 3g

i have been using mobile broadband since 2004 on a nokia 3650 here in ireland on prepay. it was very expensive back then. as tech improved the mobiles added wifi and 3g got cheaper and faster.

now on my iphone 3g or htc hero i can get prepay at 99c for 50mb for a day. fairly cheap. i do use it but 99% of the time i am in known locations. home, work, various meeting spots, pubs etc. i have free wifi in those locations so so not use the 3g data. the only time i really need it is while on the move on public transport and i can usually wait an hour or so till i'm in wifi coverage to do what i want.

i'm not going to pay a monthly contract for a service i use 2-3 times a month on average. result is that i use less 3g data on my iphone or htc hero than i did on my nokia e61 4 years ago.

one bad thing about the iphone still not fixed in os4 is that i can't tell the device to use only wifi and not to try 3g. in bad wifi areas this means the device grabs data on 3g and costs me money with no warning. worse some apps grab data when you use them for high score tables in games for example. so i have pretty much given up on iphone. i can put it in airplane mode but then i can't send/receive texts or calls.

the htc hero has a great toggle icon that switches on/off 3g data. perfect! 3g data only used when i say so.

oh and os4 was a bugger to install. best way was to wipe the device with no backup and start again restoring then from the backup after the os was installed. no probs syncing afterwards.

"the technology does not live up to its billing"

Very little in the mobile phone industry ever does.

Dongles

The amount of trouble I have getting a decent signal on my dongle is ludicrous. I end up waiting 10 minutes to send an email because I'm barely connected. I was missold

Not fit for Purpose

I have been using the Vodafone system for some time and had no end of problems.

Their network connectivity is poor, even in the centre of Basingstoke (which should have proper 3G by now!)

Their support is completely geared to Phone customers and does not recognise the phone numbers assigned to dongles.

One PAYG dongle they sold me uploaded its software into my PC which ran then happily announced it was not compatible with the dongle it had been loaded into.

I frequently spent more time trying to get the Dongle to work properly with Windows XP than I have online. I know XP is receiving Euthansia from Microsoft at the moment but 1000,s of notebooks with XP loaded have been sold and these are natural partners to a PAYG dongle and will be in use for a few years to come at least.

When you can get it to work it is useful but the uphill battles...

Even adding credit to the thing is very difficult dueto a website problem at time of writing. All in all Vodafone should make Huawai iron out the problems properly, work on its web and phone support and return to the market with a properly sorted product. Give me a job and I will sort it out for them!

Calling their suport from a non-vodafone phone is no doubt also expensive but after this experience I am definitely not interested in any of thier voice products.

A pity really as it is a potentially useful product - if they sort the bugs out.

Drop the caps

Drop the caps, keep the prices low, and I'll get it. 1GB/month, with an "fatter" option of 3GB, 5GB if you're lucky, slightly more if you're a Ltd. with deep pockets? And yes, I don't mind limiting my speed for "special download services" (torrents). I need mobile Internet for the following: Youtube, iPlayer, Google, The Register, and Work (SSH, HTTP, FTP, that kind of stuff - I'm a developer). But all these can reach your cap mighty fast, even on a slow link which "encourages" me to give up Youtube, iPlayer, and Flash Ads.