Mobile broadband or WiFi? You betcha

Mobile broadband - got that T-shirt

I live in the forest mere minutes from civilization. DSL is not available. Cable TV is not available. So for years we suffered with only dial-up. We knew about mobile (cellular) broadband, but it was always about a trillion dollars a month for any amount of usage.

Then one of our local wireless telcos (Telus) started offering "Unlimited" EVDO access for under $100 a month. So we grabbed it. After about ten months, the slime balls at Telus decided that 'unlimited' meant "5GB a month is cool", and they cut us off. Lying liars.

Now another wireless telco (Rogers) is offering an explicit (ie. honest, ie. not lying, ie. not Deceptive Marketing Practices) 5GB per month over HSPA for about the same price. So we're using that one now. So far they've been perfectly honest about what's what. But we've had to scale back to limited usage to stay around 3-5 GB a month. It's really tight!!

WiMax is coming soon... coming soon... coming soon... coming soon...

Until then, we'll continue to back-fill with some sort of mobile broadband at twice the price and one-third the service.

Rogers HSPA isn't bad, except it isn't really unfettered access to the web. There seems to be plenty of blocked ports and a few websites were (for a time) simply not available. My Sanyo R227 Internet radio just sings perfectly when I take it into town and connect it to a real Cable modem at my Dad's house. But at my home using HSPA - some stations and all On Demand simply don't work.

In summary - mobile broadband sucks. It's expensive and they make it seem like there is some huge International bit shortage. In spite of other wireless options (WiMax) being presented without such insane limits.

Campus wide, baby

I am a student, who also works part time fixing PC's at the campus I am on - we have wireless throughout the area, so I end up configuring iphones, blackberries, laptops, even desktops sometimes for wireless. As much as wireless 3G roaming looks attractive, seamless wifi throughout an environment such as a university or office complex is SO much better for consistent speed, I tell thee!

Mines the one with the access point built in...

PAYG is finally here

travel to Switzerland a lot. Just bought a Swisscom USB broabdand dongle on PAYG, 7.50CHF per day (unlimited GB within FUP), since this particular one was unlocked another 3.99 from ebay got me a O2 Broadband SIM. This one costs £2 per day for 500mb.

Roaming rates are obscene, but I can live with the odd payg sim in each country until contract pricing and roaming is cheaper. Its so much cheaper and more convenient that hotel broadband too!

Broadband?

"as mobile broadband is often slower"

Indeed. It isn't broadband at all unless you are sitting in the shadow of a cellphone tower. I use it in a fixed location for the "always on" aspect, for which it is preferable to a dial-up modem. Maybe I get a little more speed than dial-up, but only because dialup is also abysmal out here in the sticks. The idea that this is the answer for those people who are too rural for landline broadband is simply ridiculous.

And the Orange dongle is braindead when it comes to maintaining connection. If the signal goes down, it won't find it again without the computer being rebooted. Restarting the connection software, or telling it to run a search, won't work. This in a FIXED location, mind. I have no idea how people on the move cope.

I heart mobile broadband

I've been using mobile internet for years as I'm constantly moving around - fixed-line ISPs want you to sign long contracts, and I'm never at one address long enough! I made do with GPRS for a loooong time and finally upgraded to HSDPA about a year ago. It is fantastic.

Anywhere I go, on the train, at home, even heading up the motorway (not computing while driving, of course) I can usually get some kind of link, enough to fetch e-mails and the odd web-page. When in a city location, my download speeds are impressive, and I've used VoIP and video 'calling' without problems.

Although the cost of a mobile broadband contract is generally higher than that of a fixed line, the flexibility it offers is priceless. No 'extra' costs either like paying for public hotspot airtime (Openzone etc.).

Europe?

Look at Europe on the map. Compare its size with, say, Australia,USA, China, Russia, ...

So why should we Europeans have to pay so much for so little?

rural living vs. urban living when it comes to service provision

It's so easy to say "you shoudn't expect to get the high quality of service citydwellers get if you live in the sticks". I'm trying to think of counter-arguments. Service provision is run by private enterprise, so, to me, the only benefit they get from running services into rural areas is if they can offset the loss against any value added in PR, brand value, goodwill etc. In fact, I bet lot of people factor high-quality services as a reason to move to an urban area.

Back on-topic now. I like mobile broadband as they're cute little devices, they're easy to use, and, most of all, they're Teh Internets Inna Box that you can buy from the high street. As a concept, they're brill. Flatmate of mine wanted one because she couldn't be arsed setting up internet in her house. Wifi access may bring higher speeds, but as the article says, the setup and billing is complicated and it brings no real benefits - you can (barely) watch iPlayer over mobile broadband.

/me leaving my coat behind - it's 44C here in Melbourne...

Mobile Broadband Rules

Having bought an eee some time ago I decided it made sense to accompany such a portable device with an equally portable connection of some kind so I bought me a 3 (UK) PAYG dongle (Huawei E220) for a pretty reasonable 40 quid. I'd read reviews and I'd heard the service was abysmal but never one to take reviews as gospel truth I figured I'd give it a go. At £10/1GB, £15/3GB or £25/7GB it's pricey to say the least (not to mention the fact that topups expire after 30 days). However, the convenience of being able to connect pretty much anywhere made me overlook the costs because I knew I'd only use it occasionally and I wouldn't be doing anything particularly heavy with it, that's what ADSL is for.

Now I'm glad I did, but right out of the box I wasn't quite as pleased. Trying to make the dongle install properly was a right pain in the ass despite the dongle having a U3-style flash based optical drive simulator with the drivers on it. The drivers are awful, the connection to the laptop would often just flat out die or it would seem to be connected yet would not be recognised. Terrible, pathetic, nasty, cheap... just plain crap. When I eventually got the thing installed, the device itself seemed stable but the connection it provided wasn't so much.

Now I've taken the SIM from the dongle and put it into an HTC Tytn II and it's absolutely brilliant. I don't get 3G at home but why would I need to when I have ADSL already? In an emergency though I can get GPRS which makes it a nice backup even if it's not particularly quick. Out and about, however, I do get HSDPA, and when I have that HSDPA it really is like having broadband in your pocket, it far surpassed my expectations. As an added bonus, with every topup I get 90 days of Skype traffic for free outside of my regular usage.

So in summary, if you have a decent device to connect with and you have a half decent signal, HSDPA rocks. If you have a cheaply made dongle with drivers that could've easily been written by a 5 year old and a mediocre signal then you'll probably be less lucky. It's extremely convenient but it's also extremely expensive. On the other hand, WIFI is faster and more consistent if you're not going anywhere. Most access points these days seem to be secured (so no "borrowing" WIFI) and I'm not sure I'd want to pay for a connection I could only use at (for example) Starbucks which is insecure and only works in one location when I could drop the same cash on a top up for my HSDPA and go anywhere with it.

Oh yeah, one final point, make sure you bring a portable nuclear power station, those HSDPA radios suck juice like a class full of preschoolers at cookie time.

Mobile broadband

I signed up with broadband-through-my-phone ages ago, and just before I moved into my new flat discovered that I could use my shiny new smartphone as an HSDPA/3G/GPRS/EDGE modem.

It's perfectly good for checking emails- just about anywhere as well as downloading maps on Mobile Google Maps. It even lets me connect (painfully slowly) to my work VPN so I can continue to work even when the network's down. I can even get El Reg RSS feeds. So far, so good.

However, I can't get on Youtube, I can't get naughty movies and I can't play TF2.

Mobile broadband is great, but it'll never beat wired broadband until they stop being arses with it and get the near-zero lag my Telewest line used to have.

3G saved my sanity

I live in deepest darkest Cornwall and can't get ADSL due to Aluminium cables and distance from the exchange. I was stuck with one way satellite which really does suck. Not only do they have crippling caps and costs but you need to use dial up for your uplink and quite often I found the ACK signal for the incoming data was exceeding the dial up capability so you never acheived the full download speed potential! Then 3G came along and I've not looked back, I'm with "three" for £25 a month 7GB transfer a month. Admittedly the modem doesn't move and I guess the tower in a rural area doesn't get huge amounts of use but I find the speeds are pretty damn good, quite often downloading at over 100k/s.

Laptops

I've been thinking for a while about laptops and netbooks. All the manufacturers want to charge you for addons like 3G or whatever, but I have a better idea - for the consumer at least:

An Internet USB port or even 2, under a lid - with enough space to put your 3G dongle, your faster WIFI card, your Flash drive for readyboost or whatever.

That would be a major selling point in a laptop to me. No more dongles sticking out the back.

Joikuspot + netbook?

That's what I use. Works well enough to stream Youtube. And when roaming, I don't need anything better than that.

Who are these people who NEED to download gigabytes of data in milliseconds while roaming?

3G isn't Broadband,

Even 14.4Mbps HSPA+ isn't broadband

100ms + latency common

Disconnects or not able to connect. Certainly not "Always on"

Up to 50% coverage variation when more users connect

Speeds below dialup if the sector is full.

Mobile might be an alternative to Dialup. It's MOBILE. not an alternative for WiFi or real Broadband.

It's technically Mobile Midband.

See

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1147

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=60

Midband FAQ

Comments on Ireland's NBS using i-HSPA from 3

also

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055427127

Mobile (so called) "Broadband" and Mobile WiMax is incredibly over sold. It can only approach Broadband when the signal is near perfect and no-one else is using the mast. Even so the latency is terrible.

Because of how HSDPA works, at 250ms a 2Mbps Mobile connection will take longer to load a web page than 1Mbps VSAT at 790ms Latency (2 way satellite).

VOIP performance and capacity using a decent codec is laughable on HSDPA. 3G native calls are better quality and you can have about 10 to 20 for each VOIP call.

Mobile "broadband" Yeah!

I have a 3 mobile broadband account - 5GB for £7.50 per month. Bargain! But it's slow, unreliable and coverage is very patchy even in urban areas or main towns/cities. I perservere with it only because it is so cheap (special offer through Quidco, it was half the normal cost) and it does the job in an emergency, but tbh it's performance is no better than dial-up at best.

Disappointing.