On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, Jim Kissel wrote:
> I've heard that 3 currently offers the best contract for data.
I guess that depends how you measure "best", they are certainly the
cheapest currently.
In my totally unscientific and subjective testing they also seem to have
reasonable coverage, probably better than Orange and T-Mobile, but not as
good as Vodafone. Speed-wise though they could be better, I have friends
with T-mobile and Vodafone modems who regularly get faster connections
than I seem to, though that is also tied in with coverage and the sort of
service available in the area.
Currently I've not seen anything close to the theoretical 2.8Mbps possible
with HSDPA (around 1Mbps is the best I've seen and that is a lot faster
than the average which is probably closer to the 100 Kbps mark) but 3 do
seem to have a fairly aggressive roll out planned to improve their high
speed coverage so it might improve in the next year or so.
The service I get so far seems fine for checking my email, surfing and
general usage, not so good for things like streaming music/videos or doing
other high bandwidth or latency intolerant activities like say online
gaming.
> Would you mind letting us know the costs for this type of access and
> what their T&C/limits/restrictions are?
I'm on their Broadband Lite tariff which is 10 UKP/month for 1GB of data,
with overage charged at 10p/MB, but given my usage over the last couple of
weeks I'm not expecting to go over the 1GB allowance very often if ever.
They also have a 15UKP/3GB and a 25UKP/7GB tariff for heavier users.
Price of the modem initially depends on tariff, length of contact and
whether you also have a phone with them or not so you'll need to check the
website or go into a 3 store for exact pricing, but for higher
tariff/longer contract users it is possible to get the modem for free.
Aside from the bandwidth limit I haven't found any restrictions yet, but
I've not tried (and don't have any real interest in) using VoIP or hosting
a web server on the end of the connection so I've no idea if such things
are restricted or not. As always you should read the T&C yourself before
making any decision about a purchase.
For me so far the service seems ok, it's not lightning quick, but is
better than the connection I used to get from my mobile phone and most of
the things I want to do while mobile are fairly low bandwidth anyway like
sending/receiving email, IRC, connecting to a server via SSH etc.
So for a tenner a month I'm reasonable happy, it allows me to check my
email on the way to work or while waiting for a delayed train however
while it is faster than dial-up it certainly isn't a replacement for a
fixed line broadband service IME.
All the above are observations while traveling in Basingstoke and South of
Basingstoke mostly to Southampton, though last weekend I was in New
Milton, where phone coverage has been traditionally poor during previous
visits and it worked ok there. I've not ventured North of Basingstoke
since buying it (toward London the coverage will in theory be better but
I've not tested that myself) and obviously your experience with the
service will depend a lot on the quality of coverage in the areas you
travel most frequently.
For more information including links to coverage maps see:
http://www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/mobile_broadband_/index.omp
Andy
