3G is becoming quite common in the UK and mobile phone networks are starting to take advantage of it by offering fairly cheap 3G modems for laptops. 3 provide a good value mobile broadband service, starting at £10 with total bandwidth capped at 1GB. This price plan comes with the choice of three modems, which are free on an 18 month contract, so 3mobilebuzz sent me a Huawei E169G to review but I imagine most dongles (what 3 like to cal the modems) are the same.
Setting up the dongle could not be any more simple. All I had to do was open the box, grab the dongle (which is about the size of a stick-shaped MP3 player), place the SIM card into it and put it into my laptop’s USB port. Christian Lindholm had more difficulty having to carve the dongle to fit in his MacBook Air but then someone pointed out that it comes with a USB extension lead so it will fit in any port!
As soon as I plugged it in, OS X opened an application (which is stored on a small piece of memory on the dongle) and getting online was as simple as clicking ‘connect’ and it immediately installed drivers and the relevant network interfaces.
In fact, the only issues I have had is getting a signal but when a 3 signal is not available, it seems to be possible to roam onto other networks. However, most places have a 3 signal but sadly my house, the lodge in the middle of a forest I was staying in over the weekend or my local pub do not have a reliable one. With a little strategic searching (moving out of forests, for example) and a little luck, you can expect an extremely strong signal and I was easily getting 1Mbps. 3 say that 85% of Britons live in HSDPA (fast 3G) areas, but it definitely isn’t 85% of Britain area wise! Looking at the map of 3’s website, everywhere in my town and most of the neighbouring towns are covered by Turbo just my estate is in a blackspot which can only achieve 2G!
You also receive free international roaming in Ireland, Denmark, Austria, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy and Sweden.
Mobile broadband definitely increases your productivity. The fact you can work in a pub without paying extortionate amounts for WiFi, or on a train or in the Sports Bar at Center Parcs means that time where you would normally be without an internet connection (or an extremely slow phone connection) is now time were you have broadband! Naturally, you can use your internet for YouTube (I wouldn’t advise that though just because of the caps!), checking your emails, looking something up on Wikipedia or chatting over MSN, Yahoo! or Skype if you felt so inclined!
If it’s plug and play on a Mac, I would also expect it to plug and play on PCs because that is what most people use!
Price plans are cheap, starting at £10 a month as mentioned above for 1GB, £15 for 3GB or £25 for 7GB. If you are already a 3 customer, you can receive 50% of these prices. 3 has some other price plans which are well suited for bloggers such as the £25 Texter plan which comes with unlimited texts (fantastic for updating Twitter!) and 500 minutes as well as free Skype calls and free instant messaging! Naturally, if you sign up to a Texter plan you get a half-price mobile broadband plan (£5 a month is a worthwhile extra!).
Tags: 3, 3g, mobile broadband, huawei e169g, 3 mobile broadband
To bad 3g modems aren’t plug n’ play in GNU/Linux environments.. I’m testing the HUAWEI e220 on ubuntu 8.04 next week;)
I didn’t try it under Ubuntu to be honest, Alexander.
Hi,
Featured this article on our website and thought it might help – http://tinyurl.com/54j5b4
Cheers,
Sam.
“3 has some other price plans which are well suited for bloggers such as the £25 Texter plan which comes with unlimited texts (fantastic for updating Twitter!)”
Not so fantastic for updating twitter – the twitter sms number is a Channel Island number, which despite being a +4477xxx number is excluded from 3’s included texts (if you see what I mean), as I found out to my cost when I first started with twitter.
Be very careful here, 3 (three) mobile have charged me an exorbitant amount for going over the monthly 3GB limit.They mislead me instore by saying this was not possible, and the customer “help” is dreadful, both on the Indian no-help line and instore (Eastbourne branch anyway). I was notified (by being sent 50 messages all at once!!) 2 days after allegedly going over my limit, and later told they couldnt contact me sooner as I hadn’t been online!!! Overall they charged me £39 for one month for allegedly using 3.3GB, just 10% over the 3GB, normally £15 a month, the 7GB bundle being £25. Normally I could only use less than 1GB, the download speed being so slow. Avoid if at all possible.Three 3 mobile internet is a disgraceful rip-off.
furthermore, I have now been told that it is possible to cap your limit,after a return visit to the Eastbourne store, where the “manager” Darren said this was not possible. When I phoned him to tell him he said “we just sell the contracts the way we are told to by the company!!” Also T mobile internet do not charge you if you go over, just advise you as any decent company would, not sting you for £100 a GB overuse!!
The cost of exceeding your limit (10p per MB) is well published and available to you. You went over by 0.3GB which is 333MB which is £33.30. If you sign a contract for 3GB per month why should you expect more without charge?
The customer service in India is absolutely superb.
I agree that the facility to limit your overspend isn’t mentioned anywhere – it should be.
Broadband Mobile on the Three network is substantially cheaper than any other network, especially if you are already a Three customer.
I just bought the Huawei E169G USB modem from 3 in denmark. I got the following problems, and I would very much like to hear from any one that might be abel to help.
First of all, the E168G I got do not have Mac software on it preinstalled, and the win software on it does not have driver for E169 but for E220 witch is not very helpfull. I talked to 3’s technical support and they send me a package called “MobileConnectDriver(2.8.2).pkg”
I have installed drivers and i get a blue flash on the modem, but it won’t connect to servers PPP.
Can any one confirm that I’ve got the right driver (2.8.2) – or is there a kind sole that would like to mail me the software from their USB stick?
Thank you very much.
-and my mail if anyone could help
tkandersen@gmail.com
Hi gang!
I found a router on Wikipedia called the Dovado UMR, which offers folks the ability to share their internet connection from Huawei modems such as the E169G via WiFi and/or LAN. The company’s site is http://www.dovado.com and I found a store already which is selling it here: http://www.infoferenda.eu/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=1&category_id=1&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=2
BOOKED!
Hey all,
I am currently using the 3 ZTE MF622 HSDPA USB Modem, (black and green).
I purchased this in England on the £15 per month 3GB plan.
I am now in Australia and using this quite alot, does anyone now if I will get charged any roaming rates for not using the 3 network??
Also, how do i know how much of my 3GB allowance I have used??
sorry, im a bit of a novice!!
Thanks in advance to anyone that can help!!
This blog posting http://dalelane.co.uk/blog/?p=254 describes how to get the Huawei E169G working on an Asus Eee PC, which runs Linux. I haven’t tried it myself yet.
I got my Dovado router yesterday! Wow, no joking. It actually worked with the Huawei E169G! I tried it on the E220 modem as well, and worked there too. Now I saw that they will have support for the ZTE MF622 in the coming software release. Really cool box. Makes life easier for us at home since we don’t have to share the modem manually. Beautiful!!!!
http://www.dovado.com/umrmodems.html
WARNING: Purchased a three modem in April on PAYG. Bought £10 top up from a shop and had difficulty activating it. Three Customer Service assisted me by activating it. Fine. It worked. Used it for half an hour and then not for a month when I thought I may have a need for it in my motorhome.
Bought another £10 top up by credit card which I had registered on the 3 site. Fine. It worked. Used it for 10 minutes then not again for another 20 days when I required it in the motorhome. Couldn’t get it to work and it looked as if it wanted more money. Bought another £10 top up and it worked. The anti virus kicked in to update and mid way through, it stopped again.
I gave up until I got home when I read the small print on the website and found that AFTER buying s top up – one then has to ‘buy’ an “Add on” with the money in ones ‘top up account’ so that broadband can be activated. Customer services hadn’t told me and I must say that this unconventional way of working should have been in LARGE print.
It transpires that because I hadn’t done this, I had paid £1 per Mb instead of £10 per 1024 Mb.
Must be the most expensive broadband ever at £1024 per Gb!
Now I know what I am doing – fine – but felt I should warn other unsuspecting punters.
i`m currently using 3`s internet dongle on my desktop p.c. i am finding it very slow due to poor reception, which is shown in top left hand corner of ‘connect’ box at beginning. rather than having to keep moving all my equipment around house till i find good signal, is there anything available that can boost signal. i purchased this dongle three weeks ago, with top package, so that i didn`t have to get tv, phone and internet but i`m getting frustrated already. any replies would be much apreciated. cheers, ashkenney@hotmail.com
I have now had 3 mobile broadband for around a year. I live in South London. When I first bought it the internet worked at reasonable speed, but has only ever been fast dial-up. Over the year the speed of the service has declined markedly. It is now often difficult to get internet access. The “fast” link HSPDA continually kicks back to the slow connection, which does not work. In the evenings especially the service is unusable.
I would not recommend the service, though it is cheaper than some competitors, the service is generally like a low-dial up connection. I do not think it is accurate to describe it as broadband.
Looking on this review board, the responses seem very variable. I think this reflects the fact that the speed of the service differs markedly depending where you are. My observation is that South-West London is particularly slow; I have tried the internet on my laptop on a number of occasions.
If you want to try 3 mobile, do not go for the 18 month contract. I would recommend instead buying the prepay option and seeing if it works in your area. While the mobile dongle costs £60+, better to do that than spend a couple of hundred pounds on a service that doesn’t work in your area.
I have been with 3 MOBILE BROADBAND for 9 months and the speed is often as slow as DIALUP and often craqshes. I have also had a lot of billing problems. I avdize you to “STAY AWAY FROM 3 MOBILE BROADBAND”. Vodafone is just as cheap but so much more reliable and faster too. I will never go back to 3.
ok ive been using 3 for a while now, mainly for mobile phone use (had n95 8gb,lg veiwty) all with HSDPA so i thought id use the phones as a modem for the internet on my laptop, costing only £5 a month using the mobile tariff on payg,all i can say is….. wooow had speeds up to 2.9mb/s everything was as quick as my broadband at home, anyway i decided to buy a proper 3 usb modem(ZTE MF622)and get the proper 3gb payg broadband package(£15)and WHAT A DISAPOINTMENT i had!!!! download speeds of only 45kb/s and page load up times was so slow my granny could eat rock hard frozen toffee quicker with her false out ?????my advice to any1 is to get their mobile out (make sure its 3g compatible 1st),get it unlocked for a tenner,buy a 3 sim card off the net,and use that….its quicker,easier and less hassle…..ho ya dont get ripped off by 3 by using and paying for their so called broadband payg tariff,get their mobile internet add on for a £5er a month and spend the other £5 on your missus or spend it down the pub
Its amazing how almost all new customers to 3 mobile get a fast connection.. and then after a while it slows and most often u are timed out before u can get onto a site. I certainly think 3 mobile is in breech of contract and its time the regulator looked into the service they provide, I for one. will not be renewing my contract with them and am even considering stopping present fees to them as i think the service i receive from them is a joke.
If you are having problems connecting using your e169g in a Mac, it needs updating the driver. see the discussion in here:
http://forum.huawei.com/jive4/thread.jspa?threadID=322226
specifically:
From: x00114004 Huawei Staff
Re: E169G on MAC OS10.5.3
Posted: 2008-07-01 14:34
please go to http://www.huawei.com/mobileweb/en/doc/list.do?type=-1&id=4381 download the E169 Client Software WINMACB300D00SP01C03(UTPS11.002.04.10.03_MAC11.201.01.00.03) for WinXP&2K&Vista & Mac then do it as below:
1.plug your E169G to a windows pc and install the client software automatically.
2.upgrade the dashboard using the software you have downloaded.
3.plug your E169G to your MAC and reinstall the client software then dial up again.
I’ve put together a package that will hopefully make it much easier to use the E169G with a Linux EEE PC. If it works for you it would be great if you could let me know in the comments. See: http://www.greenhughes.com/content/huawei-e169g-easy-way
I’ve had 3 mobile broadband with the E169G modem/dongle for about a month. I chose 3 rather than the other providers because they are the only company which allows you to make VoIP phone calls. Sadly I cannot recommend 3’s service as I am currently averaging download speeds of only 0.74 Mbps (a quarter of the advertised maximum 2.8Mbps) and 48Kbps upload speeds, meaning that VoIP and other applications like BBC iPlayer do not work. To make matters worse, the speed is so slow about 15% of the time that I can’t even browse the internet. Not good. (Btw, I am in central London and 3 have confirmed that I have “very good” signal quality so that’s not the problem. Neither is my reasonable spec Vista laptop the problem.)
My tip is to go for Vodafone or to follow Luke Heaven’s advice here (12 July 2008) and use your mobile as a modem.
Incidentally, 3 have told me that they expect to upgrade their max speed to 7.2 Mbps sometime between November 2008 and spring 2009. We’ll see if that makes any difference…
I’ve managed to improve the speed of my 3 broadband connection with a simple upgrade of my modems firmware. There’s a simple guide here http://www.xdasite.com/showpost.php?p=13171&postcount=2
i have had my 3 dongle for about 2 months, after moving my office around 3 times i finally got a signal. i had to ring them because it was very very slow often timing out before a webpage loaded and constant freezes on web pages. Weirdly after i rang them it was ok for a month or so, not super fast but bearable. but now it has gone back to the same old slow useless internet as before. Its pretty fair to say that i pay £15 a month and may as well have no internet at all, i cant log onto hotmail as it can take 3 minutes often crashing etc and i cant use anything that either loads up an advert or a flash video. I bought it because i was renting an apartment and didnt want a phone line but wish i just got a phoneline now. I have tried using it at work and at my parents house with same problems, Avoid this product, it should not be allowed to advertise as broadband – as dial up back in the 90’s was quicker!
What an utter load of rubbish
“The cost of exceeding your limit (10p per MB) is well published and available to you. You went over by 0.3GB which is 333MB which is £33.30. If you sign a contract for 3GB per month why should you expect more without charge?
The customer service in India is absolutely superb.
I agree that the facility to limit your overspend isn’t mentioned anywhere – it should be.
Broadband Mobile on the Three network is substantially cheaper than any other network, especially if you are already a Three customer.
Comment by Fleng — 4 May 2008 @ 6:15 pm ”
The Customer Support is AWFUL. All they say is they will book the modem in for repair .. which it has been several times without fixing the issue. Fleng, you either work for 3 or you are a bloody liar !!!
I bought a 3g Broad Band lite package. The only “lite” bit being the money NOT, now in my bank account! During the first month, after paying £49.99 for the modem, I kept monitoring usage and got up to around 850Mb total, shown both on the 3G manager and NetMeter. However, the usage, shown on the 3g web site, jumped to 377Mb (or therabouts), above my usage, and I was charged accordingly! On four seperate days there were massive downloads recorded over and above that which I had used. After spending hours, on the phone, I could get no link to someone that spoke other than 3g speak. The ‘technical’ line is simply for those unable to connect in the first place. I have used PC’s for over twenty, 10 with Orange and a Nokia data card, and I have never come across such a problem before, with so little help to resolve an obvious fault. Needless to say, I have monitored every Mb since and, like magic, everything tallies, with what is shown on my PC and the 3g site. They (3g) state that messages would be sent when I was nearing the monthly limit and then just before reaching it. These were not sent/received, although I did receive messages staing how much I was spending over the limit. Well, we live and learn. I hope some good comes of this, because I am not a happy bunny, even if, for the moment I am still using thier services. Regards Tim
Hello.. I’m writing using the Huawei E160G usb donkey from Ubuntu Linux.. only think I done was to copy the settings I already had for my Nokia N80 and change the modem location to /dev/ttyUSB0.
Works perfectly !
Here in SE15 I consistently get HSDPA with my Huawei E160G and 3, but the fastest speed that I’ve clocked when I test it is 0.15M (a 10th of what I expected).
I got it as a fallback when I moveout into the sticks. I understand that there is a lot of interference in London.
I recently got the E169G and D100 router. Initially it was great with speeds of around 2mpbs but after a couple of days this has dropped to about 40kbps!
i live in central london (zone 1) and i get 7 bars HSPDA signal but nowhere near the advertised speeds! i will try calling them and see what happens, they are clearly falsely advertising their speeds and providing a very poor service. the last time i called them they gave me a phone contract worth £40 a month for £1 a month for as long as i want it!
As much as `i may try to convince myself that I can accept 3’s “broadband” service-(only in order to hide the fact I have been conned into parting with £270 over 18 months for a rubbish service) I have to admit I am a plonker to have subscribed to 3 mobile broadband. My old dial up pc card lies in its grave with a wide grin on its face and smirking away in the knowledge that the all new cutting edge piece of plastic with the 3 logo on it and deludedly referred to as a broadband modem is in fact not much faster and sometimes even slower. Like a lot of people have said, It did work ok for a while at the beginning of the contract and now in my opinion has better use as a suppository which I deserve for being such an idiot to believe their hype. Other networks use the same modem and get a good service. PLease dont bother with 3 and Fleng….whoever the hell you may be…you are deluded just like 3 or sitting right on the one mythical place on this planet that receives a decent 3 signal and is top secret. It may as well be Atlantis.
I was given a 3broadband stick(new)put the sim card in,but am unable to load my £10.00 prepay voucher.
Please can anyone HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hutchison 3G,s “Mobile Service” is a disaster. Speeds from 46KB to 640 KB, (640KB for a 5 minute period, once only),falls far short of the definition of broadband. Mumbai (Bombay) “office”, seems like a call centre to me,like most, to be a system of reading from screen-prompts, they are unwilling or maybe unable to cope with in-depth problems. The imposition of a £1/month itemised billing charge, where I was charged £1 for a sheet of printed A4 paper with 1 item of 1 minutes duration defies belief.
My advice is, write to the Hutchison 3G Glasgow address, and to the ASA about false mobile broadband speed claims. I’ll let you know what happens, I am in a said high-speed data reception area according to Hutchison 3G.
I have 3 mobile broadband and would like to offer some further warnings. I also have connection issues, for those who can’t even get a web page: run a programme like full tilt poker or stream radio from winamp. If you have a constant stream of data running to your machine it tends to reduce (but not eliminate) connection freezes and allow you to browse the web. Also, torrent apps will grab as much bandwidth as your area can provide, if you wanna use up your allowance, get downloading.
More advice: YOU CAN CAP YOUR CREDIT LIMIT TO ZERO!!! I was told by the salesman at the shop where I signed up and several agents that this was not possible. It is, insist on it. Before I did this I managed to go 46 pounds into credit in my sleep!!!
A warning: In 3G’s documentation they mention a disconnection fee to end their services. This implies a payment, lower than the entire value of your contract, to end all services. This is not the case. The fee is EQUAL TO the value of the remainder of your contract. As I am on the 15gig package, it would currently cost me over 400 pounds to end my contract. And I’m still tempted.
The call centre is in india and have a comined iq of about 3. I taught one employee how to find an IP address and, whilst making a complaint, another employee asked “What are you going to do about it?”. I found them rude and threatening, as if they knew and enjoyed the fact that they were ripping you off. My girlfriend did however speak to one employee who hated his job and was quite open about how terrible the service is for EVERYBODY due to failing technology and server oversubscription and it was he who told us about the credit limit cap.
I’m enraged by the contract I’ve signed up to and wish I could get out of it. I’m still looking for a fix for my USB modem as I believe a firmware update can resolve some issues. I have the e169g piece of crap and am running a modded version of xp pro. If anyone can help with that, please gimme a shout on sam_j_frank@hotmail.co.uk. Also, if anyone wants to put a mass petition or class action or anything as a group to try and sort this problem out, I would like to volunteer to take an active role and am contactable by the same address.
I hope this prevents some people from signing up with 3 and inspires those already burdened to fight.
Hi.
I read your blog about 3G broadband network.
Today i bought laptop with the 3g wirelles modem E156G
I expirience very very slow connection.
I just try everything to improve connection and finally give up.
Thanks for blog otherwise i will just try over and over to “improve” wirelles seting and my 3 days for return will be passed.
I will try to return tomorow modem only for some other network possible Vodafon.
Regards Alex
Thanks for your comment alex. Glad you’re still in enough time to return this. In addition to my previous post, I have carried out the firmware upgrade found here : http://www.xdasite.com/showpost.php?p=13171&postcount=2
It helps, a bit, but does not make a drastic difference. Worth doing though. I reitterate the poster’s warning; this fix may void your warranty and I dunno how to reverse it, there doesn’t seem to be a DL for the origional firmware so beware. I’m still looking for people who are having the same issues as myself and would like to collaberate to do something about it. sam_j_frank@hotmail.co.uk if this applies to you. Cheers, sam.
I purchased a 3 Mobile Broadband PAYG and it is horrendously slow, horrible to get up and running, and a real pain to top up. The “help” service is non existent, and I can barely understand the people in the call centres in Asia. The website has regularly failed to connect when I have wanted to top up and I am now dumping it and buying one which works sensibly, can be topped up anywhere and credited within ten minutes, and does not wipe out my hard earned money after a few days. If you are thinking about buying a mobile broadband PAYG don’t buy 3!!
I have installed once again Mandriva Powerpack 2008. And recently I have bought Huawei E169g modem.
What I have done for my EDGE internet works?
I typed in terminal:
$ lsusb
(to get a list of usb devices)
$ su
$ modprobe usbserial vendor=xxxx product=xxxx
(here I filled the xxxx from the usb devices list that I get at the first step)
Then I rebooted.
After reboot I haven’t even configured Drakconnect. Network is on using ppp0 interface.
Now Mandriva still sees my dongle as an unmounted CD, but it does work as a modem!
It was really more simple than when I connected via bluetooth+pnone.
This network and it’s Technical Support/Customer Services are by far the worst company I’ve had the misfortune to have dealt with. Operators have given me false names, I’ve been ignored, sworn at, hung up on, lied to, I’ve spent over £25 on an 08707 number (Escalated Tech Support) were they refused to call me back, used over 8hrs of my mobile talktime calling Tech Support and all this whilst paying for a service that has never and will never work to the advertised speeds, lowest speed was 17kbps, yes that’s 17kbps, the highest was 883kbps (tested at 5am) which is still well below what they advertise, trying to connect between the hours of 4.30pm and 2am is virtually impossible, After several months of getting nowhere via the chief executives office I resorted to e-mailing the Director of Customer Services allan.mcluckie@three.co.uk and had my contract cancelled. I’m lucky, if seen hundreds of reviews were 3 are refusing to cancel contracts, the general public need to be warned about this rip off company. “AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE…YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED”
Martin, I have had a very similar experience, although I have spent almost 1 entire day (over 22 hours) talking to tech support and customer services and, as you can imagine, has cost me a fortune in call charges.
My connection speeds are well below advertised rates (2.6 – 45kbs) and is practically worthless. I especially find connections pointless (being below 1kbs) between 9pm and 10pm – which is normally the time I use after getting home from work, having a cuppa and something to eat. The modem generally spends only about 60% of the time on HSDPA, despite the Three shop up the road claiming this is a great reception area in London (NW3).
I have finally been able to reach the end of my contract and have given my 30 days notice. However, due to a misleading ad on their website, I accidentally signed up for a second, completely different contract in June. Despite cancelling this contract as soon as read the paperwork (the day in arrived on 26 June) I still have an active contract!
They have sent 4 different bailiffs since late August to collect ‘owed’ money – remember, I cancelled this contract well within my 14 day cooling off period – but this week I finally gave in and paid a small amount to cover the cost of the modem I had to send back. I waited over 30 days (3 lots of 10 day periods) for their stamped addressed envelope to arrive to send back the new modem. In the end I paid for my own Jiffybag and stamps and sent it myself. They claim it didn’t arrive. If I hadn’t sent it back myself I would still be waiting for their Jiffybag, SEVEN MONTHS LATER.
I have been given McLuckie’s postal address (eventually) and have been told to write to him to finally settle the matter and cancel the still active account. But thanks Martin, I think an email will be much better and faster.
I STRONGLY ADVISE not to use this company for anything – phone or mobile broadband. They have absolutely no respect for you as a customer, in fact they treat you with utter contempt. Customer Service and Tech Support are not trained to do their jobs properly – it’s not their individual fault, it’s Three’s complete disregard for you as a fee (and therefore wage) paying customer. I can honestly say that about half the employees I have spoken to do not like their jobs or the company they work for.
If the employees wouldn’t buy the product they sell, neither should you.
Good luck,
Steve
Very simple message, do NOT under any circumstances subscribe to 3 Mobile USB Mobile broadband service. Absolute rubbish in all areas.
I’m tied into an 18 month contract for an appaling and erratic service and 3 insist that I pay them a termination fee equivalent to the remainder of the contract. this is despite them not fulfilling there side of the contract by providing an adequate service.
Very very poor service and it looks like I’m stuck with them for the remainder of my 18 months if that is the case then I’m afraid they have 18 months of complaining to look forward to.
What a complete load of tosh! Ok I know many who like new kit, but to pay the sort of price you can get 8MB speed for without capping is quite frankly, a good indication of how mobile phone users have no idea at all what to do.
Chuck this crap out and get a life.
There are a lot of people leaving negative comments about Three and they have obviously had bad experiences.
I’ve been with three for around five years, one of which I have had broadband. I’ve had contracts with all the UK mobile operators and three is the only one I have not had a problem with! Maybe I’m just lucky.
I’ve got a E160G modem which chugs away just fine. Typically in the sticks I get just over 1mbps connection. In London it varies from 500k – 1mps, occasionally when the cell in the area is busy I get around 200K.
This is all fine for surfing the internet, Three do advertise the fact that usual speeds are around 1.5mbps (maybe a little exaggerated). Ok Three has, to save bandwidth, only given you 56k upload to play with. This again is fine for surfing the web and emailing the odd word document.
To stop myself sounding like a three employee, I do concede that Three’s Indian call centre sucks and what really grinds my gears is the fact they don’t give you there real names, but an English sounding one instead!!!
My last point is Three have by far the largest 3g network, followed by T-mobile (who use a large part of threes network). Now in my humble opinion it’s better to have a slow connection than no connection at all!
stay away from 3 mobile broadband absolute rubbish dropped connections,dns problems,lockups,overloaded servers,i also noticed that it always seems to work fine when your getting near your allowance every single mont and @10p per mb it really is a joke.by using my own bandwith monitor i noticed thet they always over calculate your usage 10 min browsing 95mb !!!!! i dont think so….
Hadn’t done my homework on this one for a change and ‘nearly’ got suckered into three’s new 25% off for existing customers (as I have a phone with them). Was going for the £40/moth ACER laptop deal with 15Gb a month (24 months) included. Fair enough, was told the 25% was only valid on 18 month deals so opted to go for the Fujitsu with 5Gb on 18 months – another £40/month deal so should be £30. Went through all the checks and bank details until at the end was told “to recap that will be £36….”. Thats where I stopped him and said, “what happened to it being £30, 25% off £40 as far as I know is £30.” His reply was that it was 25% off the £15 mobile broadband, the laptop was the rest of the deal and not included! I expressed my displeasure (as they say) commenting that it was not worded that way at all clearly and he agreed but said that was the deal – so I declined. Just mentioning so no-one else fall for it and gets ripped off by three on the laptop scam.
I’ve used T Mobile’s 3G service and then moved to 3’s. Both for 18 months each. Reception in central London is variable inside buildings, the frequency they work at are not very good at penetrating steel construction buildings, so reception can be piss poor at times. My colleagues on O2 and Vodafone also have similar experiences, it all depends where the cell is located. UMTS was never designed to handle loads of high bandwidth clients, your connection is highly contended.
To avoid disappointment, treat it as a “best-efforts” connection, if you are close to a cell transceiver and not in a steel structure and not many people are streaming videos, you may get a decent service.
I get an average 1Mbs down and 50Kbs up, but I do get kicked off the connection and have to redial quite often. At home I get 0 reception!! I’ve renegotiated a new contract with them and got the next 12months for £5/1GB and a new E156G modem too, so overall I’m happy with the service.
BTW, The “Like Home” service international roaming service has been canned I used it extensively in Hong Kong….
Thinking of using 3 mobile broadband ?..DON’T ! its truely useless and awfuly slow, sub dial up speeds and I live in what ‘3′ describe as a ‘good’ service area in Central London. Luckly, I only took out a rolling 1 month so I can ditch it without too much finacial loss. The Huawei D100 router seems like a good idea and does actualy work but reduces your already pitifully slow speed a lot. The ‘3′ control panel even with the latest software upgrade is ‘bugy’.
As so many people have already stated the Tech Helpline is less than useless …they simply have n’t got a clue what they are talking about. Don’t waste your money and run up your phone bill talking to them…call your Grandmother instead, she probably has more idea of how to sort the problem than those fast talking guys and girls in India.
PLEASE, PLEASE don’t waste your money …use any other mobile broadband service provider except ‘3′…you have been warned.
PS Anyone know how to unlock the D100 router and the E156G modem dongle ? that wayI might be able to recover something from this mess if I can use them with another providers SIM
“When I first bought it the internet worked at reasonable speed, but has only ever been fast dial-up. Over the year the speed of the service has declined markedly. It is now often difficult to get internet access. The “fast” link HSPDA continually kicks back to the slow connection, which does not work. In the evenings especially the service is unusable.”
I have exactly the same experience in Dorset. Waiting for minimum contract to end and switching to Vodafone – which I have already used with no problems at all.
Will never use 3 mobile services again!
Poor. We’re in South London, and the reception varies from ok to continually dropping to an unuseable level. We got it on the basis that the reception for fast broadband was, according to their website and shop, “excellent” in our area so yes, we’re angry and looking to leave 3 ASAP. Forget BBC iPlayer, it can’t handle it at all. You get better reliability and bandwidth at the local McDonalds free hotspot.
we get around 50kbps download speed and it is fine, it always disconnects but who cares, its great for surfing and downloading anything., i downloaded district 9 in under an 1hour it was brilliant speed, if you want fast internet get a phone line and use that.
I am not sure why there are so many negative comments about 3 mobile (no, I am not an employee). Admittedly, the no-cap function available with some packages no longer applies to the one I purchased but this does become apparent if anyone visits their space at MY3. Similarly, the 30 day limit on the top-up is very obvious when visiting MY3 and is excellent for judging where I am up to given that I am unemployed. Basically, all the information is there for anyone who wants to spend a few moments reading the contract or visiting their own MY3 space. I have heard good reviews of T-Mobile too but beware of the fact that they do not charge at the moment for overuse. All companies reserve the right to change contracts and you may find yourself with an unexpected bill for things that were previously free.
My only problem is that my XP package is down and I cannot get the dongle to run under Ubuntu at the moment.
I have upgraded my Pc to windows 7. The 3 mobile broadband dial is not compatible with windows seven
indicated by the windows 7 upgrade advisor.
Using Windows 7 dial up , functions better than 3 mobile dial up.