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.