Several Arrsers have previously asked about the quality and cost of 3G broadband. I have almost completed 3 months using 3G broadband and now have a better idea of my actual usage.
I was using dial-up that was costing me £10 for 32hrs surfing at no more than 44kb/s. I was usually spending £10 per month. Latency was usually awful!
I spotted an offer from 3 in the January sales and signed up to their one year offer of 1GB/mth for £100.
It didn't work out of the box (it couldn't see any transmitters), and I returned to the shop. After messing around with the modem, the salesman forced it to connect. I didn't see what he did and he couldn't tell me what he had done! I have visited 3's website, but the page which tells me how much data I have downloaded is badly laid out and doesn't appear to work! My figures are taken from the program on the laptop which might not be accurate.
Coverage isn't too bad, especially where HSDPA is available, although away from the centres of population, it can be pretty dire. Where it is dire, it is just equal to dial-up, in my opinion. It has dropped out several times in 3 months (no transmitters to be seen) but I normally do something else and the system recovers within a couple of hours.
The download speed is pretty good, achieving >1Mbps but upload speed jumps all over the place. Today it is only 27kbs! The latency isn't too bad either, but I haven't tried to play any games. It usually works well in Chat which, sometimes, dial-up could not handle.
Now, I do not download videos, music, games, porn or anything else that needs lots of bandwidth but am usually on websites with a high text and database content like Arrse. I note that Vista and McAfee seem to spend a lot of time and bandwidth downloading updates! So, my average surfing per month over the last 3 months has been:
Upload: <200MB
Download: >600MB
Total: >800MB
Time: >25hrs
Now, I have not reached the monthly limit of 1GB so do not know what the bill would be for exceeding it. I have a figure of £10/GB in mind, but cannot remember where I saw that.
To summarise, I am using the 1GB/mth mobile broadband service from 3. It has been pretty good, and certainly better than dial-up, but I have not had any reason to contact Customer Services which, judging by their poor quality website, will probably be a lousy experience!
Litotes
I was using dial-up that was costing me £10 for 32hrs surfing at no more than 44kb/s. I was usually spending £10 per month. Latency was usually awful!
I spotted an offer from 3 in the January sales and signed up to their one year offer of 1GB/mth for £100.
It didn't work out of the box (it couldn't see any transmitters), and I returned to the shop. After messing around with the modem, the salesman forced it to connect. I didn't see what he did and he couldn't tell me what he had done! I have visited 3's website, but the page which tells me how much data I have downloaded is badly laid out and doesn't appear to work! My figures are taken from the program on the laptop which might not be accurate.
Coverage isn't too bad, especially where HSDPA is available, although away from the centres of population, it can be pretty dire. Where it is dire, it is just equal to dial-up, in my opinion. It has dropped out several times in 3 months (no transmitters to be seen) but I normally do something else and the system recovers within a couple of hours.
The download speed is pretty good, achieving >1Mbps but upload speed jumps all over the place. Today it is only 27kbs! The latency isn't too bad either, but I haven't tried to play any games. It usually works well in Chat which, sometimes, dial-up could not handle.
Now, I do not download videos, music, games, porn or anything else that needs lots of bandwidth but am usually on websites with a high text and database content like Arrse. I note that Vista and McAfee seem to spend a lot of time and bandwidth downloading updates! So, my average surfing per month over the last 3 months has been:
Upload: <200MB
Download: >600MB
Total: >800MB
Time: >25hrs
Now, I have not reached the monthly limit of 1GB so do not know what the bill would be for exceeding it. I have a figure of £10/GB in mind, but cannot remember where I saw that.
To summarise, I am using the 1GB/mth mobile broadband service from 3. It has been pretty good, and certainly better than dial-up, but I have not had any reason to contact Customer Services which, judging by their poor quality website, will probably be a lousy experience!
Litotes