[Ben]

So, I've got the ZTE thing, which, in all fairness, is a piece of crap. However, while in the Midlands this weekend 3 UK have really been good.

I've transferred about a gig over the last couple of days due to the WiFi here being flakey and Vodafone being GPRS-only where I'm staying (O2 and Orange are also GPRS-only). 3 UK has strong 3G coverage, though, and while I was initially surprised I've since been making the most of it!

Yes there have been drops in connection, and yes I'm VPN'd, but the experience has been very much like having a wired (or WiFi) broadband connection. Pinging the BBC is about 140ms, and, tbh, most users wont notice latency so long as it's kept under 200ms. In terms of throughput, it's about a meg.

Anyway, the point of this post is only to log a positive real-world experience of using 3 UK. Probably my first one ever ;)

[miffed]

I used Three mobile broadband for a few weeks when I moved into this house , and I had a similar experience ! . when it works properly , it is a great , excellent product !!
Unfortunately my most recent experience was nowhere near as rosy - My phone line went down at home , I bought a top up but "My 3" was down , I had no way to top it up - My phone line was back up and working before "my 3" was , so that top up was a waste of time and money !

[chagle]

I've had a pay monthly 3BB for around 18 months. I only pay £7.50 for 3GB - Special deal via QuidCo! I mainly use it for work and to be honest, it's OK.

But then again I only use it for 'green screen' type services, email and the occasional bios/firmware download. So not large transfers..

18 months is up in a few weeks, so I'll see what they can offer me to stay.. not that I'm going anywhere! :)

[3GScottishUser]

I have had a similar experience.

I had a 3 PAYG Dongle (the original white one) which was just about usable.

I ended up with the E169 on a contract (£5 a month for 1GB) and it served me pretty well for the duration of the contract period as a fall back when my work netwok or home boadband was unavailable. Recently 3's mobile broadband has improved and on the rare occations I used it the browsing experience was just a little slower than home broadband, excluding some streaming services.

As a very low user I figured Vodafone's £15 a GB Connect Lite was a better option for purely emergency use. I installed the software on my laptop and netbook and only used it this weekend for the 1st time. The Vodafone software is very professional with lots of options. You can even upgrade to contract terms at the click of a button! Once connected Vodafone's mobile broadband was returning very fast speeds and i could hardly notice any difference between my TalkTalk browsing experience and the mobile broadband. I have had a call from Vodafone offering their latest high speed dongle with 3GB a month for £7.50 on an 18 month contract. Was tempted but being realistic I think ill get by with the £15 credit for almost a year so to change would be a contract for the sake of it. The old saying 'a bargain is not a bargain if you dont need it'!

My recent mobile broadband experience has been enlightening. It's obviously come on leaps and bounds and for some might now offer a viable alternative to home broadband. When the mob ops get 900Mhz sorted and LTE is deployed I think we will really have a wireless broadband product that stacks up against the hard wired systems although price also is an issue and TalkTalk (soon BT as well) provide home broadband free as part of a very low cost call plan (£6.49 a month).

[Hands0n]

Thats the funny thing with Three. It is a highly addictive proposition. I feel like an ex-smoker with Three, remembering the nice feeling it gave when it worked, but also recalling the sick feeling their CS give you when things go wrong. I actually love the notion of Three as the 5th mobile network operator, I'm thrilled with their product and offerings [mostly], but filled with utter dread with ever having to contact their CS again in this mortal life!

I did have a poor experience of their 3G/HSPA at my home location - it never was resolved, and I had zero inclination to try and work through the problem with their CS. I simply walked away within the 14-day cooling off period. But I have seen their network and product work very well indeed. I do recall holding a 3G voice call from Dover to Dartford, uninterrupted all the way.

I maintain a watchful eye on Three most of the time, their propositions are often of extremely good value and help drive the competition downwards. It is ironic that Three have the good value mobile data offerings that they do, especially considering their early [Bob Fuller] days where the walled garden existed and they really did think that mobile data was not something the people wanted.

Having been "burned" by their CS four times I cannot trust Three and so they do not get my business. But if they work for you then it is often splendid value and performance.

[3GScottishUser]

There are still a few tempting deals on 3 but they are becoming quite rare nowadays as the other networks have similar if not even more attractive propositions.

3 have been banging the drum about freebies like Windows Live Messenger, Skype etc, but when you examine what you get for your money in terms of a new handset deal and consider the inclusive calls and texts it's normally not hard to match or beat 3's pricing.

On mobile broadband 3 have some good offers but others are now beginning to offer similar services. The MiFi device is a nice deal just now at £49 PAYG but requires a monthly top-up. It can be unlocked I have found out for about £40 (that will drop Im sure) so could be worth getting for use with an exisating dongle's SIM.

[chagle]

The MiFi device is a nice deal just now at £49 PAYG but requires a monthly top-up. It can be unlocked I have found out for about £40 (that will drop Im sure) so could be worth getting for use with an exisating dongle's SIM.

I'd like one of these MiFi doodahs! Not that I need one.. but I *WANT* one. :o

[3GScottishUser]

I am sure if the demand exists for these they will become available from all the other networks soon. The fact that 3 have already reduced the price by 50% makes me wonder if this will catch on and perhaps it's more novelty value than practical device.

[Hands0n]

The fact that 3 have already reduced the price by 50% makes me wonder if this will catch on and perhaps it's more novelty value than practical device.

I think that fact speaks volumes. High hopes for the technology but, really, who actually wants such an expensive way of accessing the Internet from a group of home computers?

The technology is probably just a year or two too soon. Perhaps with LTE and after that 4G this kind of technology will be the norm - always assuming that the tariffs by then are more akin to what we see in landline communications.

[Hands0n]

Is this the time to rethink my ideas about 3's mobile broadband where I live? Possibly - see here http://www.speedtest.net/result/756273052.png

I have just re-built the Advent 4213 with Windows 7 Home Premium - I'll talk about this in the relevant post elsewhere onTalk3G. For the benefit of those who may not know, the Advent 4213 has a built-in Huawei HSPA data card, very nice too. Its a shame about the crappy Toys 'R Us keyboard - hopeless for a touch typist like myself.

To complete the build I needed to try out the Windows 7 HSPA card drivers which also include the Mobile Partner connect software, essential for mobile broadband use. Oh, also I'll need a valid mobile network SIM with some data available on it. Enter 3, mostly because I just happened to have one of their USB ZTE MF627 dongles on the bench I am working at. I could go get the Vodafone USB stick but thats in the other room :)

Local 3 HSPA here has been crap, to put not to fine a point on it. I tried their 30-day £15/5GB service late last year but local atrocious data delivery here put me off and I sent it all back withinthe 14 days. There was no way that I was going to even try and work it out with their Mumbai CS. They're exhasperating in the extreme and I have no patience left with them - preferring to pay more for less with an operator who has a worthy CS to back it up.

Without expecting anything much really, I popped the 3 USIM into the Advent 4213 and fired it up. Now for the fun, or not.

Surprisingly, the service is working excellently here now. HSPA speeds are readily attainable and there is none of the characteristic data connection breaks that I experienced previously. The Speedtest linked above is the highest that I have seen from 3 locally.

If 3 can keep that up for any length of time it may well become a viable proposition for me again.

[solo12002]

3SGU


"TalkTalk (soon BT as well) provide home broadband free as part of a very low cost call plan (£6.49 a month).

Is this likely to happen i go back to BT like a shot. Im p off with talktalk taking over tiscali and then increse the charges after telling us nothing would change

[DBMandrake]

Perhaps the 3 / T-Mobile 3G network consolidation has been completed in your area and borne some fruit ? Or perhaps the ZTE MF627 hardware or driver is crap ? It would be interesting to see what speeds you get at roughly the same time of day and location with the SIM back in it's original ZTE dongle.

To be fair, I get those sort of speeds in many places from 3 on my iPhone 3GS (at least the downstream - the upstream is limited to around 350kbit due to the iPhone's lack of HSUPA) and although I only get about 1300kbit at home, at the train station 100 yards up the road I regularly get about 2000-3300kbit while waiting on the train platform. It does vary a lot from place to place and time to time though, but it's generally never below about 1Mbit. (As long as I can get at least 1Mbit, I find things more than fast enough for iPhone use)

I first tried 3 in August last year and their speeds were very poor in most places I go (50 mile radius of Glasgow mostly) but by the time I switched to them in October, speeds had improved in many areas, enough for me to consider switching from Virgin with their speed caps. There has been even more improvement since then, along with a significantly more "hole free" 3G coverage. It really does seem they are pouring a lot of effort into getting their network's performance and speed up to snuff, and I guess a large part of that is the network consolidation with T-Mobile.

They also seem a lot more responsive to acting on reported network problems - for example at one particular location where a relative lives there was an ongoing problem with HSDPA that was in evidence every time I visited (about once a month) since at least last August - when the connection went idle it would drop from HSDPA to plain 3G and then never go back to HSDPA again (at least on my iPhone) unless I toggled airplane mode on and off.

I could tell it wasn't a capacity issue as if I did a speed test immediately after turning airplane mode off I would get around 2000-3000kbit, but after letting it sit idle for 30 seconds and trying again, I could only get 56-128kbit, with high packet loss and latency. Timeouts when trying to load pages weren't uncommon in this situation either, basically data was very slow and unreliable.

I never did anything about it as I didn't visit often enough for it to be a problem, and to be honest I didn't think they would do anything about it or understand what I was on about. A few weeks ago I thought what the heck, I'll report the issue and see what happens, and to cut a long story short the next time I visited that location about 3 weeks later the problem was fixed and I now get a good solid 2000kbit+ with no packet loss or high latency or anything. :)

Bad that the issue existed for so long without being noticed, sure, but good that when it was brought to their attention by someone technical enough to explain the issue well, they not only fixed it, but relatively quickly.

Personally I can't wait to see what their network is like by October, when they claim the T-Mobile joint venture will be completed...