Three

Just to update the below, written in January:

Cell has been upgraded.

Now have an Edimax router and the E367 modem.

Performance averages 5.4Mbps down and 1Mbps up, latency averages about 70ms

Best seen is 6.6Mbps down 1.7Mbps up.

All other comments as previously

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Live 2.5km from the phone exchange, 2.8km from the Three cell.

ADSL manages a 1750 IP profile.

Three 3G averages between 2 and 3Mbps with the dongle indoors near a window. Local cell only 3.6Mbps, but due for upgrade to 7.2Mbps in 2011.

Speeds quite consistent, abandoned landline 2+ years ago in favour of 3G and haven't looked back - it can't match it.

No image compression, no apparent throttling of any particular protocols, YouTube and iPlayer stream find at standard definitions.

You need to change your port for SMTP to work (587 I think) but MS Exchange works as is.

One 2 day outage due to major issue with cell, took 48 hours to resolve. All other outages for upgrades informed in advance via control panel.

Latency averages 90ms so not good for gaming, but in every other way walks all over ADSL on a circa 3km long line.

A real alternative to ADSL with the proviso that we're in a rural area, and so I could possibly be one of only a handful of people using it.

Just thought i'd chuck a small review in here for 3 mobile broadband as ive been using it for a month now.

Positives:

Its fast
Its easy to connect plug and play
Its easy to top up
Great signal
You can game online with it!
30 pounds free credit (3gbs)

Negatives:

Its expensive
The support line im assuming maybe based in India

Its pretty easy to sum up 3 mobile broadband , its simple to use and the signal in my area is pretty good , im almost always maxed out on signal , it barely ever drops out for me and the download speeds are about 6meg , so around 700kbs tops! Ive gamed online with it you get about a 70 ping in London servers , and on world of warcraft i barely got any lag or drops at all it seemed to fine just as fine as threw the line broadband. You get a nice bundle of 30 pounds free credit as well when you first buy it , it easily trumps all its competitors for value for money when you first buy the dongle nearly all of the other company's don't give you free usage.

You can also get the pay per day services 2 pounds 99p 500megabytes to last you 24 hours which is ideal for a lot of people who just wanna quick browse during the day and night!

Overall.

7/10

Noticed advert in the paper from Three offering all you can eat data which also allowed tethering and at first was a bit dubious of the offer.Decided to chance my arm and am so glad i did.

First month in ive used 38 Gigs and i have not recieved any messages from Three telling me im a bad person.

I use my connection to stream from Iplayer,4od which in all honesty can get choppy between 6pm and 10 pm and gaming on both Xbox live and PSN which is absoultly fantastic (rock steady all through the day,and with a ping of 90-100ms allows me to be competative)

The only bug bear i have is the call centres,which are truly horrid.

So in closing i am one happy camper who is running a network of computer,Xbox and Ps3 from My HTC Hero.:)

Services: 10

N/A

Support: 1

Account changes are no problem and are done within 24 hours.

However when it came to cancelling, they don't make this easy, try to rake you in with 'deals' and I had to say "Can I just have my PAC code?" 10 times, yeah 10 TIMES!

I am currently awaiting my PAC text to come through, lets see if they deliver...(I will update this).

UPDATE: Got the pack code about 15 minutes later, just got to await final bill etc. to complete the exodus, I don't think I'll be coming back any time soon, especially as they removed my local mast, leaving was made more difficult than it needed to be.

Speed: 3

Three is the UK's slowest network in my experience, lucky to get 1.5Mbps during peak times and even then it is traffic managed...

Value: 10

For what you get it's very generous albeit the slower network speed.

Having tried to get a realisticly priced fixed line solution to my flat I failed. BT ran an advertising campaign offering a boradband package for £20. Looked good. Phoen them and found out it was actually £35 including the line rental.

Already being a three customer I decided to look inot what they could offer and discovered MiFi. Its great. Reliable connection that even allows me to use it for XBOX live (which was a real surprise).