Three Reviews

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.:)

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).

Services- good on the whole although coverage could be improved in rural areas.
Support- greatly improved recently and the best of any mobile provider or isp that I have ever dealt with. I recently had an issue with a netbook under a 2 year mobile contract. I called 3 customer services who referred me to the manufacturer of the netbook. As it was more than a year old the manufacturers would not repair the machine. I emailed 3 and they called me straight back. They are going to cover the cost of repairing the netbook as a goodwill gesture and the entire process has been painless for me. The most important aspect was the polite, efficient and informed nature of the gentleman who dealt with my case (Vejay Chetty).
I suspect that 3 have researched how to improve customer services and have made great headway in this regard. Other providers should take note as customer services are a major let-down for a lot of them and I have moved my business twice due to appalling treatment.
Speed- more than adequate, easily copes with streaming high definition video (but be careful not to use up your allowance)
Value- Very good

Oh dear, where do I start?

After buying the modem on PAYG connection reliability was non existent. It could drop the line literally every few seconds.

Then a couple of months ago 3G UK revamped their network in my area and things looked like they were improving. I could then keep a connection for several hours without any problem. Admittedly download speeds were still erratic and generally poor but it was much more usable than before.

And then 3G UK decided to introduce 'filtering' to weed out the P2P bandwidth hogs. Now my download speeds have gone through the floor. From around 30 kbps to 400 kbps before in general (with the odd and very infrequent surge up to 2000 kbps) to what I am getting now, which is 0.233 kbps with the odd surge up to a 1 kbps. This is now a joke.

I have never done any P2P stuff and I don't even surf on You Tube apart from once in a blue moon as 3G UKs service is far to slow to allow you to stream video, unless you like watching it in two second chunks.

I can only recommend you avoid Hutchison 3G UK and try one of the other providers, or better still get a land line if you can. Mobile snailband is largely junk and it is unlikely to improve enormously for several years yet.

I bought a pay as you go pre paid package with a Huawei E220 dongle from three due to a long stay in hospital.

Price wise - you can't beat it - if you use it regularly. Speeds can be pretty good when signal is good - no where near the claimed speeds, but I didn't expect that anyway.

Only gripes are:
1) Purchased Packages only last a month. I'm a very sporadic user so I end up spending £10 for sometimes a couple of days access.
2) Doesn't drop down to GPRS when signal is too weak to connect via 3G. Have to force it to only connect via GPRS.
3) TXT Messages from 3 don't show up in Linux for some reason. All other messages do.

Haven't needed support, so ignore that score.

after having issues where l lived we moved out which meant no fixed line broadband of any kind, thankfully this service has provided me a way to access the internet which is great..the speed however has been up and down, according to the modems stats page lve hit 800k however l know that in truth that lve only been able to hold speeds for short periods of time but l suppose lm not using this connection because l want to its more just providing me access when l need it... coverage is reasonable but patchy outside of towns, and on some days it can be hell to connect, all in all it does what l need it to but the limits are still pitiful (even tho l have changed to contract based 15gb cap), until they have larger limits (60gb+) and better speeds (especially at peak times which are often unbrowseable until after midnight) l only consider this service a backup until things improve offline at which point l will got for a proper ISP!

I purchased the 10gb option £15 per month, while it was ok for the first day or so it quickly became a pain in the a$$. Constant dissconections, or more usual to appear to be online but when browsing no page can be found.

Their support network is next to useless, asking the same questions over and over again.
Oh and remember their own sim card only works with a 3 mobile no matter if your phone is unlocked or not, even my Blackberry wasn't compatible, nor my upto date nokia. So you could end up on the phone for a long time and having to pay for it. I always got them to ring back always, which they did but still couldn't fix the issues i had.

I had a replacment delivered but same problem constant dissconections, and or slow speeds.

This was also with a very good signal as well.

NOTE:

You have only a few days to try this out befor you are locked in to a years contract so be careful.

I sold on mine to a close friend, i then went over to DEMON, i have reviewd them in their own forum.

regards
panzer

Have been using this since October 2008, thanks to my sister (contract in her name, at her address, for reasons unimportant at present). Costs 7.50/month for 5 GB (there was a deal on in September, so sister signed up but lives xxx miles away and sent the dongle on).


It is in use pretty much 24x7 (usage limit is 5 GB and I get to 95% or more by end of month). Running iMac, linux and a trio of Win XP machines (sharing the USB of one XP box with ICS). The 3Connect software sometimes reports no network (while a connection is present) and in a few cases, only recently, I have seen no connection light while Windows thinks it is still connected. Overall not a problem - I use the My3 page to check usage every 8-12 hours to ensure I never go over limit

Draconian fees if you exceed limit - the T-mobile system of lower speed but no extra fee seems a lot better, though this is an 18 month contract so not likely to check that out.

In a semi-rural part of N Wales (10 miles south of Chester) and seems I am lucky as there's a dual carriageway nearby and cannot think of any lengthy periods without connection being possible (I do switch off now and then, but not often, as I do websites from home, and check several mail accounts regularly).

I have never needed to contact customer services or support. The 3 days for testing is definitely too little - in my case I had no connection for a few hours on second day - 7 or 10 days would be more fair for users. Have put 5s for service and support as cannot claim poor or excellent.

Previously have used ADSL on landline since 2001, and previously had 6.5 Mbps. Speed could be better -- 3G 1 or 2 bars (of 10) but can show 2 bars and HSDPA (?) or no bars and I am still online.... so do not use that as guide now! Normally have no problems with BBC radio listen again - not expecting to view video with it, so not tried.

I been using this for a few days now on pay and go, I haven\'t had many problems. The most regular problem I do have is the software telling me the modem is invalid, to which I need to unplug the modem then back in, probably cause I use Vista. I have also had a few times when I get disconnected even when stationary at home, other than that I have no real complaints of the service. I play WoW and get about 350ms. I get pretty strong signals in my area, so I can connect upto about 2meg which about the average home broadband speeds now. The price however is pretty expensive for the 7GB download limit at ?25. This is best for people on the move.

My experience with the trial of Mobile 3 Broadband was not as good as expected. This was due to receiving a poor signal at my location. Inside the house it was utterly useless, but when I stepped outside I was able to surf etc.at a reasonable speed though not comparible to broadband as we now know it.
During the trial one was only allowed a maximum of three days to test it which I think was was too short.
However, there was no problem in getting the promised refund when I cancelled the contract.
I am sure it may be very useful to travellers but the signal has to be excellent to be of any value.
John