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3 Mobile Broadband is epic WIN

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
 
I have one of these for when away from home/reliable internet.

I don't think it is that expensive though but that may depend on the package. Mine gives 15GB for £8.00 a month, which is a bargain.

Matt
 
The "about 6 meg" does seem to come up quite a lot. That's roughly what we get most of the time.

It's quite impressive when you consider that the signal is travelling over about 2.7km of oxygen, and sits almost next to the BT exchange. Feeding an "up to 8Mbps" ADSL signal down 3.6km of phone line results in only 2Mbps at the other end.

Were it not for the 3G service we'd have had to move back to a cabled area by now, but as it is, we just get by with it.
 
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Although I don't use Three for a 3G line at home, I do use them for my phone (HTC Desire).

After weeks of everyone telling me that Three have horrible speeds and terrible signal I was quite pleased with the outcome.

While the signal in and around my house is a little patchy 0-2/4 bars for HSPA it still can do 1-2Mb.

If I head into town I get 4/4 bars for HSPA and can pull 3.5Mb/s which for a single antenna is pretty impressive.

The mobile broadband modems have two antennas which I guess both pull around 3Mb to make 6Mb - similar to line bonding I suppose.

But from all the bad comments I've heard about Three they seem to be not only the cheapest, but the fastest and probably my No 1 mobile network for 3G.
 
The mobile broadband modems have two antennas which I guess both pull around 3Mb to make 6Mb - similar to line bonding I suppose.

But from all the bad comments I've heard about Three they seem to be not only the cheapest, but the fastest and probably my No 1 mobile network for 3G.

Three (H3GUK) has definitively improved since the start of this year as before they were cheap and nasty. Since then the huge network investment has finally paid some dividends. A number of surveys have rated them quite highly / the most improved.

Anyway, which modem are you using that it has two antennas? It's usually a case that when you have two the modem will simply use a bit of logic to either amplify the signal or choose the best antenna for the task, which is a surprisingly simple but also quite effective method of boosting speeds. I don't think they "bond" the link though as that would require two sims and I'm not sure if 3G networks can work like that.
 
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Three (H3GUK) has definitively improved since the start of this year as before they were cheap and nasty. Since then the huge network investment has finally paid some dividends. A number of surveys have rated them quite highly / the most improved.

Anyway, which modem are you using that it has two antennas? It's usually a case that when you have two the modem will simply use a bit of logic to either amplify the signal or choose the best antenna for the task, which is a surprisingly simple but also quite effective method of boosting speeds. I don't think they "bond" the link though as that would require two sims and I'm not sure if 3G networks can work like that.

I'm not entirely sure, maybe you're right.

I just find that phones on 3 don't see any more than 3-4Mb whereas the modems can get 6-8Mb.

They must just have a better antenna. Wish I could put that tech into my phone.
 
Not only that but modems can put more power into signal reception while mobiles try to use every trick in the book to reduce their energy output. I think it would be interesting to benchmark HSPA based phones and USB Modems against each other on the same network. Unfortunately that would be a rather expensive test :) .
 
I've been using 3 all you can eat data whilst tethering my phone for six months now and to put it simply its fantastic.I game using Xbox live and PSN,i use IPlayer and 4od,i pretty much use it like i would a fixed line broadband solution.I cant really find a gripe with 3 as i have only ever had to phone CS once and my problem was sorted within 5 minutes.

If you find it hard to find a fixed broadband solution i cant recommend 3 highly enough as an alternative.
 
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