I am using T Mobile for my mobile internet, on contract for 12 months,
£15/month and no limit, though there is a fair use policy of 3g, never been
anywhere near that though. Coverage is great and speeds are very good, would
recommend them. I now believe that they are doing a deal with a phone so you
can use the phone as a modem and use the data minutes from that contract.

Neil


"Roger Mills" <watt.tyler@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:78s5amF1n0lo9U1@mid.individual.net...
> In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
> Jim Kewley <JKewley@noanswer.com> wrote:
>
>> Dunno how many here are internet nerds, like me. In my attempts to
>> maintain a web connection on our travels with the van, I bought a 3
>> mobile PAYG dongle internet connection thingy. Big mistake.
>>
>> 3 mobile appears to offer the cheapest way of getting on the web
>> whilst travelling, consequently I bought one of their dongles. Sadly
>> 3 mobile merely serves to emphasise the truth of ' you get what you
>> pay for '. Despite the apparent value in it's bandwidth offering the
>> truth is most of the time the connection is so slow and unreliable,
>> with frequent dropped lines, that anybody would be hard pressed to
>> take advantage of the bandwidth available.
>>
>> Finally, after my umpteenth dropped/slow connection, I gave up with 3
>> and decided to try an O2 version of a similar PAYG dongle set up. O2
>> is slightly more expensive than 3 but so far I've found it's
>> connections to be consistently far better and so much more reliable
>> than 3 mobile.
>> Sent from the Caravan Club, Wirral Country Park site, via my O2 PAYG
>> connection. O2 is retaining a steady 3G connection at 3.6 gigs,
>> checking the 3 mobile dongle it seems to be struggling to find a GPRS
>> connection at 56 mbs.
>>
>> HTH for anybody interested.
>
> I too bought a '3' dongle, and have been very disappointed with its
> performance. I don't think I've *ever* achieved download speeds in excess
> of 1Mbps, and it's often not much better than dial-up speeds. In a recent
> caravan trip to the New Forest I couldn't make the bl**dy thing work at
> at, despite having had some sort of connection on the same site a few
> weeks earlier - and despite hoisting the dongle high up outside the
> caravan on the end of a USB extension lead.
>
> The version I bought came bundled with 12G of usage - which expires after
> 12 months - and further top ups cost £10 for 1G or 1 month - whichever
> occurs first. [There's no way I'm going to use 12G in 12 months because my
> use is only occasional, when away from home - but it was a reasonably good
> deal at the time].
>
> One of the problems with the '3' setup (apart from it not working!) is
> that it's time limited. So, for example, if you want to use it on a short
> caravan trip, you have to buy a month's worth, and if you go on another
> trip (say) 6 weeks later, you have to buy another month's worth even if
> you've only used a fraction of the previous month's bandwidth.
>
> I see that Vodaphone are now offering a PAYG BB dongle for £39 - including
> a bundled 1G of usage. AIUI - unlike the equivalent '3' offereng - this
> doesn't time out, so you don't have to top it up until you actually run
> out of bandwidth. Top-ups appear to cost £15 per 1G (as opposed to 3's
> £10) but, if they don't expire after one month, may represent better value
> for occasional users.
>
> When my year's worth of '3' expires, I shall be very tempted to ditch '3'
> and try Vodaphone instead - particularly if user reports in the meantime
> are favourable.
>
> Anyone got any experience of Vodaphone mobile broadband?
>
> [I'm cross-posting this to uk.telecom.broadband and uk.telecom.mobile
> because I think it's of wider interest than just the caravanning
> fraternity]
> --
> Cheers,
> Roger
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