Hi, anyone used or know about this deal from T-mobile?
Basically uses a mobile phone signal to get wireless broadband through the enhanced 3G HSDPA? network to your laptop for 1.8mbit broadband in areas of signal for £30 a month.
I’d just like to find someone who’s used it as it seems a good deal for what could essentially be a broadband connection for your truck, no more boring nights, and google maps whenever you can’t find somewhere… And am mainly curious about how well it works and what the coverage is, ie do you have to be parked up in the middle of london to get any use from it or will it work in a layby in the middle of nowhere?
I have that package at the moment with a MDA phone. It seems very good, I use it a lot and so far no extra charges have arrived. I have had no problems with reception and in a 3G signal area its seems nice and fast. I have it doing Tom Tom traffic updates all day, as well as searching for addresses via the net, very happy with the service plan. I have found the phone they supplied less than great, the battery life on the Vario 2 I have is very poor, so surfing and connecting to blue tooth devices does take it out of that mobile very quickly.
T-Mobile have not tired to help much with that problem, apart from saying I can upgrade in the last month of my 18 month contract… I bought myself a sim free Sony M600i while in Poland and I am happy with that, so yep its seems a great plan, try and get a good phone to go with it and you will be happy.
andy the battery getting hammered while using 3g is the trade of for haveing a hi speed connection hopefully if edge gets rolled out this will help as it will still be hispeed not as fast HSPDA but much faster than gprs
I understood that Alix when I bought it. However at worst I got 6 hours out of it before it was screaming for a recharge, so in the real world it was useless for me. The M600i seems to manage much better and my use of the old internet and pushing email seems as speedy. I guess part of the problem is the large screen the PDA type phones have, the m600i is more phone like and thus a smaller screen.
true drew i recently got a hgh capacity battery that is made for pocketpc and phones try the mda compact 3 because it dosent use 3g it doent hammer the battery as much
I’ve got the PCMCIA card for my laptop. Very nice indeed.
Great for some surfing in your 45! Suppose I’d get more use out of it if I was tramping.
I got an additional antenna and it improves the singal a bit. Put it like this I still managed to get good signal in the wilds of Center Parks (elden forest).
It might be worth a mention that with web and walk packages one is for use with a laptop via your mobile, although I would have thought it would be easy enough to set that up anyway as the laptop package is a tad more a month.
Thanks Alix for the update on batteries. I am very happy with the M600i, as it looks like a phone and that is its main function, the MDA does not feel right as a phone for me at least. I have a Nokia 9500 which I love, but it does not connect at all to a Mac, even struggles with Vcards, but I live in hope someone will write some software which will sort that out, then I would be a happy bunny with me brick phone.
3 are now offering a broadband USB 3G modem for free on a £15 per month contract with a 3GB per month limit. It looks like they are trying to compete with the ADSL home broadband market with this ( hence the USB ).
My sister is trying to order one for her business laptop so I’ll update later how well it works but it looks like a good deal.
Does anyone know if there are any reasonably priced ones that work on the continent as well? I would only use it for surfing on the laptop, not phoning
3 advertise that their datacard works on 3 networks abroad at no extra cost ( using your allowance ). The countries covered are :- Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Sweden. So if these include the countries you need it might be worth looking at.
Still waiting to see if this concession is extended to the USB modem as well.
Any review on the coverage with the 3 modem yet blanik?
I pay t-mobile 12.50 to use my mobile as a modem but its fairly slow… i fancy one of the 3 jobbies at £15 if the coverage is ok?
Sorry, my sister is having trouble getting the modem as a company purchase through the website which is aimed at retail sales and the telephone sales won’t sell her a single item on a business ■■■■■■■ - she must buy two. She is persevering so I will post an update when I have one.
OK, change of plan with the mobile broadband.
The 3 USB Modem has been put on hold for a while as she is now buying a 3 handset on a £20 contract which for an additional £5 per month offers 1Gb of data (plus skype calls), the plan is to use this handset as a modem.
Again once it is up and running I’ll post an update.
