In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Jim Kewley 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
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

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" wrote in message
...
In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Jim Kewley 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
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

I bought the Voda dongle - it works fine. There is a requirement to use
it periodically (I think once every 120 days). My main requirement is
to collect e-mails and do very basic web searches, look at train times,
stuff like that, on the few days I am away from home. E-mail collection
is very cheap - the balance goes down by about 10p every time I use it.
I still have over £14 left so GOK how Vodafone will make much money out
of me. I guess if my home office broadband goes down I will use it as a
backup, again mainly for e-mail so might spend a bit then.

I collect from a number of POP 3 addresses using Thunderbird,and an
associate company's Outlook web mail system. It connects via 3G when it
can and GPRS when it can't. Speed has not been an issue - but I am not
trying to download large files apart from the odd excel spreadsheet, and
am quite happy to sip my coffee whilst it gets on with things.

They are so cheap now - less than half a tank of petrol - and if I
travelled a lot I would be tempted to have 2 or 3 from different
networks and use whichever is best on the day. With some hotels
charging £15 a night for wireless access in London, it's a no brainer.
Beats having to eat in Macdonalds for their free wifi too.

It has a Micro SD card slot, so can use it as a memory stick as well.
One less thing to carry.

I am a very happy customer.




In message , Roger Mills
writes
In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Jim Kewley 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]

--
Richard C

"Roger Mills" wrote in message
...
In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Jim Kewley 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.


I've been using 3internet for 5quid month for some time now with a
smartphone as a modem, and it's acceptable most of the time.
The way I look at it is as mobile BB, at dial up prices.

Last week went for the much published 3 dongle of a fiver deal
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...html?t=1703797

Unlocked it using , flash files
http://rapidshare.com/files/235523732/ZTE2.rar.html

and Telstra connection manager, with 3 settings
Now it's unlocked i can experiment with other networks.

I've tried Virgin Mobile's 30p per day internet, which works fine
except Virgins billing computer sometimes forgets 30p per day,
and debts at per mb rate, emptying my credit! ;-(

Now to try some other networks sims

Steve Terry

"Roger Mills" typed


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]

My Vodafone mobile broadband is reasonable value for money. Speed is
very variable but you can usually get something as it defaults to GPRS
if there's no 3 signal.

It's fine to collect emails. I'm too mean to surf much with it (though
35p kept me enteertained all day a fortnight ago).

--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.

As a point of interest, three of four CC sites that we have
stayed on in the last three weeks had wi-fi - but at (cheapest)
£2.25 for 15mins or £6.99 for an hour I think I'll pass.

Aren't we paying enough for membership and site fees for them to
NOT charge hotel prices? If McD's can do it for free why not the
CC - for members at least?


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

"Woody" wrote in message
...
As a point of interest, three of four CC sites that we have stayed on in the
last three weeks had wi-fi - but at (cheapest) £2.25 for 15mins or £6.99 for an
hour I think I'll pass.

Aren't we paying enough for membership and site fees for them to NOT charge
hotel prices? If McD's can do it for free why not the CC - for members at least?


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com


I've just put the July 09 CC Mag down

Wi-Fi at over £30.00 for a month is a pure RIP OFF

Any way I cant remember the last time I took a TV away with me

The only time I now take my net book away with me is when I need it for route
planning

Those that MIGHT need me urgently , have my mobile number and they're told to text
me

Most of the news on tele I don't want to hear anyway

It can be read a few days later in some else's discarded newspaper ;-))

DieSea

See you at York next Sunday Woody ??

Woody wrote:

As a point of interest, three of four CC sites that we have
stayed on in the last three weeks had wi-fi - but at (cheapest)
£2.25 for 15mins or £6.99 for an hour I think I'll pass.

WTF? I think it's fair to say at that kind of price, Wifi in caravan parks
is going to disappear because everybody will be using 3G instead.

--
http://ale.cx/ (AIM:troffasky) )
23:44:46 up 52 days, 7:02, 2 users, load average: 0.12, 0.08, 0.08
A few flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction

alexd wrote:
Woody wrote:

As a point of interest, three of four CC sites that we have
stayed on in the last three weeks had wi-fi - but at (cheapest)
£2.25 for 15mins or £6.99 for an hour I think I'll pass.

WTF? I think it's fair to say at that kind of price, Wifi in caravan
parks is going to disappear because everybody will be using 3G
instead.

But 3g coverage is terrible in most areas

"DieSea" wrote in message
...

"Woody" wrote in message
...
As a point of interest, three of four CC sites that we have stayed on in
the last three weeks had wi-fi - but at (cheapest) £2.25 for 15mins or
£6.99 for an hour I think I'll pass.

Aren't we paying enough for membership and site fees for them to NOT
charge hotel prices? If McD's can do it for free why not the CC - for
members at least?


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com


I've just put the July 09 CC Mag down

Wi-Fi at over £30.00 for a month is a pure RIP OFF
snipped

What extra cost (if any) is there to providing all and sundry to share your
internet connection. Assuming you have a connection in the first place and
that you are not going to hard wire the whole site (daft but thought I would
mention it)? Perhaps the money is to password protect some files.