Coverage SUCKS (yeah, they kinda neglected to tell me that when I was buying it…) and is slower than dial-up used to be.

As for customer services, they are OBVIOUSLY aware of the compatibility issues with a Mac, but I am guessing they don’t want cancellation to be made anywhere near easy by admitting that.

I’m in an 18 month contract with these people now, probably too late to change it, cannot get anywhere with customer services… why on Earth do we allow ourselves to be treated like this? Because the only alternative is no mobile broadband – they are all as bad as each other as far as my experience extends.

GOOD LUCK .
MAX

I have recently moved from a remote area in Worcestershire where my best landline broadband speed was 350kbps to a new site with no landline and BT want £10k (yes, I do mean ten thousand pounds) to install one! I would be lost without my broadband so I looked at the various options available and tried a few tests.

It turns out the easiest way to test this is to use a 3g enabled mobile phone. If yours is, great, if not find a friend who has one – there are plenty around now. Then, sitting at you favourite computer position, get the phone to search for available networks. On my sony ericsson I have to go into connectivity/mobile networks/select network (not ‘new search’ because this just checks the current network) – also make sure that ‘use 3g networks when available’ is turned on or it won’t look for them. The bad news is that to get a 3g signal I have to have the phone near the top of the window facing Worcester! So you may need to hunt around a bit to find a place where you can get a signal. That said, I now have the computer at a desk by the window and the dongle on a 1m extension hanging from a drawing pin at the top of the window. Most of the time I average around 350-400kbps which is a slight improvement on the old landline. A few times it has gone up to almost 1Mbps which is fantastic, but it also drops occasionally to just 55kbps which is abysmal and yesterday I couldn’t get a connection at all in the morning, but it came back to life in the evening.

The thing is that you need to try it – when I bought mine, 3 offered a no quibble try it for 3 days, if you can’t get a signal take it back deal. So you can try it at home in peace, just don’t forget the deadline if you are having no luck with it! (Be warned though, that if you want to try it on saturday, it can take 24hrs for them to turn it on, so go into your local store thursday evening to do the deal and take it back Monday if it fails).

With regard to the comments on the drivers not working or killing a machine, I have tried this one on 4 different XP machines and it has worked perfectly first time on each one.

So I say you have nothing to lose – go and give it a go, With a 5Gb limit for £15 a month, I wouldn’t be without it now.

As it depends on where you live, I would recommend you try and use within the 14 day period or else like me you will not be able to leave the contract.

Good Luck.

I downloaded the latest drivers for three USB modem Huawei E169G from this website.

http://wahmed.blogspot.com/2008/10/three-ireland-broadband-drivers.html

Bye