Hi,

I thought I would pass on my experiences of three and do it in a fair and honest way for anyone thinking about being on 3 mobile broadband services.

Firstly, 3 mobile's broadband service is provided by a company that pulled 3 mobile's 3G service and T-Mobiles 3G Service together under one company which provides it to t-mobile and 3 mobile services. Virgin Mobile is also an MVNO which piggy backs off the back of t-mobiles network for its 2G services and consequently shares the same mobile broadband service as three and t-mobile.

That's a lot to allocate to different clients before its even allocated to you the user. The process of the tie up with t-mobile and 3 has meant that this has consolidated some sites and allowed them to cut costs. Perhaps it may provide greater coverage though.

However, due to the fact that BT were insisting on a substantial installation cost as well as rolling cost for line rental before paying for broadband - 3 mobile looked like an attractive route to pursue for mobile broadband services. It was £10 for 1GB allowance. £15 for a 3GB allowance and I think it was £25 for a 7GB allowance for data downloads.

When I first got it - it seemed okay. Bit slow, variable for signal but in the main it seemed to tick along at a nearly bearable speed.

Then there were issues. You could see there was a signal and you would attempt to connect but it would fail to connect. So you would try again and again. Sometimes it may connect and sometimes it might not. Sometimes it would connect and after a very short period you wouldn't be able to navigate to the next web page. Only to discover that the 3Connect software would be disconnected and prompting you to connect again. Meaning that you would follow the steps above. However, when those steps failed (and sometimes they worked for a short period - say half an hour if you were really lucky that day) you could plug and unplug the device. Often this made little difference. Doing this meant that you would appear to have no network coverage (even though there was). Other times you might see the connect button and when you press it it would say that there was a problem with your settings when you knew it was fine. Other times it may connect.

I knew someone that had an alternative dongle with it and it had its own software. So, I tried that. When I used that it woudl sometimes work when the other didnt and vice versa. And other times I would go through the steps mentioned above for each dongle and I may or may not get a connection.

And when I say may or may not what I really mean is that often it was fruitless, very occasionally it would work.

I also have another operating system aside from Windows XP I can use. Its called Ubuntu Studio. And the program is called WVdial.

That also tends to result in it not working but sometimes it works. Its more reliable than the above I've mentioned. But it still means that it usually doesnt work.

So, sometimes you can attempt to go through every iteration as I have of the items above and sometimes you may get them to work. It requires a lot of patience and I would assume that most of you wouldn't buy two dongles to attempt this.

You can also reinstall a fresh copy of windows as I have done and get similar results.

I can assure you that there is no issue with my reception in my area!

Essentially I believe that there are issues with software handshaking with the network. I believe that 3 mobiles network is congested and over subscribed. I also think they are aware of the issues too. But they will be piping as many people down as thin a bit of bandwidth so cream the maximum amount of money out of their cost that what they actually offer is a sub rate service that screams don't buy me buy a landline.

To send this thread I have had to use the first dongle I bought, the second dongles software (3 USB Modem), windows xp and it seems to be holding but give me ten minutes and I might have to spend 20 minutes finding what the best iteration to get connected is for next time.