3 month internet

SHEILA54

Hi

I have to move from my property for 3 months for repairs due to flooding.
My problem is that the place that I am moving to does not have internet access. I work from home and use the internet for several hours a day.

Please can anyone give me any ideas on this as it seems that dongles only give limited access and can't think that anyone will want to connect for just 3 months?

I do not think that there is any phone connected either.

I have a tv, broadband and phone package with Virgin Media at home and it costs me around £75 per month but I will have to find out if I can have it on hold as it seems daft to pay out for 3 months.

I had considered changing to the O2 phone package in March, with broadband, and getting an O2 mobile deal to cover the phone calls whilst away and I could then cancel my Virgin account, possible reconnecting for TV with Sky or Virgin.

Any advice would be welcome?

Thanks

PlutoinCapricorn

I work from home, and all I have is a 3 prepaid dongle.

Do you live in a town or big city? Can you work upstairs close to a window? If so, you should have good access to the 3 network.

Do you need to play games, download films or play music? If not, the 1gb allowance should be enough. I think that you can get a prepaid dongle with an allowance of 3gb for around £30 now.

SHEILA54

PlutoinCapricorn wrote: »

I work from home, and all I have is a 3 prepaid dongle.

Do you live in a town or big city? Can you work upstairs close to a window? If so, you should have good access to the 3 network.

Do you need to play games, download films or play music? If not, the 1gb allowance should be enough. I think that you can get a prepaid dongle with an allowance of 3gb for around £30 now.

Hi

I do not play games or download music but I do visit a lot of different websites as part of my work and have been told that it can run down the memory. Frankly, I had never heard of a dongle until recently and am not sure how it works?

The office in the new house is inside the property under the stairs and I would have to work from there.

Thanks

PlutoinCapricorn

Dongles are great, provided that you do not require very high speed access and have no need to download huge amounts of data. It is equivalent to fast dialup: they use the mobile phone network so there is no need to be close to w WiFi hotspot.

I bought my first prepaid one, which was loaded with12gb "dongle juice", plugged it into a USB port and was online very quickly. It lasted me for around 10 months.

You could try the 3g model, the worst case is that you waste £30 and anyway you could probably sell it on eBay. If you get a prepaid dongle, you do not need to take out a contract or give bank or card details, but you can go online at any time (with Internet Explorer) and see how much is left.

Office under the stairs - that is not the best place but it might be worth trying: I think that you can get a 1gb dongle just to test the access but it costs proportionally more. I always check online prices as 3 shops are not always the best place for good deals. You might even find something on eBay.

PlutoinCapricorn

I do a lot of browsing as part of my work, and have noticed that more and more sites have moving advertisements and links etc. that do slow things down and use up the allowance: 1gb was ample for one month in 2008, but now it is more like 4gb for 3 months.

Even so, the convenience and freedom from contracts more than make it worthwhile; another factor is that prices are dropping all the time. You can get 12gb for around £70: this would last me around 10 months now, although some people say that they use that much in a week!

dylanuk

How about a no contract broadband package? http://www.chooseisp.co.uk/compare/broadband/no-contract.asp There is some listed here - Be for example are worth a look.

Also not listed is Plusnet - which, although it's not advertised, will let you sign on to a 1 month contract if you pay the set up fee upfront and buy a router if you need one - I think set up is about £30, not sure about the router - but you can provide your own so can shop around for the cheapest deal.

abc

PlutoinCapricorn wrote: »

I do a lot of browsing as part of my work, and have noticed that more and more sites have moving advertisements and links etc. that do slow things down and use up the allowance: 1gb was ample for one month in 2008, but now it is more like 4gb for 3 months.

Even so, the convenience and freedom from contracts more than make it worthwhile; another factor is that prices are dropping all the time. You can get 12gb for around £70: this would me around 10 months now, although some people say that they use that much in a week!

I hate the way as you say a number of websites use Flash, particularly for adverts which use up your allowance, slow things down and add nothing of value. To get round this I have downloaded another browser (Firefox) and haven't installed the Flash plug in for this browser so it means I won't get the annoying Flash versoion of websites or adverts.

Some websites don't allow a non-Flash alternative and for those I just switch back to Internet Explorer browser which I have the Flash plug in installed.

I also use Onspeed to compress webpages, reduce gb usage and speed things up.

I do a lot of surfing but rarely get anywhere near 1gb in a month.

kwikbreaks

If you've taken the trouble to install FireFox then you may as well install the FlashBock plugin. This shows an icon wherever it has blocked a Flash element and clicking that unblocks the element.

OnSpeed may well reduce the download but most of the saving from that is lost in higher latency.