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O2 mobile broadband

Hi

I have had to move out of my property for 3 months and the let does not have a phone. I am paying for 10gb broadband with a monthly rolling contract and have a dongle.

My problem is that, despite being told that the connection should be good it is only GRPS and is soooo slow.

I spoke to someone in O2 and they took me through another process to install which immediately gave dial up on HSPDA, so much faster, but this only lasted for 12 hours before reverting to the GRPS. I have spoken to someone again but they say that they cannot work it out.

I am now getting the message error 633: the modem or other device is already in use or not configured properly or 680: there is no dial tone.

Please can anyone help as I use the internet for my work and it is proving a nightmare? I have a desktop system or I would go to a local WiFi area.

Many Thanks

Comments

  • I use Vodafone mobile bb but I suspect that they are all pretty much the same.

    First you need to find the loaction of your nearest O2 2100MHz cell...
    http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/

    If you see a different teleco 2100MHz mast significantly nearer then as this is work consider buying one of their PAYG dongles.

    Ideally you need to be seated near a window facing the cell and have your dongle on a long enough USB lead to tape it to the glass. You may want to experiment with the orientation (vertical, horizontal, flat on or narrow side on to the glass) to get the best signal. You could also consider making a tinfoil relector for the dongle as is used with WiFi kit http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/Ez-10/ The dimensions are not critical but if you want you can scale the sizes up in the ratio of 2400 : 2100 (the frequencies used by each).

    Even with all that you may well still slip back to GPRS. From home my dongle will sometimes connect at 3G but then slips back to GPRS and I don't really believe that the cause is signal strength - I suspect that the cell I'm using is over capacity and it is dropping users back to GPRS to conserve bandwidth because it always works on 3G at silly o'clock and rarely does or slips back during more social hours.

    IMO mobile broadband is a long way short of being a technology you can 100% depend upon.
  • Have you ever googled '3G dongle in a saucepan'? I know it sounds glib but it could give you slightly faster speeds when you're connecting through GPRS.
  • o2 has the worst 3g coverage in the UK.
    No amount of saucepans and tinfoil will solve that :D
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