Mobile Broadband as ONLY Connection?

[Deleted User]

Hi

I'm trying to cut costs and am with Sky for BB & Phone & TV. I'm ending my TV and to keep BB & Phone with Sky on the unlimited service is £21.00 a month.

I've rung 3 who I have a mobile contract with and they can offer me a 15GB mobile broadband dongle for £8.99 a month as a loyalty deal.

Could I use this 3 dongle as my main BB connection. I check my emails regularly and upload pictures quite alot for ebay listings and facebook. I don't download that many songs on itunes as 2 a month and rarely use YouTube.

Sky have said my useage over the last 12 months has 7 times gone over 2GB and normally averages 5GB so would it be feasable for is there a reason it's called mobile BB??

is mobile BB GB different to ADSL GB

Thanks in advance for any help

kwikbreaks

It seems from your past usage that 15GB would be fine. The only question remaining is what will the mobile broadband performance be like and indeed will it work at all - it is even more location dependent than ADSL.

You mention a loyalty deal so I'm assuming you have a 3 phone - how good is your signal?

If you do decide to go ahead make sure you have a cooling off period and don't cancel the BB and phone line until you are sure that the 3G is going to be good enough for you.

PasturesNew

I have a three 15GB dongle. I use it as my only broadband service. I am online about 20 hours/day, 7 days/week. I run a few websites and update them all, some daily, some weekly, some monthly. I spend way too much time reading MSE, I google loads of news, I have a chatroom running all the time I am online where I chat to my friends. I upload images to my websites/blogs. I receive about 300-400 emails/day which I check/read online.

I have never ever run out of bandwidth. I did come close, at 12GB, in November, when I downloaded 6-8 audio files for a bunch of seminars that had run for 14 years, so over 100 mp3s.

At 12GB I received a txt message in my "login box" area telling me I was down to 20% left, so there is a warning. You can also check your usage in the login box to see how much you've used this month.

It should be fine for you.

[Deleted User]

kwikbreaks wrote: »

You mention a loyalty deal so I'm assuming you have a 3 phone - how good is your signal? QUOTE]

I have good signal on my mobile at all times, I used to have a PAYG 3 Dongle while we moved in it used a 3G service??

PasturesNew wrote: »

I have a three 15GB dongle. I use it as my only broadband service. I am online about 20 hours/day, 7 days/week. I run a few websites and update them all, some daily, some weekly, some monthly. I spend way too much time reading MSE, I google loads of news, I have a chatroom running all the time I am online where I chat to my friends. I upload images to my websites/blogs. I receive about 300-400 emails/day which I check/read online. QUOTE]

That sounds a bit like my useage so fills me with confidence! I don't need a landline my most expensive phone call bill for Sky has been £1.18! I think I may bite the bullet as it would be a real big saving!

kwikbreaks

Sounds like it should be ideal for you as you already know it will work.

I have a 3G Vodafone SIM which I use a lot during the day for 4 days each week and rarely exceed 2GB with that. So long as you are sensible you'll be fine. Some ADSL deals don't include as much as 15GB. That said many come a cropped by exceeding their caps.

jamespir

i have 5gb mobile broadband and never come close to that and i pretty mmuch do the same as you the only bad thing is signal its not always great and sometimes pages can take a while to load

Snakeeyes21

Three are great for mobile broadband providing you have a decent signal, im nearly at the end of my 18 months and only ever had one problem where all signal was lost for a couple of hours.

15gb is more than enough, people are constantly on mine all day every day and havent once came close to my limit, thats with downloading quite a bit of stuff aswell.

If you can try to get a mifi device out of them, they can recieve faster speeds and you can connect multiple laptops, computers, phones, games consoles etc through them.

If you do need a landline number for any reason get a local voip number from sipgate, its free and you can hook up a usb phone so people can call you for landline rates, works great over mobile broaband, and you can call all those 0800 numbers for free through it, save a few quid on mobile costs

[Deleted User]

Snakeeyes21 wrote: »

Three are great for mobile broadband providing you have a decent signal, im nearly at the end of my 18 months and only ever had one problem where all signal was lost for a couple of hours.

15gb is more than enough, people are constantly on mine all day every day and havent once came close to my limit, thats with downloading quite a bit of stuff aswell.

If you can try to get a mifi device out of them, they can recieve faster speeds and you can connect multiple laptops, computers, phones, games consoles etc through them.

If you do need a landline number for any reason get a local voip number from sipgate, its free and you can hook up a usb phone so people can call you for landline rates, works great over mobile broaband, and you can call all those 0800 numbers for free through it, save a few quid on mobile costs

Sipgate looks good too! At least then my gran can feel she can still contact me!

kitsonian

The price that 3 have given you for 15GB mobile broadband is really very good - you'll struggle to get a more competitive deal I think. I actually use a 3 mobile broadband dongle and as long as you can get a good signal (called hsdpa) you will barely notice a difference in speed when compared with a standard ADSL speed.

If you intend to use the 3 mobile broadband as your main broadband connection in your house you could do what a previous poster has suggested and try to get 3 to offer you one of their MiFi devices. These effectively allow you to connect up to 5 different wireless devices to 3 mobile broadband at the same time as oppossed to the 3 dongle which will only connect 1 device to the Internet at a time. So if you have a laptop, games console, iPod, etc it may be worth seeing if 3 have got any MiFi deals they can offer you.

[Deleted User]

I managed to get a MiFi on 15gb for £11 a month which isn't too bad the MiFi was free.

I now need advice on Sipgate my contract with sky comes to an end on the 15th January so I'm now looking for a USB phone to use with Sipgate. I will not have a landline. I'm getting really confused as to what to get??? :doh: