to dongle or not

brickie58

hi i am presently with virgin broadband for £7.50 per month and paying £27.50 to bt for my phone line per month which i hardly use, so i thought if i get a contract dongle for £15 a month or so i will be saving money! has anyone done this and what is a good contract deal and with whom? i would be using my laptop at home mainly.thanks.

almillar

£27.50 for a phone you're not using? BT line rental should be under £12 (?) for their cheapest line rental, you're on the wrong package!
And don't get a dongle to replace your 'home' broadband. Mobile 'broadband' will disappoint you greatly speed-wise, especially if your reception isn't that great, and you're bound to go over your limit very fast at only £15 per month and incur more fees.

Yinster

almillar wrote: »

And don't get a dongle to replace your 'home' broadband. Mobile 'broadband' will disappoint you greatly speed-wise, especially if your reception isn't that great, and you're bound to go over your limit very fast at only £15 per month and incur more fees.

The key is signal strength. I use a mifi using the 3 network which is one up from a dongle. Instead of a dongle hanging onto a usb port it is mobile so you can put it somewhere to get a decent signal. I won't lie to you, if you can't get a signal then it can be pretty rubbish but usually I can and I don't see any difference in speed. Also the beauty is you can connect up to 5 different machine on any one time. And you can take it anywhere with you.

I managed to get my mifi on a 24 month contract for £15 per month for 15GB which is enough for me.

It is personal choice though and I do have home broadband too.

jamesy1986

On 3 I managed to get a no contract £15 a month 5gb dongle, then went through to cancellations a month later and got "talked into" (;)) getting 15GB for the same price, which was a 6 month contract, told them nah no contract and they were happy to keep it a 1 month contract.

I have Virgin broadband for my home broadband but my housemates laptop wont pick it up, problem with their pc, so they use the dongle as they arent heavy internet users and I use it while travelling, 15gb is a lot for that price without a contract.

Give that a try.

Also, I would never take a dongle as a home broadband, I only took it out for temporary usage while I was waiting a month and a half for a Virgin engineer to install the internet cabling. Theyre quite slow and the signal is good in my area, and its not very wise to do a lot of streaming. Even a few hours on youtube can notch up a whole load of your limit.

almillar

I still think that home broadband is better value unless there's a problem with the phoneline or you're too far from the exchange...

cgk1

Yinster wrote: »

The key is signal strength. I use a mifi using the 3 network which is one up from a dongle. Instead of a dongle hanging onto a usb port it is mobile so you can put it somewhere to get a decent signal. I won't lie to you, if you can't get a signal then it can be pretty rubbish but usually I can and I don't see any difference in speed. Also the beauty is you can connect up to 5 different machine on any one time. And you can take it anywhere with you.

I managed to get my mifi on a 24 month contract for £15 per month for 15GB which is enough for me.

It is personal choice though and I do have home broadband too.

But usage is also important, the OP doesn't indicate what his usage is. I can gobble up 15gb in a couple of days, if he's a similar type of usage, then a dongle would be an expensive mistake...