home or mobile broadband?

sundries

I am in contract on an Orange mobile. I previously had mobile broadband with Orange but the signal in my house was ridiculously bad so I ended the contract. I used to have a BT landline and internet but cancelled that and so don't have a landline or internet. I also have an o2 payg which i dont really use.

What would be the cheapest way for me to access broadband? I'd quite like to have mobile broadband as I do 6 hour round trip on train once a week but I'd also like to be able to watch tv on internet at home. Not sure if i would have to pay a connection fee for my landline. I'm finding all the information a bit confusing. Can anyone help?

HappyMJ

Mobile broadband possibly won't be quick enough or have enough allowance for tv so I'd go for both. The cheapest is mobile but not for what you want it for. An o2 dongle can be used for 1 day for only a couple of pounds.

You won't pay a connection fee for the landline as you already have it connected just not being used.

Mark_In_Hampshire

The answer depends on what the landline can offer in terms of broadband. If you can determine that then you can see if there's a choice. Do you remember what speed the service used to run at, and if it was capable of streaming video? If not, put the postcode into the availability checker at www.samknows.com and you will get a speed estimate.

In most cases, landline broadband [ADSL] is faster than 3G - but not all, our home being a case in point - ADSL broadband is barely fast enough to stream, yet 3G is twice as quick and streams video (YouTube, Seesaw etc) perfectly.

If keeping costs down is important and you don't use it much, AND if there's sufficient coverage, AND it's quick enough (lots of ANDs - check the coverage on three.co.uk - "Indoor coverage" is what you want) then Three 3G mobile broadband on PAYG pay-for-a-day @ £2 per day might be ideal. That only allows 500Mb though which is enough to stream about 25 minutes of TV. 7GB costs £25 enabling you to stream programmes and watch video (a film is about 1.2GB), but there's no line rental.

Just £2 when you want to use it rather than anything up to £50/mo for a landline and ADSL. There's a cost for the dongle thing you'll need to buy. Three is especially well rated and arguably has the best 3G network.

If the landline hasn't been used in a while there may or may not be a connection fee from about £0 to about £150 to get it working again - pick a provider and choose a package online and you'll be told whether there will be a connection fee or not, assuming you pick a bundle of line + ADSL from a supplier who does both.

Plusnet, for instance, have come in for quite a bit of stick lately but are cheap and mostly cheerful, and have quite a good package builder on their site which would enable you to do the above.

Snakeeyes21

3 do 15gb for £15.99 which isnt too bad of an allowance.
and speeds with them are great for me atleast, I was getting 2mb/s on a normal dongle, but ive recently got a new mi-fi from them and the speeds have doubled, more than fast enough to watch tv and films online and dare I say faster than many people with landline connections get....

but if you want to stream films and tv all day then mobile broadband isnt for you, neither is any of the cheaper broadband packages, they all have similar or lower usage allowances....

My local 3 mast is around a mile and a half away....

speed test from the other day


one from a few minutes ago...


And one final one, which has kinda amazed me, which pushes the boundries of mobile broadband as you know it....
warp speed ahead mr spock...

Mark_In_Hampshire

Three are planning to upgrade all the cells to 7.2Mbps this year - some, like ours, are still 3.6Mbps But we do get most of that.

You're getting very good results, though - 5.7Mbps is very good for 3G. You'd need a good quality and short phone line to get anything like those speeds via ADSL.

devizes18193

depend s on coverage as said above . also if you have a good signal it possable to watch iplayer etc ,but it eats data for a pass time . The cheapest way that I know off is buy your dongel then look on ebay for replacement sims . I paid £7 for 3gb on ebay .