Home broadband so slow, considering mobile as it would be fatser!any suggestions?

loupoppins

OK, so I am SO fed up with our ridiculous broadband situation! I have been with Orange for almost a year, and have finally got them to allow us to terminate our contract early due to shocking service. Our internet drops at least once a week, and is only brought back on by endless calls to goodness knows where.Anyway, that is a long story, but the point is I now have a MAC code and need to change asap.
The problem is our phone lines. We live on a modern housing estate with newish houses. inhabited by families and professionals all of whom use the internet. Yet unbelievably the speed of our connection is a whopping 0.25MG!! Sometimes it reaches the dizzy heights of 0.5, but never breaks 1MB! There is so much we cant do at that speed.
The trouble is we are 8KM from the exchange, and have something slightly odd about our phonelines. To top it all off, there has been a regional project going on to bring "superfast broadband" to the area via fibre opric cables, but guess what - we are in the 3% of people in the region that wont get it...so they spend millions getting people from 20 to 40 mb and meanwhile we have to make do with 0.25.
Anyway...rant aside...I am considering mobile broadband as ridiculously it would probably be faster for us!! I have been looking at 3 MiFi as it needs to work for more than one PC at a time...anyone tried it?? Any reviews - good or bad??
Or anyone got any other suggestions please - this is driving me mad!
(oh and cnat get virgin either!)
TIA:beer:

spannerzone

If you're 8Km from the exchange then consider it good luck you get anything at all!

While mobile broadband might be an option, I've never found my 3g dongle to perform anywhere near to what they say it might do... even in good/excellent reception areas. Sometimes it feels not much better than dial up so don't assume it'll be a vast improvement! So before commiting to any 3g based service I'd suggest you firstly check coverage with the various suppliers and if possible do you know anyone with one to do an onsite check before buying?

The 3 'mifi' might be an option but you'd need to make sure the package you get has a decent download allowance (many 3g broadband limits are small (1, 3 or 5gb a month) which might not last long shared. The '3' truly unlimited 3g broadband option might be worth a look if the service works in your area.

Finally, have you tried connecting your modem into the BT master socket to see if your internal wiring is dropping the speeds? Info here

Mark_In_Hampshire

If you really are 8km from the exchange, it's amazing that ADSL works at any speed.

2.5 years experience with Three 3G here as main connection (ADSL useless)

Local cell is only 3.6Mbps

Hits 3.2Mbps sometimes

Less than 2.2Mbps is rare

Streams e.g. YouTube perfectly night or day, Seesaw seems a bit more problematic on the higher quality setting and has packed up once or twice - you have to watch in normal def

Ping times average 90ms so probably useless for gaming - never tried

2 days downtime in last 2.5 years - local cell packed up altogether and needed repairs.

Here, the exchange is 2.5km away and the mobile cell is 2.8km away, and 3G runs at roughly twice the speed of ADSL.

I might be only one of a handful of people using it and hence, if this can possibly apply, "lucky".

Like ADSL, whether it's any use or not depends on where you are. We can also get O2 3G, but that's useless here despite an apparent strong signal - packet loss is horrendous.

Yes, it's frustratingly slow, 3Mbps is what I'd call "narrowband", but it is the only option available and here, over about the same distance, radio waves and oxygen succeed as a broadband conduit in a way that BT's knackered old phone lines don't.

On a contract 15GB/mo can be had, but that's a 2 year deal I think: since quality is so variable, do make sure you do get it on the "take it back if it's useless" option e.g. perhaps start on PAYG.

spannerzone

Mark I'd say you're getting a pretty good service by all accounts...I've used various 3G dongles in various places on various computers and never been overly impressed but perhaps it's all down to how many people are using the same cell site.

Still, I'd rather be using a working 3G dongle than dialup that's for sure!