Mobile broadband until home broadband gets sorted

Willeh

I'm moving into a new house this Monday and the home broadband won't be sorted for another 2 weeks (if not a month). I'm looking to take out a rolling monthly mobile broadband / PAYG mobile broadband contract until the home broadband becomes live.

I use the internet a lot, so as high of a limit as possible (but I can reduce my usage). No budget in mind.

Could you guys please recommend & suggest some options? I've had a quick search and it seems like 3 are the most generous with 5GB for £15 p/m.

Thanks!

EDIT -
May be a silly question & apologies for it, but 3 is offering iPad monthly mobile broadband data plans - 10GB per £15pm. I was told by someone if your laptop supports a microsd slot, this monthly plan can be used on a laptop? Any ideas?

Buzby

MicroSD slots have nothing to do with Micro SIM's - one is memory, the other is authentication device if a modem is fitted. If you don't have an iPAD, then this will be of no use to you. Their standard USB dongle is the way to go.

Tedrick_2

I would recommend trying to cut down a little too, I used 3 prepay for the time between moving in and getting broadband up and running. My wife and I are not heavy users but do use the internet throughout the day and our month ended up costing around 70 pounds, using approximately 12GB.

Just be careful as if you went over that 5GB allowance, its bloody expensive.

Who are you signing up to broadband with? Some of the ISP's offer the OpenZone wifi so you could essentially use next doors until yours gets set up... Worth a try.

TakeThis

Tedrick wrote: »

I would recommend trying to cut down a little too, I used 3 prepay for the time between moving in and getting broadband up and running. My wife and I are not heavy users but do use the internet throughout the day and our month ended up costing around 70 pounds, using approximately 12GB.

Just be careful as if you went over that 5GB allowance, its bloody expensive.

Who are you signing up to broadband with? Some of the ISP's offer the OpenZone wifi so you could essentially use next doors until yours gets set up... Worth a try.

Good thinking. O2 modems come with an unlimited WiFi element. Both the Cloud and BT Openzone.

You can pick up an O2 Starter Pack for as little as £12. If the SIM has expired, give O2 a call and they will replace it.

That will give you a month of free WiFi via OpenZone/The Cloud without even having to topup.

ultimax

I'm in a somewhat similar situation. I just relocated from overseas, into a new flat, and was told it will take a month to get home broadband installed. A real shocker considering where I come form, broadband can be set up within 1-2 working days.

My wife and I have been using a mobile dongle in the interim. We signed up with an O2 PAYG dongle. We got GBP 10 off because we're O2 customers, so we paid GBP 25 (instead of 35) for the dongle and 2GB of data valid for a month. It's GBP 15 for every 2GB data purchased.

O2 currently has a deal which gives you double the data paid for every first, third, fifth and so on top up.

Since we got the dongle 2 weeks ago, we've used about 4GB, and that's without videos and all that. Just regular surfing. We also realised (belatedly, unfortunately) that if you don't turn off windows updates, you might be downloading huge patches without you even knowing! We "wasted" 700mb of our quota that way. So we're pretty paranoid now because we don't know what other programs update themselves in the background. We've decided to only use one computer now.

We've explored other options like tethering our smart phones to our notebooks. The speeds generally are good. Unfortunately, none of the PAYG providers lets you do that on a PAYG sim. It's a bit of a grey area of Three's All-You-Can-Eat data PAYG plan. Some of what I've read says it's not allowed, others say it's OK. Giffgaff doesn't allow it for sure. Other providers charge you a pretty penny for data past the initial 500mb, that standard package for most of them, which is nothing for desktop surfing.

All in, interim mobile broadband access looks to be costly. In 2 weeks, we've already spent GBP 50 on the bloody dongle! That's 3-4 months of home broadband. All because it takes forever to set that home connection up!!!! We're pretty miffed about this.