3 MiFi Premium Dongle instead of Adsl for rural area?

Sammyantha

I live in a rural area and get a crappy 3.5 download and 0.37 upload speed from plusnet. Currently considering using 3's new MiFi Premium dongle as I live 5 miles from the mast and they have said i should get 2.5 upload and 7.2 download with them (we can't get adsl 1/2 or cable here).

Has anyone else successfully replaced their landline broadband with a mobile network, especially 3? Is there any lag with video chat or gaming? How do you find the quality?

Thanks

Sammyantha

Bump.......

GRM

I would think the high latency of 3G would kill most gaming.

<standard data speed thread>

Can we swap? I get 1.5Mb/s at best on ADSL.....

S0litaire

Have you got a 3 mobile already?

I'd give one of their PAYG sims a go (use a sim-free mobile as a 3G modem with the PAYG card) and see what speeds you get with your usual day to day stuff.

InsideInsurance

Though the 3g antenna in some of the premium dongles are better than those in mobiles - I have one of their MiFi devices with an O2 sim card in it and it will often get a 3G or above signal in areas that neither of our O2 mobiles do.

Whilst it will be more expensive to buy as PAYG than on contract it is possibly better to do it as it will be a lot more expensive to sign up to a contract and find it is unusably slow when you get home.

I do use one for working on the train etc, it is ok for doing basic website browsing, emailing etc but I couldnt imagine living with it as my only connection

Sammyantha

I've just bought a payg mifi dongle off ebay and will trial it for a couple of weeks to see how i get on. We could always keep plusnet on for my other half and have mobile broadband just for me, so the gaming won't cause an issue. Just wondering now about video chat/ skype etc?