Samba Mobile Broadband - Is it Really Free?

liam8282

I bought one of these sims last week on a 99p offer.

So far not impressed with it.

I watched lots of ads to top up the credit to about 50mb, my iPad has not been taken out of the house and is used over wifi, yet my credit has been used up and actually gone over the limit twice now, meaning I have to watch more ads just to get back into credit.

Wifi is the default and there are no connection problems, so there is no reason for any credit to have been used, yet it has.

I will be ditching the sim and getting an orange sim with 12 m free Internet.

prowla

I've built up 8 Gb of credit, and have only used it a couple of times.

I had a dongle already from 3, and the service was never good.

I've found that the reception is very variable in the house, and I have to use a long USB cable from my laptop so I can get the dongle near the window.

rutters

Has anyone managed to get this working in a smartphone? particularly a samsungS3

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rutters wrote: »

Has anyone managed to get this working in a smartphone? particularly a samsungS3

Works in my old HTC Wildfire (which is locked to Three too) just fine.

rutters

Did you have to change any settings?

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rutters wrote: »

Did you have to change any settings?

No, I didn't have to do anything special. I just put the SIM in, enabled 3G data, and I was set to go.

rutters

Something weird going on here.Got a dual sim phone. I've switched off wifi, taken my Talkmobile sim out but can still connect to internet.

When I go to the samba site I've still used no data! Does it take a while to come out of your credit?

prowla

I used mine with a computer when we went on a long weekend break, and it seems to work as expected.

When I say "as expected", I mean: intermittent connections, slower speed than broadband, but eventually got there.

It is also hopeless on a train - I've had a 1-hour trip into London where I spent more time reconnecting than using the service.

There is no way that this could be used as a primary internet connection, unless you are in an area with excellent signal (eg. in London or next to a mast!).

Uplink

rutters wrote: »

When I go to the samba site I've still used no data! Does it take a while to come out of your credit?

Takes a few hours. Three, the network used by Samba, is sending usage updates every once in a while. Being a Three customer too, I can say this is how Three works, it's not a Samba thing. It wasn't always like this, but my guess is they "improved" something My feeling is that they "fixed" the data usage reports when they introduced all you can eat data (so data usage doesn't really matter unless you're Scrooge, like me).

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prowla wrote: »

It is also hopeless on a train - I've had a 1-hour trip into London where I spent more time reconnecting than using the service.

Three are horrible on the train from Chelmsford to London too. You're better off reading the free newspaper on the train instead. At least on Three you can roam on Orange (the other horrible network) if you're lucky, but Samba may not get the same "privilege".

prowla wrote: »

There is no way that this could be used as a primary internet connection, unless you are in an area with excellent signal (eg. in London or next to a mast!).

Samba isn't meant as a primary Internet connection, but it's a great replacement for your mobile data allowance when your mobile network gives you peanuts, charges a litre of blood for it, and asks you to be grateful for it too. That's what I'm using it for.



And now some funny signal story (not that it's relevant or anything ):

The mast is like 1 km away from my flat, hidden behind trees, buildings and a railway line. I do have to put my phone that I use as an access point near a window to get a decent signal - toward or away from the mast, doesn't matter (I blame the building). The signal gets attenuated sharply as I walk through my flat, with a few black spots in the doorway between my lounge and my kitchen (very precise black spots these). On the other hand, I do have another very precise spot in my bedroom where signal is awesome, but unfortunately this same spot is in mid air, with nothing to hold my phone. In this spot, the signal is stronger than near the window, figure that. Around it, the signal drops like a pile of bricks.

I'm blaming the 3G signal. I was with another network a while back, and I had similar experience with their 3G, yet the same network's 2G (EDGE) was flawless - with the end result that 2G appeared faster than 3G too.