Questions About A Dongle?

Terrysdelight

Hello

My friend has 4 mobile phones, plus a dongle on the Vodafone network for his small business.   The dongle has 20gb data each month.   I asked the reason for having a dongle and he says it is for when he is out of the office and he wants to access emails on his laptop.

I am looking into whether he can ditch the dongle. 

My thinking is, with the smart phones, if he wants to access his emails via the laptop, he could simply create a connect the laptop to a hotspot from the phone?

Would this be just as good as a dongle?  Would the speed be sufficient and the coverage the same?

Many thanks
Terrysdelight

Neil_Jones

In theory, yes.

Cisco001

ditch the dongle.
Make sure his mobile phone tariff has enough data.

nick74

One possible downside is that some phones drop the data connection, or at least switch down to 3G, whilst you are on a phone call. It can be annoying if for example someone you are speaking to wants to send an email through to you whilst you are talking. I think using a phone with VoLTE would avoid this issue though.

Sandtree

Terrysdelight said:

Would this be just as good as a dongle?  Would the speed be sufficient and the coverage the same?

Presumably he is on a commercial tariff?

The only downside of tethering to the phone is that it will use up the phones battery and so little/no juice left may cause problems (though presumably he could charge it from the laptop) whereas the dongle leaves the phone alone.

In most consumer tariffs tethering these days just falls under your standard data allowance and so no technical or financial reason not to do it however double check the same is true for his commercial tariffs... anything B2B can be much more cut throat as businesses are supposed to be peers whereas consumers have much more protections.  

With Vodafone Business you also have to pay for access speed so can get a cheaper tariff by setting a maximum data transfer speed... depending on what the phones are being used for it may be cheaper to have the phones on a speed limited tariff and then either one phone full speed or the dongle at full speed.

J_B

Cisco001 said:

ditch the dongle.
Make sure his mobile phone tariff has enough data.

and ensure that 'tethering' in included in his contract!

Jenni_D

J_B said:

Cisco001 said:

ditch the dongle.
Make sure his mobile phone tariff has enough data.

and ensure that 'tethering' in included in his contract!

Pretty much any data plan I've come across that has a fixed data limit allows tethering - it tends to be the "unlimited" plans where you need to be careful.

Sandtree

Jenni_D said:

J_B said:

Cisco001 said:

ditch the dongle.
Make sure his mobile phone tariff has enough data.

and ensure that 'tethering' in included in his contract!

Pretty much any data plan I've come across that has a fixed data limit allows tethering - it tends to be the "unlimited" plans where you need to be careful.

And you've looked at a lot of business plans? A genuine question because they vary significantly from personal plans... as mentioned already with Vodafone you pay for what download speed you want on phones which is something I've never seen on personal plans (not talking 4G -v- 5G but 2mbps or 10mbps etc)

Jenni_D

Business plans? No idea.

You think the OP's friend (or the OP) uses (or is even considering) business plans? Got to admire your optimism.  

flaneurs_lobster

Sandtree said:

 A genuine question because they vary significantly from personal plans... as mentioned already with Vodafone you pay for what download speed you want on phones which is something I've never seen on personal plans (not talking 4G -v- 5G but 2mbps or 10mbps etc)

Vodafone's personal plans already offer different max speeds on their unlimited plans (branded 'Unlimited Lite / Unlimited / Unlimited Max ). Same is true of ASDA (a Voda MVNO).

Sandtree

Jenni_D said:

Business plans? No idea.

You think the OP's friend (or the OP) uses (or is even considering) business plans? Got to admire your optimism.  

He says its for his small business... I admit not worked for any 4 employee companies to know if they typically buy a small business plan or take out a personal phone and then give that to their employee but certainly our accountant was highly encouraging to take out company phones and would only allow partial recharges for personal phones... if that were the case for the OP too then their friend would be personally funding part of their employee's phones.