Mobile Broadband on Three

robt_2

Firstly, I'm asking this in here as it is a technical question rather than a general broadband/mobile phone question.

I have a Nokia E65 on 3, which I can use as a modem with Nokia PC Suite. If I download a file it achieves upto around 30KB/sec downloading, which speedwise is fine for me when I need to use it as opposed to my 'proper' broadband.

When surfing with it however, it is very slow navigating from page to page, much (MUCH) slower than you would expect for something which can achieve 30KB/sec.

The phone has a full signal, and is in a 'Video' area as opposed to a 'Turbo' area, and is connected with a standard Nokia data cable.

If I were to purchase a USB broadband dongle (from 3), would I get identical results, or is PC Suite, or the phone, limiting my connection somehow?

robt_2

Anyone?

System

If it is of any use, I recently queried how hundreds of people who live on a static caravan holiday park each have internet with no landlines. It seems the majority of them have these 3 dongles. They tell me they pick up signals much as a mobile phone does, there is no noticeable slowness of speed from a PC, other that if everyone surfs at the same moment. Apparently if you do a lot of heavy downloading, you run the risk of using up your allocated allowance, but THEY tell me it hasn't happened to any of them. Oh, and it is £5 per month now.

Conor_3

robt wrote: »

Firstly, I'm asking this in here as it is a technical question rather than a general broadband/mobile phone question.

I have a Nokia E65 on 3, which I can use as a modem with Nokia PC Suite. If I download a file it achieves upto around 30KB/sec downloading, which speedwise is fine for me when I need to use it as opposed to my 'proper' broadband.

When surfing with it however, it is very slow navigating from page to page, much (MUCH) slower than you would expect for something which can achieve 30KB/sec.

The phone has a full signal, and is in a 'Video' area as opposed to a 'Turbo' area, and is connected with a standard Nokia data cable.

If I were to purchase a USB broadband dongle (from 3), would I get identical results, or is PC Suite, or the phone, limiting my connection somehow?

It isn't much slower than you'd expect for something that can achieve 30KB/sec, its just that you're used to your home connection which is typically 10 times faster. The average size for a webpage has doubled over the last couple of years which doesn't help. There is a bit of lag in their DNS servers which holds it up whilst the computer queries them but this can be overcome to an extent by changing them to the ones at OpenDNS.com.

If you're using Firefox, install the Adblock extension which will save you downloading adverts when you load a page which can easily be larger in size than the page you want.

Speedwise, you'll notice no difference unless you're in a Turbo area as the E65 doesn't support speeds above 384Kbit/s.